Chief Executive’s Report

Te Ripoata o te Manahautū, Te Rūnanga o Ngāti Awa

E āku iti, e āku rahi tēnā tātau katoa.

In the first half of the financial year to December 2019, we had been directing resources to a medium to long-term focus on tourism, self-sustainability and self-directed futures. A number of projects were conceived to further these objectives – at both Rūnanga and commercial Group levels – and some in conjunction with partners. Work on these was suspended with the Whakaari eruption, and our response to that terrible event, followed shortly after by Covid-19. When the lockdown was declared on 25 March 2020, Ngāti Awa marae, our social and health Service, Te Tohu o te Ora o Ngāti Awa, along with Te Rūnanga o Ngāti Awa management and staff, arranged for hundreds of food and home essentials to be packaged and delivered to vulnerable whānau and kaumātua of Ngāti Awa hapū, including those on Mōtītī island near Tauranga. Over 250 kaumātua over 65 were supported, along with vulnerable tamariki and those with chronic conditions, all of whom were the most at risk from Covid-19.

While continuing to respond to these events and their aftermath, at the same time we have had to continue with project development work. The principal ones are: • Korehāhā Whakahau – a major pest eradication plan, starting with possums, across a 4,700ha area covering Whakatāne and Ōhōpe, benefitting biodiversity and boosting regional development and tourism. Funded by Ngāti Awa, Predator-free 2050, a Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) grant and Te Papa Atawhai / Department of Conservation, and launched in June. It is the first Iwi-led Predator-Free 2050 project in Aotearoa. It is an example of what we hope will be many projects to protect and enhance our taiao, and reinstate our connections to our whenua.

• Kāinga – the transformation of the Whakatāne Army Hall that will celebrate Ngāti Awa culture, heritage and stories. With equity support from the PGF, this will be a destination anchor in the Whakatāne township, and will help us provide manaakitanga to visitors and residents. Kāinga will also reflect our taiao aspirations be sustainable and align with our values. • Led by Te Rāhui Lands Trust, a potential new boat harbour adjacent to the Whakatāne river on Ngāti Awa owned Māori freehold land, funded by a

PGF loan and equity. This will include a training facility for the Eastern Bay of Plenty. • Te Ara Mahi – a workforce development and training programme delivered by Te Rūnanga o Ngāti Awa with partners to support the boat harbour development, our businesses, and most importantly descendants of Ngāti Awa into training and employment.

• Town and riverside regeneration in Whakatāne (Te Ara Hou) – led by the District Council, with our support, a range of work is underway to repurpose and beautify the town centre and riverside, with new walkways and mixed use spaces. • Tourism Reset – alongside Ngāti Awa Group Holdings Limited we are jointly working on refreshing and repurposing our tourism offerings. Guided by our values, we are seeking to create a Ngāti Awa eco-system of suppliers and service providers where the value we create is first distributed to Ngāti Awa businesses and employees.

The boat harbour and river revitalisation projects are expected to create 450 jobs, direct and indirect, over 10 years and for Kāinga to create another 150-200 jobs. More broadly, through job seeking and training support we hope to match our people to the many new training and job seeker support schemes the Crown has set up to respond to Covid-19, and also to see what we can deliver ourselves. This is part of our wider workforce development plan that links in with Korehāhā Whakahau, our tourism reset, and other projects.

We are proud to continue to support and encourage independent rangatahi leadership. Their priorities from a hui they held to look at the impact of Covid-19 were tino rangatiratanga, strengthening cultural, spiritual and economic resilience and self-reliance, deepening knowledge of Ngāti Awatanga and being in control of their own destiny. Underpinning rangatahi Leadership is succession planning, soundly focused on perpetuating our culture, language and identity as Ngāti Awa, and mātauranga ā hapū ā Iwi. We will continue this important work alongside rangatahi in the New Year. Also of note this year was our continued opposition to Creswell NZ Limited’s plan to extract 1.1 billion litres of water per year from the Otakiri aquifer in the Awaiti Canal groundwater catchment for water bottling. After our unsuccessful Environment Court appeal, we lodged a High Court appeal. The hearing was in July this year. Creswell is a subsidiary of Chinese soft drinks giant Nongfu Spring. If it is given the green light the plant will fill 1,800 single use plastic bottles per minute with water. Nongfu Spring sell around 15 billion bottles of water a year. Discarded bottles from Nongfu Spring brands are routinely found polluting oceans and shores around the globe. There needs to be a complete national policy review that addresses these issues associated with water bottling. The employment programmes we are implementing, based on our values of kaitiakitanga and manaakitanga offer alternative work pathways, and we intend for these to become the jobs we create and promote in the future. The financial performance of the Runanga Group for the year was a surplus of $2.7M. The commercial group’s performance is discussed in the Ngāti Awa Group Holdings Chair’s report that follows. We reflect that it is now 15 years since our settlement with the Crown, and with time passing, the broader community and younger generations may be less aware of the history and of the terms of the settlement. In short, using the pretext of a localised conflict in which three people were killed, in 1865 the colonial Government declared martial law in our rohe and subsequently confiscated over 100,000 hectares – the vast majority – of our tribal lands as ‘punishment.’ Many other losses came on the back of this: of people, of mana, of language, of heritage. The cumulative impacts were devastating and intergenerational. One hundred and forty years later, in 2005, we were finally able to negotiate a lasting settlement with the Crown. It consisted of cash and assets, including some of the confiscated land that was still in Crown ownership. Like all settlements, it represented only a small proportion of what was lost, but it was imperative for us to move forward. The Rūnanga was reconstituted to manage the settlement and we began the long rebuilding journey – cultural, spiritual and economic – of the lives of our over 20,000 members. (For those interested in more, visit Ngāti Awa’s story online at Te Tai, Treaty Settlement Stories). Today, we continue to strive for a future that rights the wrongs of the past, empowers us to live as Ngāti Awa with our taonga, with our culture, language and identity, and forging a future of equality for the next generations. With us, recovery and growth for Whakatāne is richer, and deeper and longer term. Where we don’t have resources we have partnered with others, such as Korehāhā Whakahau which was developed with a small team of experts who have shown great commitment to Ngāti Awa, our aspirations and our values. These are the kind of partnerships we are seeking. I extend my thanks to the Governors and staff for their incredible hard work, dedication and loyalty during what has been the most challenging year we have faced. I also want to sincerely thank the many Ngāti Awa people who volunteered and gave their time and support to the Iwi particularly in the aftermath of the eruption and during levels 2, 3 and 4 of the Covid-19 response. Finally, I offer our gratitude to the Ngāti Awa organisations, Te Tohu o Te Ora o Ngāti Awa and Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi for their partnership and commitment during exceptional times and circumstances.

Naaku noa, naa

Leonie Simpson Manhautū, Te Rūnanga o Ngāti Awa