Sermon Waitangi Day Taupo 7 Feb 10
Isaiah 2:2-4
Each year at Waitangi weekend and I have chosen to talk about an event or person of religious significance in NZ history. This year I want to talk about Te Whiti and Tohu from Parihaka.
When I was in Upper Hutt in my second parish my wife Alyson worked at the Police College based as it was then in Trentham. In 1979 as part of the civilian studies, a group of trainees and staff decided to visit Parihaka. Alyson came home with Dick Scott’s book: Ask that Mountain. It was an event of NZ history that I never knew about. Just one hundred years before in 1881, armed constabulary had invaded Parihaka. This was the first time since then that Police had formally returned.
In 1989 Hazel Riseborough wrote her account: Days of Darkness, and in 2000 the Wellington City Art Gallery held a major exhibition of the art which had Parihaka as its work.
Parihaka is located on the coastal side of Mt Taranaki, south of New Plymouth. In the 1870-80’s the leaders Te Whiti and Tohu stood against the confiscation of their lands by non-violent actions. It was a non-violent resistance later to be seen in the life of Gandhi and Martin Luther King in the 20th century.
Let me give a brief summary of the events, and then focus on a couple of aspects of religious significance.
The government of the 1860’s was determined to confiscate Maori land from rebellious leaders. Hazel Riseborough states
“The invasion of Parihaka in 1881 was a continuation of the wars that began at Waitara in 17 March 1860; both drew from government determination to deny chiefs the rangatiratanga guaranteed them by the Treaty of Waitangi. The first Taranaki war ended inconclusively in a cease fire a year after it began, but in May 1863 the Oakura ambush signalled the start of a new war. It soon moved to Waikato, and by the end of the year the government had passed into law the NZ Settlements Act 1863 which gave them the power to confiscate the land of tribes deemed to be in rebellion after 1 January of that year.”
Te Whiti and Tohu had never born arms against the Queen, nor been in rebellion in terms of the Settlement Act. They had both been students at schools in Taranaki. They had studied the Bible and Protestant theology with Wesleyan missionaries, and been drawn to the religiously inspired King movement. As young men they studied agriculture at the mission at Warea. This mission was established by a German Lutheran missionary, J F Riemenschneider in 1846. When the mission was shelled from the sea in 1860, the mission was closed. Te Whiti and Tohu moved inland as their land and pa’s were destroyed. Parihaka grew as Maori displaced by war or the confiscations joined the village.
Throughout the wars of the 1860's the Parihaka leaders forbade the use of arms and condemned violence and greed. They challenged the Colonial Government over the illegality of the wars, the confiscation of the land and the punitive policies enacted by the Settler Government against Māori.
No attempt was made to enforce the confiscations until 1878, but the government then began to survey the plains. Maori resisted the surveyors by pulling out the pegs and markers, and then by removing their gear back to where the survey had started.
Te Whiti then began the phase of the ploughmen. They ploughed the fields in the land at Oakura, then over the next weeks disciplined and unarmed, began ploughing confiscated lands held by the settlers. The reaction was to paint Te Whiti as fanatical and hostile. Governor Grey made enquiries to find that the land being ploughed belonged to customary owners, or to Maori friendly to the Crown who were promised reserves but never given them.
Arrests of the ploughmen began, but consequently were never put before a court. The government passed the Maori Prisoner’s Trial Act, which permitted detention without trial.
Meantime in Parihaka there were about 1500 people continuing to have their monthly meetings and accommodate 2-3000 visitors. European visitors misunderstood Te Whiti due to the language barrier, but it was very clear that there would be no fighting and no violence.
The constabulary came closer with the survey, with Te Whiti replacing their broken fences around their cultivations. The Government Minister John Bryce introduced further legislation to hold the fencers in prison as long as the government wanted. About 200 fencers were sent to prisons in the South Island.
In November 1881, the day came when Bryce on a white horse, with 945 volunteers and 644 armed constabulary invaded Parihaka. The symbolism of the white horse has featured in some of the art and poetry as artists a century later connected with the story. The invasion force was greeted with singing and food – actions of welcome to visitors on the marae. No resistance was given and both Te Whiti and Tohu were arrested and imprisoned. The police destroyed the village. The government imposed a news blackout in an attempt to hide the event, but in 1882 correspondence was printed in British Parliamentary papers.
Te Whiti and Tohu were exiled to Christchurch, but many of those Maori arrested were made to work on roads and stonewalls in Christchurch and Dunedin. Parihaka had its economic base removed, and the land given in perpetual leases and peppercorn rates to Europeans.
The Parihaka leaders died during the year 1907.
Let me make a few brief comments about Parihaka.
Te Whiti stood for Maori independence as promised in the Treaty of Waitangi, and it is clear that the Government of the 1860’s on, would not work with such a covenant. For Te Whiti, there was a spiritual and religious foundation for what he was doing, but the secular government only read this as political rebellion.
Te Whiti acted with a code of non-violent resistance, a community action against the government. The response of sending in the troops, changing the law to prevent any arrest or detention going before a court, and then confiscating the land through perpetual leases is a dark part of NZ history. As we struggle today with the consequences of violence, both domestically and in our community, let’s not forget the legacy to our nation of the violence by government in our history.
Te Whiti had a choice about the ploughs. He could have used Maori digging sticks, but to choose the plough was a moment of great inspiration. In our reading from the book of Isaiah 2 today the phrase “they shall beat their swords into plowshares” has echoed down the centuries.
Pablo Neruda wrote:
“In ploughing the soil beyond Parihaka, the Taranaki ploughmen were inscribing a text into the land – a written assertion of rangatiratanga, of spiritual and material attachment and of sovereignty.”
Artists who have picked up this theme of the ploughed line compare it also to the tattooist’s
Chisel or needle.
It is this as a final thought that I conclude.
Te Whiti brought to his resistance a non-violence that is very Christian in its foundation. It was an inspired response to a government that lacked any moral or religious credibility, a government acting on the superiority of the British Empire. Yet the Christian civilization which the Government was supposed to be bringing to the supposedly inferior Maori, was in actual fact being demonstrated by those very Maori.
The artists, who have picked up this issue a century later, have made us aware of those dark days. The symbol of the ploughed lines, found in the art of Ralph Hotere, is a powerful illustration of inscribing a text into the land.
John Howell
See Riseborough and Neruda in “Parihaka – the art of passive resistance”, VUW Press 2000. The book also has artists’ work.
Isa 2:2-4
2In days to come the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to it. 3Many peoples shall come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.” For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. 4He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
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