Historic day for Taranaki

One hundred and fifty years after the New Zealand government first fired on Waitara and sparked wars across the country for the next 21 years, an exhibition opens and the story is to finally be told throughout the country’s schools. Negotiations are also to begin for cultural and financial redress and an apology from the crown for two Taranaki iwi.

Yesterday morning PM John Key opened Puke Ariki’s new exhibition Te Ahi Kaa Roa, Te Ahi Katoro Taranaki War 1860-2010 Our Legacy - Our Challenge. The exhibition showcases stories and historic items from those on both sides of the war and a CD has been created for use in all New Zealand schools so the history of our country can finally be told. The exhibition runs until August at Puke Ariki Museum in New Plymouth.

Next stop for John Key was Owae Marae in Waitara, where he was met by around 200 members and supporters of Te Atiawa iwi to sign an agreement for negotiation of the iwi’s Treaty of Waitangi settlement. A carved table used during the Taranaki treaty hearings of the 1990s, was brought into the wharenui and laid with the NZ flag and the Te Atiawa flags divided in half side by side. Kohatu (stones) were collected from all the Te Atiawa rivers and lain on the flags alongside a small replica cannon and a taiaha as symbols of the war. In the middle was placed the Taranaki hearings report book and a single raukura, the symbol of peace from Te Whiti and Tohu’s resistance at Parihaka. The kohatu were given to Treaty Settlements minister Chris Finlayson in hope that they would be returned and given back to the rivers as a sign of freedom when settlement has been made.

Speeches were heard from several kaumatua from Te Atiawa including Te Atiawa Iwi Authority (TAIA) negotiations representative Grant Knuckey and from Pita Sharples and John Key (who read from cards, presumably written by someone else). A catholic priest and kaumatua near the end of the ceremony stood and spoke angrily with tokotoko waving to challenge TAIA on their niceness to the crown and to express the anger and pain of the people. During the signing, Kaumatua and school children passionately sung many traditional haka and waiata, many of which told the stories of the war and the pain and suffering the people had endured for the past 150 years.

The mood on the tangata whenua side was a mix of hope, sadness, anger and cynicism. The crown hopes to settle as soon as possible with the expectation being by 2014. Some say settlement can never be reached as it will never go far enough and there is still much frustration with the whole settlement process being driven by the criminals, the crown, which can never be deemed just.

Negotiations were signed later in the day at Puniho Marae between the crown and Taranaki Iwi (not to be confused with the seven iwi of Taranaki).