Te Heu Heu Tukino V1 Hoani 1936 1944

edmondsallan - Hello - In 1937 the Tongariro Timber Company affair was moving to another crisis. The Egmont Box Company by now had entered into a new agreement with the Aotea District Maori Land Board, acting as agent for the owners; it was agreed on 13 June 1935 that the Box Company should be paid £23,500 by the board in order to discharge all claims arising out of the agreement between the board and the Tongariro Timber Company. This money was paid over by December 1935. Hoani Te Heuheu then sued the land board on the grounds of negligence. He and his board had been advised that any debts to the Egmont Box Company were owed by the Tongariro Timber Company and not by the Maori owners. The case failed in the Supreme Court, and a proposal to use the board’s funds to help him take it to the Court of Appeal was vetoed by the native minister. The board appealed this decision, declaring that Hoani was suing in his capacity as chief of Ngati Tuwharetoa and that if the Crown had been negligent it was a double injustice for it to prevent Ngati Tuwharetoa from using its own funds to seek a ruling on the matter. In the event the case failed in the Court of Appeal.

Protest meetings were held at Waihi in 1938 and a national Maori hui was held there in January 1939. By then Hoani Te Heuheu and many others had begun to focus on ratification of the Treaty of Waitangi as their principal defence. Hoani was attempting to establish that the legislation was contrary to the treaty and therefore invalid. M. H. Hampson took the case to the Privy Council in 1940. The result was a set-back for Maori rights under the Treaty of Waitangi, the Privy Council declaring that rights under a treaty of cession could not be enforced in the courts except in so far as they had been incorporated into domestic law.

This was Hoani Te Heuheu's last big effort. As chairman of the trust board he urged conservative spending during the Second World War, wanting to ensure a fund for rehabilitation of Tuwharetoa servicemen. In 1942 he became ill with tuberculosis, and in May 1943 the Tuwharetoa Trust Board considered an annual grant to be set aside to assist him to fulfil his functions on behalf of the tribe, and for specialist medical treatment. A monthly honorarium was set in place from November 1943. Hoani was re-elected chairman in his absence on 26 January 1944, but died at Waihi on 27 April, survived by his wife and five children. He was buried at Waihi on 2 May 1944. His eldest son, Hepi Hoani, succeeded him as Te Heuheu Tukino VII. I know this ancestry is very detailed , however I think it is great for the close Relatives . Gives a great mental picture . Till we meet again - Regards - edmondsallan