Жаңа Зеландиядағы Парихака: Бейбіт қарсылық және жер дауы

Parihaka is a community in the Taranaki region of New Zealand, located between Mount Taranaki and the Tasman Sea. In the 1870s and 1880s the settlement, then reputed to be the largest Māori village in New Zealand, became the centre of a major campaign of non violent resistance to European occupation of confiscated land in the area. Armed soldiers were sent in and arrested the peaceful resistance leaders and many of the Maori residents, often holding them in jail for months without trials. The village was founded about 1866 by Māori chiefs Te Whiti o Rongomai and Tohu Kākahi on land seized by the government during the post New Zealand Wars land confiscations of the 1860s. The population of the village grew to more than 2,000, attracting Māori who had been dispossessed of their land by confiscations and impressing European visitors with its cleanliness and industry, and its extensive cultivations producing cash crops as well as food sufficient to feed its inhabitants. When an influx of European settlers in Taranaki created a demand for farmland that outstripped the availability, the Grey government stepped up efforts to secure title to land it had confiscated but subsequently not taken up for settlement. From 1876 some Māori in Taranaki accepted "no fault" payments called takoha compensation, while some hapū, or sub tribal groups, outside the confiscation zone took the government's payments to allow surveying and settlement. Māori near Parihaka and the Waimate Plains rejected the payments, however, the government responded by drawing up plans to take the land by force. In late 1878 the government began surveying the land and offering it for sale. Te Whiti and Tohu responded with a series of non violent campaigns in which they first ploughed settlers' farmland and later erected fences across roadways to impress upon the government their right to occupy the confiscated land to which they believed they still had rights, given the government's failure to provide the reserves it had promised. The campaigns sparked a series of arrests, resulting in more than 400 Māori being jailed in the South Island, where they remained without trial for as long as 16 months with the aid of a series of new repressive laws. As fears grew among white settlers that the resistance campaign was a prelude to renewed armed conflict, the Hall government began planning a military assault at Parihaka to close it down. Pressured by Native Minister John Bryce, the government finally acted in late October 1881 while the sympathetic Governor was out of the country. Led by Bryce, on horseback, 1,600 troops and cavalry entered the village at dawn on 5 November 1881. The soldiers were greeted with hundreds of skipping and singing children offering them food. Te Whiti and Tohu were arrested and jailed for 16 months, 1,600 Parihaka inhabitants were expelled and dispersed throughout Taranaki without food or shelter and the remaining 600 residents were issued with government passes to control their movement. Soldiers looted and destroyed most of the buildings at Parihaka. Land that had been promised as reserves by a commission of inquiry into land confiscations was later seized and sold to cover the cost of crushing Te Whiti's resistance, while others were leased to European settlers, shutting Māori out of involvement in the decisions over land use. In a major 1996 report, the Waitangi Tribunal claimed the events at Parihaka provided a graphic display of government antagonism to any show of Māori political independence. It noted: "A vibrant and productive Māori community was destroyed and total State control of all matters Māori, with full power over the Māori social order, was sought." Historian Hazel Riseborough also believed the central issue motivating the invasion was mana: "Europeans were concerned about their superiority and dominance which, it seemed to them, could be assured only by destroying Te Whiti's mana. As long as he remained at Parihaka he constituted a threat to European supremacy in that he offered his people an alternative to the way of life the European sought to impose on them." The Parihaka International Peace Festival has been held annually there since 2006.

The local Parihaka marae now features the Rangikapuia, Te Niho, Toroānui and Mahikuare meeting houses. It is a tribal meeting ground for the Taranaki hapū of Ngāti Haupoto and Ngāti Moeahu. In October 2020, the Government committed $457,693 from the Provincial Growth Fund to upgrade the Toroānui meeting house, creating 6 jobs.

The Parihaka settlement was founded about 1866, at the close of the Second Taranaki War and a year after almost all Māori land in Taranaki had been confiscated by the Government to punish "rebel" Māori. The settlement was established by a Māori chief and veteran of the Taranaki wars, Te Whiti o Rongomai, as a means of distancing themselves from European contact and association with warlike groups of Māori. Within a year the settlement had grown to house more than 100 large thatched whare (houses) around two marae and by 1871 the population was reported to be 300. The Taranaki Medical Officer visited in 1871 and reported food in abundance, good cookhouses and an absence of disease. It was the cleanest, best kept pā he had ever visited and its inhabitants "the finest race of men I have ever seen in New Zealand". Large meetings were held monthly, where Te Whiti warned of increasing levels of bribery and corruption to coerce Māori to sell their land, yet European visitors continued to be welcomed with dignity, courtesy and hospitality. In 1872 the Government acknowledged that although all Māori land in Taranaki had been confiscated, most of it had effectively fallen back into Māori ownership because so little had been settled by Europeans. As a result, the Government began buying back the land, including reserves and land given as compensation for wrongful confiscation. As Te Whiti continued to reject the offers, however, European anger towards Parihaka grew, fuelling calls for his "dangerous" movement to be suppressed. Newspapers and government agents that had earlier praised him as peaceful and amiable began describing him as a "fanatic" who gave "rambling", "unintelligible" and "blasphemous" speeches, producing a "baneful influence". By the mid 1870s, Taranaki was enjoying a rapid growth in immigration, with the founding of Inglewood and other farming towns, the creation of inland roads as far south as Stratford and a rail link from New Plymouth to Waitara. In mid 1878, as the provincial government pressured the Government for more land,

Hectored by the settler press, which claimed extra farmland was needed and that "these lands should no longer be retained by turbulent, semi barbarous people, too idle to put them to any use", the Government on 26 March began advertising the sale of the first of the Waimate Plains. On 24 April it announced the sale was postponed indefinitely. Sheehan determined to find out what had been promised to Māori and whether this was the cause of the interruption to the survey. Still, however, the Government refused to confirm its promise of reserves. Monthly meetings at Parihaka attracted Māori from all over New Zealand and let was set aside for each tribe to have its own marae, meeting house and cluster of whares throughout the village. As the population grew, so did the industriousness, with cultivations over a wider area and more than 100 bullocks, 10 horses and 44 carts in use. Residents at Hawera were convinced war would be commenced "at any moment" and the Patea Mail urged a new "war of extermination" be waged against the Māori: "Justice demands these bloodthirsty fanatics should be returned to the dust the time has come, in our minds, when New Zealand must strike for freedom, and this means the death blow to the Māori race."

On 26 May 1879 those bullocks and horses began to be put to use ploughing long furrows through the grassland of white settler farmers – first at Ōakura and later throughout Taranaki, from Hāwera in the south to Pukearuhe in the north. Most of the land had earlier been confiscated from Māori. Te Whiti insisted the ploughing was directed not against the settlers, but to force a declaration of policy from the Government, but farmers were incensed, threatening to shoot the ploughmen and their horses if they did not desist. Magistrates in Patea County advised Grey that Māori had 10 days to stop "molesting property" or they would be "shot down", while MP Major Harry Atkinson encouraged farmers to enrol as volunteers and militia soldiers. He promised to upgrade their rifles and was reported in the Taranaki Herald as saying "he hoped if war did come, the natives would be exterminated". At Hawera a group of 100 armed vigilantes confronted ploughmen, but were talked out of violence by those they had come to threaten. On 29 June the armed constabulary began arresting the ploughmen. Large squads pounced on the ploughing parties, who offered no resistance. Dozens a day were arrested, but their places were immediately taken by others who had travelled from as far away as Waikanae. Te Whiti directed that those of the greatest mana, or prestige, should be the first to put their hands to the ploughshares, so among the first arrested were the prominent figures Tītokowaru, Te Iki and Matakatea. By then, however, the protest action seemed to be having some success, with Sheehan, the Native Minister, telling Parliament on 23 July: "I was not aware what the exact position of those lands on the west coast was. It has only been made clear to us by the interruption of the surveys. It turns out that from the White Cliffs to Waitōtara the whole country is strewn with unfulfilled promises." A former Native Minister, Dr Daniel Pollen, also warned of the consequences of firmer government action against the Parihaka ploughmen: "I warn my honourable friend that there are behind Te Whiti not two hundred men, but a great many times two hundred men." All the prisons of New Zealand would not be big enough to hold them, he warned. On 10 August leading pro government chiefs issued a proclamation to all tribes of New Zealand calling on the government to halt surveys of disputed lands and on Māori to end their action in claiming those lands. The proclamation also proposed testing the legality of the confiscations in the Supreme Court. Te Whiti agreed to a truce and by the end of the month the ploughing ended.

The first 40 ploughmen were brought before court in July, charged with malicious injury to property, forcible entry and riot. They were sentenced to two months' hard labour and ordered to either pay a £600 surety for 12 months' good behaviour following their release or—if they could not raise the money—be imprisoned in Dunedin jail for 12 months. The Government declined to lay charges against any of the remaining 180 protesters, but also refused to release them. Colonial Minister and Defence Minister Colonel George S. Whitmore, who had led colonial forces against Titokowaru in 1868–69, admitted it was necessary to bend the law to keep the protesters incarcerated, fearing they would be released by the Supreme Court if they went on trial. The Grey government was on the point of collapse following a series of no confidence motions, but to provide a legal backing for its move rushed the Maori Prisoners' Trial Bill through both Houses on the final day of its session in office, Whitmore justifying the haste by claiming the "actual safety of the country and of the lives and property of its loyal subjects" was at stake. No translation of the legislation was provided, despite protests by Māori MPs. The new law provided that the detainees were to be brought to trial anywhere in the colony on a date nominated by the Governor within 30 days of the opening of the next session of parliament. The new Hall Government was formed in October 1879 and promptly introduced more legislation to deal with the "Parihaka question". On 19 December the Confiscated Land Inquiry and Maori Prisoners' Trials Act was passed into law. The Act provided for an "inquiry into alleged grievances of Aboriginal Natives in relation to certain lands taken by the Crown"—the confiscated territory in Taranaki—and it also enabled the Governor to postpone the trials of the Māori prisoners, who had been scheduled to appear at the Supreme Court in Wellington in late December. John Bryce, the new Native Minister, told Parliament he did not attach much importance to the idea of inquiring into Māori grievances; Sheehan, his predecessor, admitted there were many unfulfilled promises and that the west coast people had enough grievances to justify what they had done, but said it was in their interests to suffer "mild confinement" until the government had settled the question. A new trial date was set—5 April 1880 in Wellington—but in January 1880 the government quietly moved all the prisoners to the South Island, incarcerating them in jails in Dunedin, Hokitika, Lyttelton and Ripapa Island in Canterbury. The new legislation declared that all those in jail were now deemed to have been lawfully arrested and to be in lawful custody and decreed that "no Court, Judge, Justices of the Peace or other person shall during the continuance of this Act discharge, bail or liberate the said Natives". Sheehan, meanwhile, claimed Te Whiti's people were wavering and would soon break up, while Bryce declared the end game was within sight: "I fully expect, in the course of next summer, to see hundreds of settlers on these plains." Fox insisted that no survey of land around Parihaka should take place until the commission had made a report. Bryce agreed that central Taranaki would not be entered, apart from the completion of necessary road repairs. In April, however, he found just such a necessity, directing that 550 armed soldiers–mostly unemployed men newly recruited with the promise of free land–would begin "repairing" a new road that would lead directly to Parihaka. They recommended the delineation of a "broad continuous belt of reserve" of about on the Waimate Plains and a further reserve of 20,000 to 25,000 acres for the Parihaka people—"so long as they live there in peace". Bryce, who had strongly opposed the work of the commissioners and resented their influence, was dismissive of their report in his parliamentary address on it and gave no suggestion he would implement the recommendations.

In June 1880, meanwhile, the road reached Parihaka and on Bryce's instruction, the Armed Constabulary broke fences around the large Parihaka cultivations, exposing their cash crops to wandering stock, crossed cultivations and looted Māori property. The New Zealand Herald reported the next Māori tactic as surveying began there: "Our position is a very unhappy one. We assign reserves for natives indicate (sites for) European settlement. The natives reply by building houses, fencing, planting and occupying our camping grounds." As soldiers and surveyors cut down fences and marked out road lines across fields of crops, Māori just as quickly rebuilt the fences across the roads. When soldiers pulled them down, Māori put them back up again, refusing to answer questions about who was directing them. When Te Whetu threatened in July 1880 to cut down telegraph poles, he was arrested with eight other men and taken to New Plymouth. For the Government, it was the beginning of a new campaign in which fencers were arrested, often being dragged off by force as they continued work on building fences. According to the Waitangi Tribunal, the arrests were invalid: the land was not Crown land and therefore it was the army, not Māori, who were trespassing. Nor were the actions of the Māori fencers a criminal activity. The Government responded with the Maori Prisoners' Detention Act (enacted 6 August, the day after the West Commission released its final report) to keep all the prisoners in detention, and then, on 1 September 1880, the even harsher West Coast Settlement (North Island) Act, which widened the powers of arrest and provided for two years' jail with hard labour–with the offender released only if he paid a surety nominated by the court. Arrests could be made for anyone even suspected of "endangering the peace" by digging, ploughing or disturbing the surface of the land, or erecting or dismantling a fence. Governor Robinson regarded the legislation as necessary in the Māoris' own interests and said it was "devised for the purpose of averting another Maori war", but Grey said the law "amounted to a general warrant for the apprehension of all persons for offences which were not named at all – in fact they might be arrested for no offence." By September about 150 fencers had been detained and sent to South Island jails When a group of 59 Māori appeared in the District Court in New Plymouth on 23 September for trial on charges of having unlawfully obstructed the free passage of a thoroughfare, a jury of 12 settlers deliberated for 45 minutes before returning to say they could not agree on a verdict. Judge Shaw told the jurors that if they convicted the accused, he might choose to sentence them "to only an hour's imprisonment" and bind them over to keep the peace "for only a nominal time". He told the jurors that if they did not produce a verdict within an hour he would lock them up for the night. They deliberated for just minutes before returning with a guilty verdict. The judge immediately sentenced the fencers to two years' imprisonment with hard labour at Lyttelton jail, plus a requirement for each to find a £50 surety to keep the peace for six months. Bryce unsuccessfully sought to impose conditions on the men as they were released, including their acceptance of reserves. The sell off of central Taranaki continued, however, and in June 1881, with most of the Waimate Plains auctioned off, the Commissioner of Crown Lands sold of the Parihaka block for just over £2.10.0 an acre, with still no reserves marked out. Despite the sale, Māori at Parihaka continued to clear, fence and cultivate the land, regardless of whether it had been surveyed and sold, with their persistence leading to the use of more than 200 Armed Constabulary to pull down fences, which in turn prompted a pursuit by Māori armed with sticks. By September newspapers were reporting that "certain quarters" were persisting in working up a scare campaign, suggesting Te Whiti was fortifying Parihaka and preparing to invade New Plymouth, while the Taranaki Herald reported that the settlement was "in a horribly filthy state" and its inhabitants "in a deplorable condition"–a stark contrast to the situation a Wellington doctor discovered when he visited, writing that the place was "singularly clean regularly swept drainage is excellent".

The British Government, already uneasy about growing racial tensions in New Zealand, had in late 1880 dispatched a new governor, Sir Arthur Gordon, to review matters and report to them. Gordon was more sympathetic to the Māori In mid September 1881 Gordon sailed for Fiji, leaving Chief Justice Sir James Prendergast as acting Governor. In his absence, and with an election looming, Hall's ministry completed its plans to invade Parihaka. Bryce's replacement as Native Minister, Canterbury farmer William Rolleston, secured two votes worth a total of £184,000 for contingency defence against Taranaki Māori and the government significantly boosted the number of Armed Constabulary on the west coast. On 8 October Rolleston visited Parihaka to urge Te Whiti to submit to the Government's wishes. If he refused and war ensued, Rolleston explained, "the blame will not rest with me and the government. It will rest with you." When news of the Hall government's plans reached Gordon, he terminated his Fiji visit and hurried back to New Zealand. At 8pm on 19 October, two hours before the Governor returned to Wellington, however, Hall convened an emergency meeting of his Executive Council and Prendergast issued a proclamation berating Te Whiti and his people for their "threatening attitude", their rebellious speech and their resistance of the armed constabulary. It urged the people of Parihaka to leave Te Whiti and for the visitors to return home. It gave them 14 days to accept the "large and ample" reserves on the conditions attached to them by the government and willingly submit to the law of the Queen or the lands would forever pass away from them and they alone would be responsible for this and "for the great evil which must fall on them." "As usual," observed historian Hazel Riseborough, "it was a question of mana." The proclamation was signed by Rolleston late on 19 October—his last act as minister before Bryce was returned to Cabinet and just two hours before Gordon arrived back in New Zealand. The Governor, though angry at the issuing of the Proclamation, acknowledged it would be supported "by nine tenths of the white population of the colony" and allowed it to stand. Tensions climbed among Europeans in Taranaki. Although it had been more than 12 years since the last military action against Māori in Taranaki, and despite the lack of any threat of violence by the inhabitants of Parihaka, Major Charles Stapp, commander of the Taranaki Volunteers, declared that every man in the province between 17 and 55 years was now on active service in the militia. A government Gazette announcement called up 33 units of volunteers from Nelson to Thames. At the end of October the forces–1,074 Armed Constabulary, almost 1,000 volunteers from around New Zealand and up to 600 Taranaki volunteers, together outnumbering Parihaka adult males by four to one–gathered near Parihaka, the volunteers at Rahotu and the Armed Constabulary at Pungarehu, and began drills and target practice. Bryce rode in their midst daily. On 1 November Te Whiti prepared his people with a speech in which he warned: "The ark by which we are to be saved today is stout heartedness, and flight is death There is nothing about fighting today, but the glorification of God and peace on the land Let us wait for the end; there is nothing else for us. Let us abide calmly upon the land." He warned against armed defence: "If any man thinks of his gun or his horse and goes to fetch it, he will die by it." Shortly after 5am on 5 November, long columns emerged from the two main camps to converge on Parihaka, encircling the village. Each man carried two days' rations, the troops were equipped with artillery and a six pound Armstrong gun was mounted on a nearby hill and trained on Parihaka. When the advance party reached the marae at the centre of the village, they found 2500 Māori sitting together. They had been waiting since midnight. At 8am Bryce, who had ordered a press blackout and banned reporters from the scene, arrived, riding on a white charger. Two hours later he demanded a reply to the proclamation of 19 October. When his demand was met with silence, he ordered the Riot Act to be read, warning that "persons unlawfully, riotously, and tumultuously assembled together, to the disturbance of the public peace" had one hour to disperse or receive a jail sentence of hard labour for life. Before the hour was up, a bugle was sounded and troops marched into the village. Bryce then ordered the arrest of Te Whiti, Tohu and Hiroki, a Waikato Māori who had sought refuge at Parihaka after killing a cook travelling with a survey party in south Taranaki in late 1878. As Te Whiti walked through his people, he told them: "We look for peace and we find war." At the marae the crowd remained sitting quietly until evening, when they moved to their houses. Two days later constabulary officers, still on edge because of rumours that Titokowaru had summoned armed 500 reinforcements, began ransacking houses in the village in search of weapons. They turned up 200 guns, mostly fowling pieces. Colonel Messenger told Cowan there was "a good deal of looting – in fact robbery" of greenstone and other treasures. Bryce ordered members of all tribes who had migrated to Parihaka to return to their previous homes. When none moved, they were warned the Armstrong gun on Fort Rolleston, the hill overlooking the village, would be fired at them. The threat was not carried out, but soldiers amused themselves by aiming their rifles at the crowd. The next day the constabulary began raiding other central Taranaki Māori settlements in search of arms, and within days the raids, accompanied by destruction and looting, had spread to Waitara. On 11 November, 26 Whanganui Māori were arrested and Bryce, frustrated in his attempt to identify those from outside central Taranaki, telegraphed Hall to advise he intended destroying every whare in the village. He told Hall: "Consider, here are 2000 people sitting still, absolutely declining to give me any indication of where they belong to; they will sit still where they are and do nothing else." Each day brought dozens of arrests, and from 15 November officers began destroying whare that were either empty or housing only women, assuming they were the homes of the evicted Wanganui men. When still Wanganui women could not be conclusively identified, a Māori informer was brought in to identify them. North Taranaki Māori, including children, were then separated–"like drafting sheep," one newspaper reported–and then marched under guard to Waitara. To starve out the remainder, soldiers destroyed all surrounding crops, wiping out of potatoes, taro and tobacco, then began repeating the measure across the countryside. By December it was reported that many dispersed Māori faced starvation. Bryce offered them work, but it was the ultimate humiliation—roadmaking and fencing for the subdivision of their land. The government then decreed that of land set aside as Parihaka reserves would be withheld as "an indemnity for the loss sustained by the government in suppressing the Parihaka sedition". Titokowaru, who had been put in solitary confinement at the Pungarehu constabulary camp, went on a brief hunger strike in protest at his treatment. On 25 November he was charged with threatening to burn a hotel at Manaia in October and using insulting language to troops at Parihaka in November. Three weeks later, while still in jail, a third charge of being unlawfully obstructive–for sitting on the marae at Parihaka–was laid against him. The magistrates ordered him to find to sureties of £500 each to keep the peace for 12 months and to be kept in the New Plymouth jail in the meantime. He remained in jail until July 1882 when bail was posted for him. In May 1882 the government introduced new legislation, the West Coast Peace Preservation Bill, which decreed that Te Whiti and Tohu were not to be tried, but would be jailed indefinitely. If released, they could be rearrested without charge at any time. Bryce explained that the law was necessary to protect the people of Taranaki and because he feared the two chiefs might be acquitted by a jury or, if they were convicted, receive a lenient sentence. The legislation, signed into law on 1 July, was followed by the Indemnity Act, which indemnified those who, in preserving the peace on the west coast, may have adopted measures "in excess of legal powers".—and returned to Parihaka, still under threat of arrest under the powers of the West Coast Peace Preservation Act, renewed in August 1883. His remaining land was still shrinking: on 1 January 1883 the reserves granted to Māori by the West Coast Commission—many of which were described by Fox as "extremely rugged country, broken by deep and wide gullies and covered by extremely heavy forest"—were vested in the Public Trust for 30 year lease to European settlers at market rental, prompting Te Whiti to refuse to sign documents and refuse to collect the rental income of £7000 a year.

Armed constabulary remained stationed at Parihaka, enforcing the pass laws and the ban on public meetings, yet rebuilding began. In August 1884 Te Whiti and Tohu began a new campaign to publicise the loss of their land, embarking on large protest marches across Taranaki, as far south as Patea and north to White Cliffs. In July 1886 the campaign changed direction as Māori began entering pākehā farms to occupy the land and erect thatched huts. Titokowaru and eight other Māori were arrested and on 20 July armed constables launched a dawn raid on Parihaka to arrest Te Whiti. Ten weeks later they faced a Supreme Court trial in Wellington. Te Whiti was jailed for three months and fined £100 for being an accessory to forcible entry, riot and malicious injury to property; the others were jailed for a month and fined £20. In late 1889 Te Whiti was arrested again over a disputed £203 debt and sentenced to three months' hard labour. Although there were more violent incidents during the New Zealand Wars, the memory of Parihaka is still invoked as a symbol of colonial aggression against the Māori people.

The story of Parihaka lay largely forgotten by non Māori New Zealanders, until the publication of The Parihaka Story by Dick Scott in 1954. It was revised and enlarged as Ask That Mountain in 1975. New Zealand composer Anthony Ritchie composed an orchestral work Remember Parihaka (Op. 61) in 1964, inspired by Dick Scott's 1954 book. A sardonic "song play" about Māori land issues including Parihaka, Songs for the Judges, with words by Mervyn Thompson and music by William Dart, was performed in Auckland in February 1980 and toured in 1981. Two of the songs, Gather up the Earth and On that Day, are based on sayings of Te Whiti. It was issued as an LP (SLD 69) by Kiwi/Pacific Records in 1982. A play about Parihaka by Harry Dansey called Te Raukura was first performed in Auckland and then, in a cut down version for school age performers, in the Hutt Valley and at Parihaka in 1981. In 1989 musicians Tim Finn and Herbs released the song Parihaka about the incident. In 2011, New Zealand author Witi Ihimaera published a novel called The Parihaka Woman which provides a fictional story about a woman named Erenora from Parihaka but also provides much historical fact on the subject. A song released in 2022 by Don McGlashan, John Bryce, compares how well taught and remembered the events of the Gunpowder Plot of 5 November 1605 are compared to the events at Parihaka on 5 November 1881. The former continue to inspire annual Guy Fawkes Night celebrations in New Zealand, but McGlashan's chorus suggests, "let's put a new guy on the bonfire Light up John Bryce on the 5th of November / Make it Parihaka Day".