The Waitangi Tribunal has begun a second week of hearings on the Ngapuhi claims involving the Treaty of Waitangi and the Declaration of Independence.
The tribunal is sitting at Waitangi in the Bay of Islands, where it held an initial week of hearings last month.
The Ngapuhi claim is focused on He Whakaputanga - the 1835 document in which Ngapuhi chiefs established New Zealand's status as a sovereign nation.
Ngapuhi hapu say that their chiefs did not cede that sovereignty in the Maori-language treaty they signed five years later, and that New Zealand's present constitutional arrangements are based on a myth.
