Its origins began in the 1870s, when Kāi Tahu leader and politician H.K. Taiaroa told the New Zealand House of Representatives the Crown had not honoured its promises and conditions of significant land purchases in the South Island.
One thing slowly led to another before redress finally came in 1998 in the form of the Ngāi Tahu Claims Settlement Act.
By that time, Wānaka mountainbikers were already building trails on the supposedly forgotten block of land that should have passed long ago to 50 named Māori individuals, as stipulated under the South Island Landless Natives Act (SILNA) 1906 (since repealed).
The original 50 were mainly Kati Irakehu, from Banks Peninsula.
In 1895, they were promised land at Manuhaea, The Neck, between Lakes Wānaka and Hāwea. But because that land had been leased to farmers, the Crown decided to swap it with the block at Lake Wānaka now known as Sticky Forest.
But the transfer of Sticky Forest never happened.
The story was one of many presented to the Waitangi Tribunal during the Ngāi Tahu claim and summarised by the late whakapapa/genealogy expert Dr Terry Ryan in the 2022 Environment Court case of Bunker and Rouse vs the Queenstown Lakes District Council.
No-one in the Environment Court disputed ownership. They debated what the successors of the original 50 could do with the land — such as building houses in the outstanding natural landscape, buffer zones, access and forestry.
The judges preferred te ao Māori (Māori world view) landscape evidence over te ao Pākehā evidence and said rezoning would provide for the owners’ economic benefit.
Appellant Lorraine Rouse has survived her co-appellants and cousins Theo Bunker and Mike Beresford, who both died recently.
"It is a little sad but they would be very happy, and so are their families, for the results," she said.
"That is a good outcome . . . And as you know, it has been a very, very slow burn. Over the time time, many people have come and gone ... Reading through all the submissions and evidence, they all called it a cruel hoax. It does feel like that. We took one step forward and 10 steps backward," Ms Rouse said.
But the Sticky Forest story still has many chapters to go and who knows how it will end.
"[We] are really just at the beginning from a successors’ perspective. ... There [are] 2000 and climbing successors. The number is changing exponentially."
"The key for us as successors, is that any successors who are out there need to ensure their contact details are updated with the Māori Land Court. That is the only means of communication we have. . . . Part of this slow burn has been identifying everyone," Ms Rouse said.
Spreading the word far and wide was also important for any person who thought they might be descended from the intended owners of other SILNA land that had not been transferred in the past, she said.
"There are three other blocks as well as ours, of which I know very little about other than we are the first cab off the rank. This one has been really [time] consuming so I haven’t got involved in the others at all," Ms Rouse said.
The other three SILNA cases involve blocks on Stewart Island and on the West Coast, allocated to Māori people in Marlborough as "redress" for the loss of economic benefit first complained about by Mr Taiaroa.
Ms Rouse agreed past decisions were "really weird".
"My ancestors were not involved in any land down in that area of the South Island [Manuhaea and Wānaka] but that was the land available at the time and the Crown allocated it that way. There is no deviation from Sticky Forest, because it has been substituted already from The Neck. This is it," she said.
Environment Court Judge John Hassan reinforced that fact in his decision.
"The appellants are not members of the Papatipu Rūnaka, who hold mana whenua over the part of the district within which the site falls. However, that does not preclude them [from making their case]."
He added, quoting the Ngāi Tahu deed of settlement: "the purpose of the Hāwea/Wānaka Sticky Forest block allocation is to provide for the economic wellbeing of the successors".
Any interpretation that the land was not ancestral would be "akin to enshrining that original severance and adding significant insult to injury", Judge Hassan said.
Ms Rouse said a housing development had not been decided on.
"Progress has been made . . . but it is a slow process because of the fact that myself and the representative group cannot make any decisions. It is all about the successors making the decision.
"All we were doing [as appellants] is basically finding out the best possible options for this piece of land and taking it to the successors and then the successors can vote on it."
What the zoning decision does mean is that the forest could acquire a more meaningful value.
At the moment, it has a rateable value of about $7 million ($140,000 per hectare).
Originally, the late Mike Beresford applied to rezone the whole 50ha, but the Queenstown Lakes District Council refused because the block has no legal access.
The appellants compromised during the appeal process and sought just 19ha of rezoning.
Options could include keeping the land in individual land, arranging to have it designated it as Māori land, or holding it as a company or trust
