KA MAUMAHARA MATOU - WE REMEMBER

This past week has included the anniversaries of two very important events in our history; the beginning of the pacifist ploughmen protest at Parihaka on 26^th May 1879, and the eviction of 222 Māori from Takapauwhara (Bastion Point) on 25^th May 1978.

The ploughmen protect was one of the most courageous and creative forms of political protest ever conceived and enacted in this country when Māori men from the community of Parihaka began to plough up the land of Pākehā settlers.

This action, taken under the leadership of the Parihaka prophets Te Whiti o Rongomai and Tohu Kākahi, was the community’s response to the government’s repeated failure to deal honourably with Taranaki Māori over land.

The ploughmen knew what they were letting themselves in for. They would face Pākehā wrath. They would face almost certain arrest and incarceration. But they rallied to the words of Te Whiti: “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.”

In short order, more than 400 Parihaka ploughmen were deported and imprisoned for up to two years — sometimes as far away as Hokitika and Dunedin. Not one was ever tried in a court of law. The government found it convenient to suspend the right to a trial and passed a series of draconian laws under the guise of “national emergency” that became progressively more desperate and unjust as time went by.

There were also atrocities. When arrested, some ploughmen were tied to a horse and dragged around a paddock. That brutality is remembered in the name Totoia, which means dragging, given to some Parihaka children to preserve the memory of those times. Another name bestowed on children was Ngarukeruke, the discarded body.

When some of the ploughmen asked Tohu Kākahi what should be done if they were met with violence, Tohu answered: “Gather up the earth on which the blood is spilt and bring it to Parihaka.”

The same pacifist approach was enacted in 1978 by Ngāti Whātua protesting the Crown sale of Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei land.  

The famous catch-cry of 'not one more acre' from Dame Whina Cooper that came to voice in the 1970s, had brought the fight of Māori to regain their stolen lands surging into the mainstream spotlight, and the most defining image of that fight was the 506 day occupation of Takapauwhara (Bastion Point).

On Day 506, on the orders of then Prime Minister Robert Muldoon, more than 800 police officers marched up to Bastion Point on that day to forcibly remove protestors and destroy their buildings.

The protest and eviction became one of the defining moments in the battle for Māori land rights and led to the extension of the Waitangi Tribunal’s ability to inquire into claims against the Crown for breaches of Te Tiriti dating back to 1840; originally it had only been able to consider claims from 1975 onwards.

We remember.