Kemp's Deed
[1] The grievance caused by the Crown was settled 150 years later through the Ngāi Tahu Claims Settlement Act 1998 and a compensation package valued at NZ$170 million.
Ngāi Tahu chiefs had sold parts of Banks Peninsula to the Nanto-Bordelaise Company in August 1838 at Port Cooper (now known as Lyttelton), without the boundaries having ever been defined.
[2] In February 1848, Governor George Grey visited Banks Peninsula and learned that some of the Māori chiefs were prepared to sell the land south of the Ashley River / Rakahuri.
Grey considered that given the low number of Māori who were living in Canterbury, this would be "as large an amount as they could profitably spend or as was likely to be of any real benefit to them".
[8] Eyre foresaw ongoing problems with Māori and to remedy the situation, he instructed land purchase commissioner Walter Mantell and surveyor Alfred Wills to define the native reserves after the winter.
The principal disagreement was about Mantell's plan to consolidate several land claims by different hapu (subtribe) at Ōnuku, a concept that contravened Māori culture and customs.
The Crown walked away from the negotiations and seemed in no urgency to come back to the issue; the main objective of providing a harbour for the Canterbury Association settlement had been met.
[12] When the Imperial Parliament of the British Empire passed the Canterbury Land Settlement Act 1850, the unresolved status of the Akaroa district was not known.
Johnson, after a thorough investigation, concluded that Māori had never ceded the Akaroa block, and his offer of £200 and three reserves of 400 acres (160 ha) each at Ōnuku, Little River and Wainui was accepted.
[14] William John Warburton Hamilton was asked in early 1857 to respond to Ngāi Tahu claims that they were the owners of land north of the Ashley River that Ngāti Toa had wrongly been paid for, and should have instead been included in Kemp's Deed.
Hamilton brought to the attention of the Crown that two other areas required resolution: Kaikōura (also north of the Ashley River) and the West Coast of the Canterbury Purchase.
This process was delayed at Tuahiwi, where Māori could gain income from cutting down their forest, but once the timber had been sold off they faced the same problems.
[16] A full investigation was undertaken in 1920 and it was found that Grey's promise of meeting "present and prospective wants" had not been fulfilled, neither by Kemp nor Mantell.
The commissioners found that Ngāi Tahu's grievance "was created in the first instance out of misconception, prolonged through misunderstanding, and magnified by neglect".
In 1925, a Native Land Court determined a list of persons between whom this payment should be split but nothing further happened for two decades, as the Crown considered the amount as too high and Ngāi Tahu rejected it as insufficient.
