Pai Mārire prisoners wait on a sloping hill by the Napier shore in 1865. Photo / Hawke's Bay Museums Trust Ruawharo Tā-ū-Rangi
Pai Mārire prisoners wait on a sloping hill by the Napier shore in 1865. Photo / Hawke's Bay Museums Trust Ruawharo Tā-ū-Rangi
A photo taken on a sloping hill near the Napier coast in 1865, is a rare window into one of the most confronting parts of Aotearoa's past, writes Te Hira Henderson.
In the MTG Kuru Taonga: Voices of Kahungunu exhibition is a photo of Hauhau, a movement set up inresponse to Pākehā confiscation of land.
In this photo, they are prisoners of the British Empire.
Collection records read, "Group of Māori Pai Mārire prisoners seated on a sloping hill. Standing behind them, holding bayoneted rifles are colonial militia".
Written on the reverse is "November 1865, Hauhau Māori Prisoners. Napier. New Zealand".
These prisoners of are being photographed as they are waiting on the Napier shore to be shipped away. We don't know their names. We don't known exactly where they went.
Imperial Law imported from Europe was used to extinguish human rights for Māori born in Aotearoa, such as these men pictured. Extinguishment was enacted with the use of fire and guns administered by Crown redcoats and police under Imperial Law.
Laying claim to uninhabited territories, European powers enacted a programme of colonisation supported through a papal bull, the Doctrine of Discovery. This legal concept, drafted in the 15th and 16th centuries by the Catholic Church, advocated the colonisation of native peoples as subjects.
The photo is a part of the MTG's collection in Napier. Photo / NZME
Under this bull, any land not inhabited by Christians was deemed 'uninhabited' on the basis that non-Christians were in fact, non-human. European monarchies were given the right to conquer and claim lands, converting or killing the native inhabitants.
Sanctioned in Aotearoa, the bull was at times applied in the name of God, to save the souls of the "unrestrained barbarous savage".
In 2012, the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues denounced this 15th century Christian principle as the "shameful" root of all the discrimination and marginalisation that indigenous peoples face today.
In Aotearoa New Zealand it underpinned a programme of land acquisition.
These Hauhau seen here restrained, had taken umbrage against these practices.
Their full name is Pai Mārire Hau. Pai Mārire, Peace and Goodwill, and Hau, Breath of God. It was, and still is a Christian religion, with a twist.
Pai Mārire came out of the New Zealand Defence Force's actions in Taranaki - the pre-cursor of practices to create a New Zealand and British Domain.
In Taranaki lived Te Ua Haumeene, a baptised Wesleyan. He was a supporter of the King Movement to unite Māori against colonisation and Imperial Law.
Te Ua had a vision of the Archangel Gabriel. Gabriel told Te Ua to cast Pākehā out and restore Aotearoa. He wrote a gospel, the Gospel according to Ua, Te Ua Rongopai. So begat Pai Mārire, more commonly known as Hauhau.
These Hauhau men fought against imported Imperial acts of law.
The New Zealand Settlements Act (1863) enabled the confiscation of land from Māori tribes deemed to have 'engaged in open rebellion against Her Majesty', and in January 1865 Taranaki was declared confiscated.
In November 1865 these Hauhau men with other survivors, were shipped off, convicted as rebels and overstayers, deemed criminals for not wanting their Aotearoa being dragged and drawn into someone else's New Zealand.
In this picture, Māori were not considered New Zealanders.
He mihi aroha, he mihi tangi mamaeroa kia ratau kua tae pō
