The Crown says it's putting right a great deal of wrong by moving towards a Deed of Settlement for all historical Treaty of Waitangi claims with the Poverty Bay iwi, Rongowhakaata.
The deed was initialled on Wednesday in Te Hau ki Tūranga - an intricately carved ancestral meeting house that was built in the early 1840s, confiscated by the Crown in 1867, and is currently installed at Te Papa.
The tribe will work with the museum on the feasibility of taking the meeting house back.
The Government's to apologise for a number of other Treaty breaches, including the unjustified use of military force in Tūranganui-ā-Kiwa or Gisborne, and the summary executions of prisoners at Ngātapa in 1869.
As part of the settlement, the iwi will get $22 million plus the interest that's accrued since 2008, and several Crown-owned properties in the Gisborne region.
