Mat Mullany: How do we teach the complexity of our past?

The 1866 events at Ōmarunui are deserving of good scholarship, writes Mat Mullany. Photo / Supplied

In teaching the new history curriculum, how we tell different stories are important.

The events that happened after Ōmarunui are as, if not more, important than what happened at Ōmarunui. The 1866 events at Ōmarunui triggered a disastrous aftermath for iwi and hapū on both sides of the conflict.

The events are little-known, complex and deserving of good scholarship. The story of the raupatu is best told by descendants of the Mohaka-Waikare district. This is a story of what happened after Ōmarunui to my kin, the Tareha whānau of Ngāti Pārau.

Two key historical events, the beginning of the NZ Wars in 1860 and the 1863 introduction of the NZ Settlements Act, provide a useful lens to understanding the Ōmarunui conflict. The breakout of the war in Taranaki put the country on notice. The act created a legal tool to confiscate the land of iwi and hapu seen as "rebels" by the State.

After Ōmarunui in 1867, the Crown proclaimed those hapū and iwi inside Ōmarunui 'rebels', with the raupatu (confiscation) of their whenua (land) in the Mohaka-Waikare district. According to Hansard, Tareha's 1868 parliamentary speech objected to the confiscation: 'do not take their lands, their deaths are punishment enough'.

The Crown ignored Tareha's advice and established a Mohaka-Waikare deed with new owners in 1870.

By then, the Crown had alienated most of Tareha's land at Heretaunga and Ahuriri. This, coupled with rewarding his military service, motivated the Crown to grant huge portions of the Mohaka-Waikare district to Tareha. He was solely awarded the 31,000 acre Kaiwaka block and listed as an owner in seven other Mohaka-Waikare blocks.

The Crown-initiated grant spread into a bitter, intergenerational, iwi vs iwi legal feud of epic proportions. The customary land owners prosecuted their case in every possible jurisdiction: the Native Land Court, the Court of Appeal, and the Supreme Court over a 30-plus-year period.

In 1901, it became the first iwi vs iwi court case in Britain's Privy Council (Te Teira Te Paea vs Te Roera Tareha).

The facts of the case turned on a single question: Was Tareha granted the Kaiwaka block as a trustee for the appellants or as sole owner?

Before Tareha's death in 1880, there is evidence he assigned rental income from the block to the customary owners. After his death, there is a clear shift in the tone and attitude from the heirs of his will. In his will, Tareha left Kaiwaka to his four children, Te Roera, Kurupo, Hineaiia and Kawekirangi and a 'grand-niece and nephew', Airini and Whitiwhiti.

Succession orders were granted to Tareha's relatives in 1895. But, by then, a lasting dispute had developed between his relatives and the block's customary owners.

Through land petitions, parliamentary inquiries and judicial hearings, the litigants' positions are clear: The customary owners view was that Tareha had 'no claim to the land, either by his ancestry, continual occupation, or cultivation'.

The defendants, Te Roera Tareha and Airini Donnelly, argued that Tareha was the sole beneficial owner and that he and his heirs held Kaiwaka, 'unfettered by any trust express or constructive whatever'. Every court found in favour of the defendants based on the Crown's original confiscation ruling.

In teaching young New Zealanders, the new curriculum, how we tell stories is as important as what we tell. The Crown Mohaka-Waikare confiscation caused a rupture in inter-iwi relations that rippled across generations; only a careful account can heal those wounds. The strands of the past must become the ties that bind, not divide.

* This opinion piece is the second of three pieces on the subject by Ngāti Pārau historian Mat Mullany.