Who are the Claimants ?
The Kurahaupo Iwi - Ngati Apa, Ngati Kuia and Rangitane - had established a strong presence in the northern South Island by the mid-eighteenth century. By around 1800, after a series of battles with the former occupiers, they were in secure possession of a vast and rich territory stretching south to the Kawatiri (Buller) and Waiau-toa (Clarence) Rivers on the west and east coasts respectively. The Kurahaupo Iwi did not occupy well-defined territories capable of being defined by lines on maps. Customary interests often overlapped or intersected, and resources were often shared on the basis of whakapapa and other customary connections. Between 1827 and the mid-1830's Te Rauparaha and his musket-armed allies launched a series of devastating raids on the northern South Island. The Kurahaupo Iwi suffered heavy casualties. Some were enslaved, some continued to reside on their lands as 'tributary' communities, and others fled into the hinterland and remained free. But while the Kurahaupo fires may have flickered, they did not go out. Viable communities remained on the land and chiefly lines and mana were maintained. The Kurahaupo chief Ihaia Kaikoura signed the Treaty of Waitangi at Cloudy Bay in 1840, and in 1856 the Kurahaupo people of Pelorus were able to tell Donald McLean, the Crown's land purchaser, that they were "yet a living people".
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