The people of Taranaki lost much of their most valuable tribal lands in the confiscations following the 1860s wars. Repeated efforts were made in following years to claim compensation for injustices. At this 1935 meeting in Lower Hutt are (seated, from left): MP Taite Te Tomo, Prime Minister George Forbes, Rima Wakarua, chair of the Taranaki Native Trust Board, Finance Minister Gordon Coates, J. W. Andrews, mayor of Lower Hutt, and an unidentified elder. At this meeting Coates said, '[T]hey used to say that they hoped ... to make every Maori a pakeha, but ... they now wanted the Maoris to keep their civilization' (Evening Post, 3 September 1935, p. 10). The Labour government elected later that year agreed to a settlement for Taranaki in 1944.