KAPAI: Remembering the 'massacre' of Te Ranga

If you were one of the many motorists who zoomed past a Pyes Pa paddock full of fresh Friesian patties and a crowd of curious onlookers on Saturday, you may well have been asking "what are those silly souls doing standing in the drizzle?"
Was it an A&P; show? Was it a winter solstice celebration or maybe it was a punch drunk Winston campaigning to the cows. Or was it a wake for the lost causes of TECT?
Perhaps a Q&A; show would have been closer to the clover at the little paddock 200m past Aquinas College. A paddock where a group gathered at the invite of Te Kohinga and local hapu Ngai Tamarawaho, to listen and hopefully learn about the founding fathers of Tauranga Moana _ both Maori and European.
What happened on this bovine battlefield with a dark history and why does it seem like only the cows care about it? And why is there a shroud of silence circling the historical truth of this paddock called Te Ranga? Te Ranga was where the British delivered their coup de grace to tangata whenua of Tauranga Moana and it came as utu or revenge for the humiliating defeat earlier at Gate Pa. Or as a respected retired Tauranga judge said about the kaupapa (reason) the group had been called together by Te Kohinga
"I think that the whole idea is great _ absolutely totally appropriate. I have always thought that it is ironically stupid that ``the British' celebrate the Battle of Gate Pa with such gusto when in fact that was the first time since the Crimean War and the Charge of the Light Brigade that the British Forces had been defeated anywhere in the world and that by a small group of Maori _ whereas they virtually ignore the battle at Te Ranga that they ``won' conclusively."
Many corners of the community answered the call to come and listen to the lament of a lost generation and how Colonel Greer won. Pastors, principals, health workers and councillors and company CEOs, tangata whenua, artists, editors, teachers and preachers, lawyers and leading lights of community care groups. All there to listen and learn about the battle of Te Ranga, or as one councillor put it after listening to the terrible truth from Ngai Tamarawaho and other Maori leaders: "It was a massacre not a battle!"
And massacre it was. When Colonel Greer broke the rules of engagement (it was agreed to start the battle in three days' time but Greer marched in three hours) and unleashed his weapons on innocent women and children digging trenches for the battle _ it was an act of terrorism. But unlike the Towers, these brave people knew exactly what terror was coming.
We heard heartbreaking stories of un-armed Maori women holding their little ones' hands and bowing their heads as they walked to meet their fate. Massacred for no other reason than they belonged to this land and they were trying to protect it.
And to learn that Colonel Greer and his commanding General Cameron had a township (Greerton) and a main street (Cameron Road) named after him made me draw the comparison of Gate Pa and Te Ranga being our own Twin Towers and where we were standing on a Pyes Pa paddock was our Ground Zero.
Toward the end of the gathering when the wreath was walked forward to remember and honour the fallen, there was a healing balm of understanding that swept across the crowd.
A new understanding that will hopefully open more doors of our history. History that we can learn from and not hide away from be it up on Cliff Roads by the Elms, Gate Pa or out at Te Ranga.
The symbolic gesture of placing a calabash of water next to the wreath as a symbol of compassion (shown by a Maori woman toward injured British troops) and a beacon of hope for future generations was equally moving, and left many of us there both Maori and European with a shared compassion to reconcile the injustices of what happened here in Tauranga 144 years ago.
Pai marire (Peace) broblack@xtra.co.nz