A section of land in Canterbury has been returned to Māori following decades of negotiations.
The site, located between State Highway 1 and a railway line in the small community of Ōmihi, once held a pa and cemetery.
Te Rūnanga o Kaikōura is celebrating the return of the Ōmihi pa.
“Our grandparents, it's almost a time that they can rest because it's something that's been generations through generations,” Te Rūnanga o Kaikōura chair Hariata Kahu said.
Artefacts, middens and a cemetery revealed the site, which sits 17 kilometres southwest of Kaikōura, was home to Māori for at least 300 years prior to pākehā settlement.
“It was one of the main pas that were ambushed, more or less, from the Te Rauparaha wars,” Kahu said.
The fight for the land was won after decades, with the land going from Māori ownership to the Crown before being on sold to the public.
In the 1970s, the Historic Places Trust ignored pleas not to build on the historic site.
“By the time I got there, most of the damage had already been done,” said archaeologist Michael Trotter, who has been keeping an eye on the pa for over 40 years.
“Though there were the remains of 36 people there, there were no complete skeletons and that was a bit of a mystery.”
Around 16 buildings were forced to come down amid the risk of significant rockfall after the 2016 Kaikōura earthquakes.
The Kaikoura District Council bought back the land with help from central Government.
Kaikōura District Council chief executive Angela Oosthuizen said it cost "approximately $1.55 million to actually work through and develop the framework".
Kahu said the iwi is now “looking at returning it back to reserve land”.
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