Shared future is Gate Pa legacy

Members of the armed services take part in yesterday's memorial service. Photo/John Borren

Two cultures working together for a shared future should be the real legacy of the soldiers and warriors slain at the Battle of Gate Pa, Bishop of Waikato Helen-Ann Hartley told a military memorial service at Tauranga's Mission Cemetery yesterday.

Those who died in the battle were honoured at the service in which Bishop Hartley spoke eloquently about how 150 years ago men "sought to extinguish each other's lives on a rainy afternoon on a green hillside not too distant from this place".

She welcomed the estimated 300 people who gathered at the cemetery and former Otamataha Pa, including representatives from the Anglican and Ratana churches, the armed services and Maori iwi and hapu whose ancestors laid down their lives in the history-defining battle.

"We come here to seek a lesson for their loss so that they will not have died in vain."

Bishop Hartley said that on an occasion such as this, words alone could not suffice to express the significance of the day for Maori and Pakeha and those at the commemorations from overseas.

"What a different place this would be if the general [Cameron] and the chiefs had acknowledged their common humanity and perhaps sat down over kai and a pipe to talk about their differences and find a way to resolve them.

"It has taken us 150 years to repair what was supposed to be easy and quick. It has taken us 150 years to realise that we can build a strong community by working together and by having a vision for the future that is shared by us all ... our grief is surely the grief of what might have been."

The real legacy of the warriors who died would surely be the realisation that working together was one of the keys to unlocking a shared future.

The service featured the Last Post, the firing of volleys and laying of wreaths, including at the memorial to Rawiri Puhirake, the Ngai Te Rangi chief who led the battle and defeated the English forces.

Ngaitamarawaho kaumatua Morehu Ngatoko began the service with a mihi in which he said he had lived in Tauranga for a long time and it was the first time he had seen so many people gathered at the cemetery at the invitation of iwi to honour the people buried there.

"I grieve in my heart for us all."