The cost of settlement processes had a huge impact on us as a region. It meant our leadership capacity was distracted with Crown negotiation processes, it meant that their time was spent away from whānau and hapū priorities. It often meant our leaders were torn between navigating the aspirations of their people and the tensions of retaining relationships with neighbouring iwi, determining borders in cross claims on paper previously understood and practised with whakapapa. Not to mention trying to be inclusive of hapū and iwi who feel ostracised and excluded. Settlement processes are divisive for tangata whenua and do more to unsettle than settle.
Twenty-five years of relaying the stories of our past to a judicial system and nation who had never heard them before. A period for us to remember our prominent Taranaki ancestors such as Te Ua Humane, Tītokowaru, Parihaka prophets Tohu and Te Whiti, all of whom collectivised in resistance to colonisation, to muru raupatu.
This is a resistance that is remembered this Saturday, November 5 as the Pahuatanga in Parihaka. When in 1881 the colonisers soldiers forcedly removed 1600 men, women and children passively resisting, raped and molested women and children.
An invasion which caused more than the destruction of physical property but caused considerable emotional and physical personal harm. As Te Whiti o Rongomai stated to his people on his return from incarceration in 1883, when he saw many light-skinned children playing on the marae.
“I tenei rangi ka opehia noatia te kopae heki i raro I te katua, kahore he kai pipipi, kahore he kai kokoko – Today we remember we will be bundled together like eggs under the parent without food and sustenance.”
And in spite of the atrocities of Te Pahuatanga o Parihaka, our tupuna continued to lead with non-violence as a tool to survive.
Across the generations our tupuna used multiple strategies to stop the assault on their people, combining masterful warfare skills, spiritual faith, passive resistance, advocacy to resist land confiscations, rape and murder of women and children, the forced removal of ancestors to prisons in Dunedin.
We must remind ourselves as Taranaki iwi that our ancestors were very intentional in all they did knowing that ‘we cannot have peace without justice’.
It is a tikanga we strive to continue to use today and will continually remind the Crown of, whether in resistance against seabed mining, protecting our Maunga, uniting against a pandemic, that our ‘kotahitanga’ is stronger than the division they promote.
Grown today within Taranaki are great ringa raupa, educationalists, lawyers, kapa haka performers, artists, workers, hauora champions, grassroots leaders, politicians and activists who continue to weave our strengths to resist and exist as our best selves.
And as we arrive wearing our various iwi patches to compete in a iwi ‘friendly’ way, cheering each other’s mokopuna on, contesting against each other, we celebrate being together knowing the strength of our past, present and future.
Our tupuna have shown us that kotahitanga and the power of us collectivising to achieve our mana motuhake is a strategy that will never fail.
Debbie Ngarewa-Packer is an MP and the co-leader of Te Pāti Māori.
