Columnist Buddy Mikare is pleased the battles of Orakauand Pukehinahina-Gate Pa and Te Ranga have been memorialised in such a reverent way in another country.Photo/File.
COMMENT: By Buddy Mikaere
At dawn on Wednesday, April 24, 2019, I had the privilege of being one of a group representing Tauranga Moana iwi in Sydney.
The occasion was the ritual blessing of part of the new Australian Anzac Memorial in Hyde Park. We had been invited to undertake the ceremony by the Office for Veteran Affairs and the New South Wales Government with the full support of the NSW RSL and the Memorial management and the Australian Defence Force.
The new memorial contains soil samples from every small town or hamlet within NSW from which soldiers had come – more than 1000 of them.
Those samples are embedded into the walls of the memorial. But in the middle of the floor is a circle of soil samples from 100 battlefields around the world where Australian soldiers have fought; often of course alongside our own New Zealand troops.
Among those battlefields are Orakau in 1863 and Pukehinahina-Gate Pa and Te Ranga in 1864. These three battles were, of course, significant battles during 19th-century Land Wars.
Māori versus veteran British regiments brought to New Zealand from the fighting in the Crimea and India. So, what does this have to do with Australia?
The Australian involvement arises from the recruitment of troops into outfits such as the 1st Waikato Militia which served alongside the British regiments in the 1860s.
The recruits came forward in response to a promise to reward them with cheap land once the fighting was completed.
These troops largely supplied the garrisons for the redoubts that were built following the 1863 invasion of the Waikato to protect their extended supply lines which stretched from Auckland to the banks of the Mangatawhiri River near modern-day Mercer and, later, on into the Waikato heartland.
It is also known that it was Australian "bullockys" who were recruited to drive the bullock teams that hauled military supplies and artillery.
In 2018 officers from the Australian Defence Forces, with the blessing of the Māori King Tuheitia and Tauranga kaumatua, visited Orakau and Tauranga to collect the samples.
These samples were then incorporated into the new memorial in time for the Armistice Day, October 11, 2018, opening. But in the rush to complete the memorial and meet the opening deadline the important Māori tikanga or protocol for such an event was inadvertently overlooked.
The earth samples represent more than the Australian soldiers.
They represent our whenua – our land. It is soil that symbolically also bears our blood and is representative of a dark time in our history because that land, where our ancestors, our tipuna, fought and died was then taken from us. We were punished for defending our land against an invader by being stripped of it.
So, these small soil samples are not just crumbs of dirt; they have a far more symbolic role of representing the US and it is incumbent on we, the descendants, to ensure that they are put in place with appropriate care and respect. In traditional times such soil samples were carried to the new lands that our ancestors journeyed to and carefully placed in a hidden place because that soil carried the mauri, the spiritual essence, of the people.
I see these soil samples as doing the same thing. The soil from Pukehinahina bears the mauri of our ancestors who fought off a numerically superior opposition on a wet afternoon in 1864.
As far as I can find out this is the first time that both sides have been honoured in this way. The Australians and their soldiers; we and our warrior ancestors. It was an arresting moment.
Our group from Tauranga was joined by the Sydney Māori Wardens and other family members now living in Sydney.
The emotion of meeting family who have long been absent from Tauranga is hard to explain; it is a bittersweet reunion. We are pleased to see them but sad that they are so far away from us. But together we were able to properly honour the occasion.
The ceremony began with a brief welcome from local tangata whenua representative Harry Allie and the karanga rang out through the building. We then joined forces to mihi to the NSW Governor General David Hurley, our own New Zealand consul general Bill Dobbie and Major General Greg Bilton and the president of the NSW RSL – a heavyweight Australian representation but one that served to underpin the importance of the occasion from the Australian perspective.
In a moving korero, Hauata Palmer explained the importance of the occasion for us – the soil represented our hearts - and led the way with a korero that covered not just "our" place here but acknowledged all the subsequent battles and our shared ANZAC participation. The waiata singing in support in that special space was so sweet it brought tears.
It is our hope that in future; that on October 28 every year, our Māori diaspora, our whānau living in Sydney, will visit this memorial to mark the day that has been chosen to be the day on which we remember and acknowledge the Land Wars of the 19th century.
It is something whose time has come, and I am proud that the events of 1863 and 1864 are now permanently memorialised in such a reverent way in another country.
Buddy Mikaere is an historian, environmentalist, resource consents consultant and Tauranga Moana iwi representative with a wide variety of interests across the Mount Maunganui and Tauranga community. He serves on various Council committees.