Resurrecting Parihaka's peace

Troops get their orders to march on the pa at Parihaka, where they dispersed 1600 Maori and destroyed houses and crops. Herald File Picture

Te Ru Wharehoka seems oblivious to the cracks in the scuffed sunglasses that shroud his tired eyes. "Someone sat on them," he says. "People ask me why I wear them, and I tell them I can see further than most, with or without these glasses."

And indeed, the elderly man can. Perched on a modest wooden bench at the entrance to Parihaka's fading Te Paepae Te Raukura meeting house, the kaumatua seems to peer back in time, to an era when this now fading community was vibrant.

There is a richness in his detail, related with a soft, ponderous voice.

He is perhaps 70 - he declines to say - but not so old that he was present on the warm November day 125 years ago when more than 1500 volunteers and members of the Armed Constabulary descended on the settlement intent on war.

It was then home to more than 2000 Maori from throughout the country, drawn by the refuge, hope and message of peace provided by prophets Te Whiti O Rongomai and Tohu Te Kakahi.

Wharehoka speaks with words and emotions that have traversed the generations, as if he had been there on the day injustice smashed one of final shards of Maori resistance.

This weekend people are grooving at the first Parihaka Peace Festival. The three-day event, launched yesterday, features local and international musicians and includes a peace forum, DJs, films, a dance stage and traditional arts and craft.

It is pitched as a celebration of peace, and geared at raising funds for the poor isolated settlement, home to about 70 people, and to raise awareness of the community's visionary leaders and founders.

But a war of words between some of its leaders erupted in the months leading up to the festival, with years of simmering tension spilling onto a wider stage.

Te Merenga Hohaia is the driving force behind the festival. He wants to breath life back into the small community, which lies inland, about 50km south of New Plymouth.

He has lived at Parihaka most of his life, barring a short stint in West Auckland as a teenager, and is kaitiaki and chairman of one of the community's three marae, Te Paepae Te Raukura.

For him, this weekend's festival is as much about bringing peace to the community as it is about celebrating the message of its founders.

Hohaia believes the Parihaka brand is the key to reviving flagging community fortunes from a serious decline.

Hohaia struggles to contain his enthusiasm when talking of the festival, but his eyes narrow at mention of division within the community - there is caution in his voice and reluctance to discuss some of the internal conflict that has scarred preparations and tarnished the enthusiasm of financial backers.

He plays down perceived divisions as being a beat-up by mainstream media eager to portray Maori communities as dysfunctional.

A scan of the local newspaper, however, rocks his assertion. In a paid public notice, Parihaka Papakainga Trust chairman Paul Rangipunga warns all involved with the festival that the trust accepts no liability for an "unpaid debt, dishonoured agreements and or contracts relating to the event".

The involvement of disgraced promoter Daniel Keighley, has also raised eyebrows.

On Radio Waatea last month Hohaia accepted that it may not have been wise to be linked with the controversial promoter, jailed following the financial disaster of Sweetwaters 1999.

Last week, Hohaia said Keighley had been taken out of a festival managing role but would stay on as a mentor and adviser.

Speaking earlier this week, Rangipunga said he had no regrets about the trust's actions, blamed by some for slow ticket sales, and difficulty raising funding for the event.

He believes it was his responsibility to fire off letters to local government, and voice criticism through the media.

Rangipunga says the trust is Parihaka's only government-mandated representative body, and his criticism is driven by frustration at being cut out of any involvement with the festival.

"We did not even know about it, yet we are the mandated representatives."

Rangipunga says the trust was developing initiatives of its own, but wanted to find peace within the community before taking that message to the world.

"We need to clean up our own backyard before opening our doors and asking others to come and celebrate peace."

Rangipunga acknowledges that something must be done to offer hope to many in the community.

"Some of our people live in squalor, they have no power, no running water. Where do the children wash?"

Hohaia says the trust has little respect or support from the community. True authority, he says, rested with the leaders and committees of the three meeting houses, Toroanui, Tohu's marae, and Te Whiti's Te Niho and Te Paepae O Te Raukura marae.

Back at Te Paepae O Te Raukura, Wharehoka shakes his head at the warring. The kaumatua says support for the festival has unified the community's three meeting houses - historically divided by the alliance to each leader - for the first time since their death, almost 100 years ago.

He is disappointed that Te Whiti's and Tohu's message - a peaceful non-violent protest, followed later by Ghandi, and Martin Luther King - has been clouded by the ructions of a few.

He casts his eyes to the ground, and reflects on the day of the Pahua - the plundering.

On November 5, 1881 Native Affairs Minister John Bryce, atop his white horse and clasping government legislation authorising the attack on Parihaka, descended on the community.

For months, hundreds of troops gathered for the invasion, which included building roads leading to the settlement.

The Government had grown increasingly frustrated by the tactics of Te Whiti and Tohu, who challenged the Crown's legitimacy to carve up thousands of acres of confiscated central Taranaki land.

The pair brought spiritual and physical discipline to the hundreds who flocked to the community. They developed large acres of crops - potatoes, corn, cabbage and large stockholdings, including pigs, beef, and horses.

In 1878, the Government, needing money to fund the development of Taranaki, sent surveyors to mark out the 485,000ha of land confiscated from Maori as punishment for the wars that ended nine years earlier.

Maori continued to use the land for farming and hunting.

Te Whiti, eager to force the Government to meet and discuss Maori grievances, sent men to disrupt surveyors and soldiers building roads through cultivation. They removed pegs and rebuilt fences.

The Government responded by passing legislation allowing protesters to be detained without trial, leading to 216 fencers being shipped off to South Island prisons.

While Te Whiti was demonised by the wider community, most of whom backed the Government's actions, the heavy-handed approach raised concern from some sections of the British Government.

Although some Pakeha labelled Te Whiti as a rebel, he was seen in a different light by Governor Gordon, who met him and visited the settlement.

In a letter to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Gordon described Te Whiti as "eloquent and subtle ... animated by an unquestionable earnest patriotism.

He has for many years exercised a powerful and for the most part beneficial sway over the hearts and lives not only of his own tribe, but of a large section of the Maori population.

"Where his influence extends, drunkenness is unknown, industry is exacted, and peace sedulously inculcated".

In the community, which had its own bank, bakery and police force, industry was encouraged and organisation and efficiency abounded - but on Maori terms.

The Government, frustrated by the actions of the community, backed a proclamation to attack Parihaka. Wharehoka speaks of the dancing and singing children who greeted the soldiers as they approached the settlement. Among them was 5-year-old Maui Pomare, who went on to be the first Maori medical practitioner and Minister of Health, and to be knighted.

He lost a toe in the encounter when he was trampled by a cavalry horse, a wound that caused him to limp for the rest of his life.

Wharehoka, in his black beanie, baggy trakpants and gumboots, evokes the smiles and absence of fear in the youngsters.

Back at the community more than 500 loaves of bread were at the ready, to feed the "guests" a customary practice.

Wharehoka said the procession took four hours to travel the 4km from the main road to the community, with rows of children disrupting the journey.

Te Whiti and Tohu waited for the men at Toroanui, watching the soldiers approach.

Te Whiti said to his followers: "If any man thinks of his gun or his horse, and goes to fetch it, he will die ... place your trust in forbearance and peace ... let the booted feet come when they like, the land shall remain firm forever."

The men and several other leading chiefs were arrested. Maori from outside the district were ordered to leave and the houses they had used were torn down.

About 1600 were forcibly dispersed, and although 600 were allowed to remain they were required to carry passes. Crops were destroyed.

Looting by soldiers is said to have been commonplace, with livestock driven away or slaughtered.

In 1882 the Government passed the West Coast Preservation Act which gave Justices of the Peace the ability to order the dispersal of an assembly of 50 Maori or more, and provided for penalties of up to 12 months imprisonment.

Tohu and Te Whiti were held in the New Plymouth jail before being transferred to Christchurch's Addington prison in 1882.

They were freed in 1883 and returned to Parihaka, intent on restoring it to its former glory.

By 1895 Parihaka had its own butchers, bakers, electricity, gas supply and street lighting, at a time when Wellington City was without electricity.

The two men continued their protest over moves against disputed land. In 1907, within months of each other, they died.

In the absence of strong leaders, and with eroded land holdings, the community's decline began.

Wharehoka Wano is an emerging Maori leader in the Taranaki region. He has strong whanau connections to the Parihaka community and been returning to his whanau marae since he was a child.

Wano believes division in the community is overstated, with most of those connected with Parihaka slipping easily between the three meeting houses. He also rails at suggestions that it is a dying community, pointing out that it has progressed noticeably after coming close to being abandoned in the 60s.

"We used to love coming here when we were kids, the grass came up over your head. We used to go out and hide on the marae lawn."

Back then, he says, Parihaka was a "ghost town, everything was overrun", decline shrouded the community and only four of the old houses were occupied.

He says Parihaka, like most of Maoridom in the 70s, experienced a renaissance, a resurgence of its culture and a determination to survive.

People started coming back to the marae, fundraising started, and work parties began to clean up the settlement.

Wano believes the community will flourish with or without the festival, driven by a will to ensure the message of Te Whiti and Tohu is not lost.

"Parihaka came as a result of the land loss. It will always represent that legacy. Some of our people will live in the doomsday mindset, but there is a new generation.

"That generation are singing the songs, we know the stories, but we also know Te Whiti and Tohu's songs end with hope and optimism."

He is joined by his uncle, Te Ru Wharehoka, in a shared optimism that peace and prosperity will return to Parihaka.

"The festival will be a success, it may not be this time but it will happen. There is a will, and a desire for unity and peace, and that the message of our rangatira lives on."


Parihaka Peace Festival

Main stage

Today
10.15am Backlash
11:15am Grove
12.15pm Harriet & the Matches
1.15pm The Midnights
2.15pm Dreadrock
3.15pm Rhythmplant
4.00pm Baducada
4.15pm Jacqui Waru
5.15pm Dubwise
6.10pm David Grace
7.00pm Fat Freddy's Drop
8.30pm Richard Nunns
9:10pm Toni Huata
9.45pm Katchafire
11pm Nat Rose

Sunday
10am Billy Rubins
11am Hannah Howes
12pm Wayne Mason
2pm Ladi 6
2:20pm Red Thunder (In front of stage)
3.00pm Anika Moa
4:30pm House of Shem
5:20pm Katchafire
6:35pm Billy TK Senior
7:30pm Little Bushman
9:15pm The Waratahs
10:25pm Ardijah
11:30pm C.Sekda

Other Events

* Film
A selection of local and overseas independent movies including Tuhoe: A History of Resistance; Tau Te Mauri, Breath of Peace; Across Ruled Lines; Tide is Turning.

* The word
A stage for poets and the spoken word. Events include a question and answer session about Parihaka with a kaumatua, an Emma Paki songwriting workshop, stand-up comedy, a men's empowerment workshop, Georgina Beyer on gender and peace, and poetry performances.

* Arts and Crafts
A site for traditional Maori arts and crafts including ta moko.

* Dance stage
Performances by Suncontrolspecies and Gappeq.

* Traditional healing
Spiritual healing and massage from Te Kopere o Raehina.