69 | Te Whiti o Rongomai Greatest Kiwi of All Time 2023

Greatest Kiwi Of All Time: No. 69 - Te Whiti o Rongomai (Up 5 from 74 from last year)

5th November 1881, Taranaki.  1500 armed constabulary surround the settlement of Parihaka, a community built as a peaceful resistance to land confiscations by the Crown.  The constables swarm in, muskets drawn, and arrest the leaders of Parihaka.  Chief among them, the founding father of the community - Te Whiti o Rongomai.

Te Whiti was born in Ngāmotu, Taranaki in about 1830.  Educated by missionaries, he would set up his own flour mill to trade with Māori and Pakeha alike.  When Te Whiti was around 30, he’d save the lives of those aboard the Lord Worsley, a ship wrecked on the Taranaki coast.  He had a bullock killed to feed the survivors, sent messages about the wreck to New Plymouth and arranged for carts to transport them for a good feed and a hot bath.

A lot of land had been confiscated from Māori in the Taranaki region.  Te Whiti wanted to find a new way to pressure the Crown into returning the land, while rebuilding the pride of his people in the face of mana-reducing confiscations.  He established the village of Parihaka as a new way for Māori to resist European attempts to take what was left of Taranaki.

The Government had passed the Suppression of Rebellion Act in 1863, designed to punish Māori so-called ‘rebels’ who put up a fight against the Crown.  Māori could be detained indefinitely, without trial.  That would happen to Te Whiti.  While originally tried in New Plymouth, the case was moved to Christchurch when the Crown realised they were losing.  There, the trial never reconvened.  They simply kept Te Whiti locked up without trial instead.

While Te Whiti and close relative Tohu Kakahi were in prison, his people would continue to fight for justice.  Māori would come from all over the country to help Taranaki Māori re-occupy their confiscated land.  The Crown responded with hundreds of arrests and even more confiscation of property.

The Government would apologise to iwi for the storming of Parihaka in 2017.

British papers compared Te Whiti to Indian nationalist Gandhi.  Our own peaceful protester while war was raging around him, Te Whiti o Rongomai is definitely one of the Greatest Kiwi’s of All Time.