Rapua ngā tuhinga ruku tātari

The Tribunal's Mohaka ki Ahuriri Report was released on Saturday 5 June 2004. It covers 20 Hawke's Bay claims spanning a district bounded by the Tutaekuri River to the south, Hawke Bay to the east, the Waiau River to the north, and the inland ranges and the old Hawke's Bay provincial boundary to the west. The claimants were predominantly Ngati Kahungunu, although some identified more or equally with Ngati Tuwharetoa.

In summary, the claims concerned Māori land in two broad ways. First, they related to the loss of land through pre-1865 Crown purchases, the operation from 1865 of the Native Land Court, the 1867 Mohaka–Waikare confiscation, and later Crown purchasing (mainly conducted from 1910 to 1930). Secondly, they related to the barriers to the use and enjoyment of lands retained in Māori ownership, including title disruption, the lack of development opportunities, the fragmentation and multiple ownership of tiny parcels, and the lack of access.

In particular, the Tribunal investigated:

The status of the first land transactions with the Crown in the district in 1851, which the claimants asserted to be akin to ‘treaties’. Whether a supposed ‘rebellion’ justified the military engagements in 1866 and the confiscation in 1867. The propriety of the Crown’s handling of both the ‘return’ of certain lands after the confiscation and the title disputes which followed for over 80 years. The point at which the Crown should have stopped purchasing Māori land and put its effort into helping develop the remaining Māori land base; and whether there is a link between poverty and landlessness.

The Tribunal found a number of serious breaches relating to land loss and remaining Māori land base:

Overall, we have identified serious breaches of the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi by the Crown in the loss of Māori land in our inquiry district. We have also found that the Crown acted in clear breach of the Treaty in its treatment of the remaining Māori land base. We have also made the point that by far the bulk of that surviving base (some 125,000 acres out of a total of roughly 800,000) remains in Māori ownership principally because it was viewed by the Crown as too rugged and unproductive to bother purchasing.

Of particular note was the Crown's use of section 363 of the Native Land Act in 1910, alienating Māori land ownership:

from 1911 the Crown persisted over two decades in buying up individual interests in land, more than halving the amount of land left in Māori ownership at Mohaka in 1910. It adopted the usual tactics of employing alienation restrictions under section 363 of the Native Land Act 1909, as well as making payments on the basis of out-of-date valuations. This purchasing not only conflicted with the Stout–Ngata recommendations but seemed to serve no clear purpose. And, because the Crown had acquired so many partial interests, scattered throughout the various blocks, it decided upon a scheme to consolidate its interests. Even after this decision was made, however, purchasing continued unabated – in fact, the impetus for it increased, as the Crown tried to gain as much land as it could in the northern part of the Mohaka block, where the blackberry infestation was less, before the exchanges took place.

The Tribunal recommended that the Crown and the claimants negotiate over the settlements of the claims, and it made some suggestions as to the appropriate groups for the Crown to deal with. It also noted that Crown counsel had made a number of concessions of failings by the Crown to live up to the standards envisaged in the Treaty.