Tommy Kapai: How we can all improve our world

Sometimes it takes a snapshot back in time to realise just what this long weekend we have just had off is all about.

For many of us, it is a long weekend to kick back and take stock of the best ever long hot summer - and then fill up the firewood box ready for the wild weather of winter, lurking just over the next page of the calendar.

My snapshot was walking on to the hallowed whenua of Parihaka with a van full of whanau who were on a hikoi to Hawera for the annual Hui Aranga festival.

While our kids were battling it out on the kapa haka stage and sports fields at the festival, we took the opportunity to take the flash new Ngati Ranginui van for a test run.

So we loaded up and took off not knowing where we would end up on a sunny Easter Saturday afternoon - or who was with us in the van, having given out a holler to anyone who was interested in coming along for the ride.

After a puku pit stop at Opunake for a feed of the freshest fish ever, and a quick jack at Peter Snell's statue, we came across the smallest of signs that said Parihaka.

Te Whiti-o-Rongomai and his mate Tohu Kakahi had formed the pacifist community of Parihaka, nestled in the shadows of Mount Taranaki, as a refuge from the land wars, and by the 1870s it had become the largest Maori community in the country.

What was special about this place then and now was the overwhelming feeling of peace you sense, and having someone who was brought up there to tell us the story of Parihaka was icing on the Easter egg for all of us.

The message of reconciliation through peaceful protest was very much the mode of what Easter was all about for me and it was the same message another great prophet still alive on the other side of the world - who is struggling to stay alive - carries for his people of the Rainbow Nation in South Africa.

I couldn't help thinking of Madiba (Nelson Mandela) and his message of reconciliation and how he would have walked his talk with the people of Parihaka, had he been born back in the day, when Maori - like the blacks of South Africa - were fighting for the very survival of their race.

Another "peacemaker" of our country who carried the title of race relations commissioner was Sir Archie Tairoa and, unbeknown to me, walking with us on to Parihaka was his widow, Lady Martha Tairoa. When you get to share an Easter Saturday with Lady Martha Tairoa, the widow of one of this country's most endearing race relations commissioners, you get a first-hand look into what it will require of our newest appointment to the position.

It's not so much what Lady Martha said on our hikoi to Parihaka but it's what others said of her, and her husband Archie.

From all accounts, Sir Archie was a man of mana who had the greatest empathy for all new Zealanders, not just Maori. Sir Archie championed global indigenous rights and he cared about the environment and what state we were leaving it in for the next generation.

The question I asked myself that I wanted to ask Lady Martha - but didn't - was: "Was the Dame up to the legacy that Sir Archie left?

For some reason that only time will tell, I felt very comfortable in the answer the peaceful setting of Parihaka sent back.

The words empathy and understanding for all New Zealanders were qualities that I am sure Dame Susan Devoy carries in her kete of attributes.

All of us have the ability to broker better relations with each other no matter what ethnicity we were born into.

We cannot leave it solely to the Dame Susans, the Mandelas and the Sir Archies of this world.

Especially now when the world seems to be spinning off its axis and its future could be determined by a country with a crazy kid in charge of its nuclear arsenal.

If the message of Easter is all about race relations, reconciliation and unconditional love, then surely it does not belong to just the Christian community and their faithful flock of believers.

broblack@xtra.co.nz

Tommy Kapai is a Tauranga author and writer.