Maori continued with the task unarmed and, to a person, they declined to respond to aggression when removed. Go, put your hands to the plough. Look not back. If any come with guns and swords, be not afraid. If they smite you, smite not in return. If they rend you, be not discouraged. Another will take up the good work. If evil thoughts fill the minds of the settlers and they flee from their farms to the town, as in the war of old, enter not . . . into their houses, touch not their goods nor their cattle. My eye is over all. I will detect the thief, and the punishment shall be like that which fell upon Ananias. When the ploughmen asked Tohu what they should do if any of their number were shot, he replied, ‘Gather up the earth on which the blood is spilt and bring it to Parihaka’ (Scott, pp 56-57).

February 6^th  is Waitangi Day in New Zealand, the anniversary of the signing of the Treaty  of Waitangi in 1840. To the British this achieved full sovereignty and government of the country but Maori  thought, while giving authority to govern, they would still be entitled to manage their own affairs in their own way.  Similarly to Australia Day on January 26^th being known as “Invasion Day” to the First Peoples of that nation, Waitangi Day is often attended by protest as well as being a celebration of nationhood.

What perhaps not enough New Zealand settler descendants may know is that there were Taranaki chieftains who never signed the Treaty of Waitangi, steadfast in their refusal to acknowledge foreign sovereignty in preference for maintaining their own way of life on their own land – the pa at Parihaka became a sanctuary for Maori forced, fought, deceived off their land. Likened forerunners to Ghandi  and Martin Luther King, Te Whiti and Tohu ran a campaign of non-violence spanning 40 years sheltering the dispossessed.

The Waitangi Tribunal[1] published “The Taranaki Report: Kaupapa Tuatahi” in 1996 saying, “ If war is the absence of peace, the war has never ended in Taranaki, because that essential prerequisite for peace among peoples, that each should be able to live with dignity on their own lands, is still absent and the protest over land rights continues to be made.”  Contrary to the belief held by many New Zealanders that in an acknowledged first equal language, proportional representation in government and other policies we might be considered advanced in our journey of equality and reconciliation, in fact we are the only colonising country where there is no land held and managed autonomously by the indigenous population (Ch.8 Parihaka).

The title of Dick Scott’s book is a quote from Te Whiti, Chieftain at Parihaka who says:

Ask that mountain – here before us, it will be here when we are gone – that mountain as witness, can we honestly say that we have done everything we can? That everything is ‘right’?

These are the questions we need to ask ourselves and the stories that should continue to be told if we are to participate in the journey of healing between the people and the land.

It is often difficult to know where to start in confronting these issues, I have more questions than answers yet I have hope.  I have ordered a T-shirt from the Emmaus Rd community, on the front it reads Arohamai which means “sorry” or “forgive me” and on the back are a list of some of the injustices as occurred over those 40 years and are carried yet in our dreams and bones today:

I’M SORRY FOR THE

// INVASION OF YOUR VILLAGE – 5th NOV
// UNJUST ARREST AND EXILING OF TE WHITI AND TOHU
// LOOTING BY THE ARMED CONSTABULARY / 8th NOV
// DESTRUCTION OF THE WHARENUI & CROPS / 20th NOV
// FORCIBLE EJECTION OF 1,556 PEOPLE FROM THEIR HOMES /20th NOV
// RAPE OF YOUR WOMEN
// CONGENITAL SYPHILLIS IN YOUR CHILDREN

ALSO FOR THE:

// IMPRISONMENT WITHOUT TRIAL OF 420 PLOUGHMEN AND 216 FENCERS FOR TWO YEARS
// DEVASTATING EFFECT ON THEIR WIVES AND CHILDREN
// UNJUST CONFISCATION OF YOUR LAND
// BACKDATING OF LEGISLATION TO MAKE LEGAL THE GOVT’S ILLEGAL ACTS

AND OUR FAILURE AS A NATION TO FACE THESE ISSUES

In her Booker Prize Winning novel The Bone People Keri Hulme writes, “I was taught that it was the old people’s belief that this country, and our people, are different and special. That something very great had allied itself with some of us, had given itself to us.  But we changed. We ceased to nurture the land.  We fought amongst ourselves. We were overcome by those white people in their hordes. We were broken and diminished. We forgot what we could have been, that Aotearoa was the shining land.  Maybe it will be again… (p.364)

I will wear this T-shirt as an act of public witness, as a peacemaker wanting to put things right personally and as someone who believes the people of New Zealand are different and special and in faith that the mountain will stand to see a shining land, whole and restored, again.