War stories our teachers never told us: Documenting New Zealand wars narratives and silences

Ngāti Raukawa wahine toa Ahumai Te Paerata became renowned for her defiant response to the British invitation for women and children to surrender during the Ōrākau siege. Potrait / Irene Hill, 1913.

An edited extract from Aftermaths: Colonialism, Violence and Memory in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific. Chapter 1: War Stories Our Teachers Never Told Us revisits the narrative around the Waikato War and warns that how we tell our history can push us further apart, or draw us together. Edited by Angela Wanhalla, Lyndall Ryan and Camille Nurka.

KA WHAWHAI TONU MĀTOU:THE BATTLE OF ŌRĀKAU

During the late summer of 1864, in the final weeks of the Waikato War, British and colonial troops occupied the small settlement of Kihikihi on the southern border of the Waikato. By the time they arrived there the kāinga (village) had been abandoned, as Māori had earlier fled the area to the relative safety of the lands beyond the Puniu River. In their haste, they left behind storage pits filled with fruit and vegetables from the summer harvest, sufficient to feed the entire army through the coming winter. There the occupying forces made preparations for the final assault, which took place a short distance away in the orchard gardens of a place called Ōrākau.

A fighting pā was hurriedly built but the site was not ideal for armed conflict: the area could be easily surrounded, there was no clear escape route and the water supply was vulnerable. Each of these factors played a part in what was to come. The defenders of the pā were joined by iwi (tribe) allies from outside the Waikato. Around 100 women and children were also present. The battle at Ōrākau lasted three days and ended in acts of extraordinary violence. More than half the 300 Māori who defended the pā were killed. Most died not during the siege but on the third and final day when food, water and ammunition were nearly exhausted and the people of the pā made a desperate bid to break through British lines and run to safety.

At around noon on that day, it was clear that the pā would fall. With a British victory seemingly assured and the pā surrounded, Lieutenant-General Duncan Cameron, the commanding officer of British forces in New Zealand, declared a ceasefire through his translator William Mair and urged the defenders to surrender in order to save their lives. He was refused, with words of courage and defiance that have since passed into Māori history: ‘E hoa, ka whawhai tonu mātou. Āke! Āke! Āke!’ (Friend, we will fight on forever and ever and ever).

Cameron then called on the women and children to leave before the final assault. Again, the people refused. Ngāti Raukawa woman Ahumai Te Paerata stepped forward and replied, ‘Ki te mate ngā tāne, me mate anō ngā wāhine me ngā tamariki!’ (If the men die, then the women and children must also die). Ahumai’s words delivered a clear message to the waiting army that those inside the pā, knowing that defeat was certain, chose to die together as free men and women, forever united. It was an act of defiance and desperation. It was also an act of solidarity and love.

And so, the onslaught began.

In the late afternoon those inside the pā prepared to leave. They gathered in tight formation with women, children, the wounded, and surviving rangatira (leaders) at the centre to protect them as much as possible. As they ran towards open ground, the troops opened fire and a number of defenders were killed. The group scattered as people fled for their lives. Hitiri Te Paerata, son of Ngāti Raukawa rangatira Te Paerata and brother of Ahumai, was shot four times but survived. He later described the chaotic scenes that ensued:

As we fled before them they tried, by outmarching on our flanks, to cut off our retreat, and poured a storm of bullets which seemed to encircle us like hail. It became as a forlorn hope with us; none expected to escape, nor did we desire to; were we not all the children of one parent? [T]herefore we all wished to die together.

Under heavy gunfire, some ran towards the nearby mānuka swamp. There were scenes of extraordinary brutality as the invading forces pursued those fleeing for their lives. Snipers on the ridge opened fire, and members of the cavalry rode the people down and bayoneted them where they fell. Others were killed or injured as they ran toward the soldiers in a desperate bid to breach the line. One contemporary newspaper reported:

Women – many women – slaughtered, and many children slain, are amongst the trophies of Orakau, and ‘civilization’ in pursuit, or as it returned from the chase, amused itself by shooting the wounded ‘barbarians’ as they lay upon the ground where they had fallen [emphasis in original].

This is how the assault ended in terror and bloodshed, and the violence of these events echoes over time. British and colonial troops complained for weeks afterwards about the smell of decomposing corpses in the nearby swamps, where many of the more than 150 Māori killed had fallen. Later, a road would be built through the middle of the pā, obliterating the physical remnants and reminders of this terrible history as if it had never happened, and in time, new myths around the chivalrous and noble conflict fought at Ōrākau would be created.

The siege and its bloody conclusion also gave rise to new stories that are handed down in many Māori communities. These stories, about the collective stance taken in the pā, are seen as a legacy and gift. Today the words ‘Ka whawhai tonu mātou’ have become a catch cry for Māori resistance and are regularly chanted when Māori protest against Crown injustices. Each time they are uttered, the defenders of Ōrākau are summoned into being.

The contrast with how Pākehā have (mis)remembered and forgotten these events is jarring.

Pākehā in their thousands flocked to the 1914 jubilee of the Battle of Ōrākau to celebrate what they imagined was a chivalrous and noble conflict. Photos / Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections.

REMEMBERING AND FORGETTING ŌRĀKAU

On 1 April 1914, as war clouds loomed over Europe, some 5000 people gathered at Ōrākau, a few kilometres up the road from Kihikihi, to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the most famous battle of the New Zealand Wars. Cabinet ministers, MPs, the head of the armed forces, numerous dignitaries and a smattering of elderly Māori and Pākehā veterans were present at the unveiling of a memorial on the site where Ōrākau pā once stood. An early-morning train from Auckland to Te Awamutu had been organised for the big day, and veterans had received free rail passes to allow them to attend. The Auckland Education Board granted a special holiday to all children attending schools in the Waikato and Waipā counties. Those schools unable to take part in the ceremony were instructed to assemble their pupils, hoist the national flag and give a lesson on ‘the difficulties of early settlement in New Zealand’.

Newspapers throughout the dominion reported at length on the Ōrākau ‘celebrations’. And for Pākehā New Zealand, it was precisely that. As the New Zealand Herald explained, the Ōrākau battle marked ‘the final acceptance of the British mana by a heroic and warlike native people’ that had been met by ‘a just and generous reciprocity which is everywhere regarded as an example to the civilised world’. Something of that view was reflected in the jubilee souvenir programme, which described the anniversary as a ‘commemoration of 50 years of peace’. But as the Herald editorial suggested, this was no ordinary peace. Ōrākau gave birth to the myth of New Zealand as a country with the greatest race relations in the world. And for a land that many Pākehā felt was lacking in suitable legends, what better tales to immortalise than those that emanated from Ōrākau? In this way, a highly sentimentalised version of Ōrākau was openly appropriated by Pākehā for their own nationalist and nation-building ends.

Just one thing was missing. The Ōrākau ceremony in 1914 had largely been a Pākehā affair. Waikato Māori had no interest in celebrating the brutal killing of as many as 150 of their ancestors, the sweeping confiscation of their lands and the destruction of their economy that condemned generations to lives of poverty. While Pākehā publicly celebrated Ōrākau, Waikato Māori privately grieved, recalling the history in waiata tangi (songs of lament) and sometimes even in the names they gave to their children: Muru (plunder), Mamae (pain) and even Raupatu (land confiscation) were not uncommon in some areas.

So how do we talk about the past?

The New Zealand school curriculum has not served us well in terms of understanding our own history. Generations of New Zealanders learned nothing of the bloody events at Ōrākau and elsewhere during the nineteenth-century New Zealand Wars. For the most part, these are war stories our teachers never told us. Those omissions and silences foreclosed the possibility of a more vibrant and informed national conversation about our difficult past. A recent government announcement that New Zealand history will be compulsorily taught in schools is heartening.

For this to work, iwi need to be central to the public drive to remember and tell the stories of the past; mana whenua should be empowered and resourced to tell these histories in their own way. This is important, because these stories have the potential to change our minds – and to change our lives and our future. They can bring us together in diverse ways as we forge new public intimacies around the difficult, violent, unresolved past. But if told carelessly, they will push us further apart. That is the power of stories and how they define us.

Aftermaths: Colonialism, Violence and Memory in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific

Edited by Angela Wanhalla, Lyndall Ryan and Camille Nurka

Published by Otago University Press

Release date: April 27 2023, RRP $50

Extract from Chapter 1. War Stories Our Teachers Never Told Us: Documenting New Zealand Wars: Narratives and silences, by Joanna Kidman and Vincent O’Malley