Taranaki

The relationship between Taranaki and the Ōtākou people is longstanding and explained here. There is potential for your school to work on this important part of New Zealand’s history. There are plenty of online resources and books. There are whānau representatives that may be able to talk to the history but always start with your own classroom research first as volunteer time to contribute is very limited and precious. Importantly your class or school could visit some very important sights within the Dunedin area e.g.: the causeway and the memorial, Rongo at Anderson’s Bay.

Tahu Pōtiki has previously written about the connection between Ōtākou and Taranaki. He wrote:

It is important to note here another significant Māori influence on the Dunedin city which was also directly a result of European interaction. The relationship between Māori and European was reasonably positive in the South Island. Further north Māori grew resentful of European expansion and colonisation and tensions emerged soon after the signing of the Treaty. Settler pressure for land in the Taranaki region saw several conflicts between Māori and government troops from the 1860s to the 1880s. As a result many Māori were captured and sent to Otago as prisoners. There were 74 Ngāti Ruanui prisoners sent to Dunedin Gaol in November 1869, who were held until March 1872. Many of the prisoners were aging, and 18 prisoners died.

The second group of prisoners were Te Whiti’s “Ploughmen”.72 In the 1870s a peaceful movement developed in Taranaki centred on Parihaka and led by Te Whiti-o-Rongomai and Tohu Kākahi. Their peaceful modes of protest were met with military style aggression. During 1879-1880 the settlers’ militia imprisoned hundreds of those from Parihaka, who were arrested illegally and detained without trial. There were 46 prisoners who were shipped to Dunedin.

While imprisoned in Dunedin, the prisoners were made to do physical labour. Work undertaken by Māori prisoners included breaking rocks at the Botanic Garden, laying out the recreation ground at Boys High School (now Otago Girls), building the Andersons Bay causeway which opened in 1872, and building what is known today as Māori Road (named after the prisoners) which was an access road through the Town Belt from the end of Arthur Street to the old cattle market then situated just above the present Kaituna bowling green. In addition, Māori prisoners were involved in building the sea wall along the Peninsula road.

The connection between Taranaki prisoners and Dunedin remains to this day. Their remains are buried in Dunedin cemeteries. Some Taranaki men adopted Ngāti Ōtākou for their hapū name, and built a church near Waitōtara, called Tūtahi (Standing as One), in honour of all the ministers that supported the prisoners in Dunedin. Local Kāi Tahu families have continued their relationships with Taranaki whānau over the years.

In 1987 a memorial to the prisoners was erected adjacent to Portsmouth Drive before it reaches the Andersons Bay causeway. Edward Ellison (Upoko ki Ōtākou) explained the memorial stone, Rongo:

”The memorial was proposed after a visit to Otago by Taranaki Māori, among them descendants of the original prisoners, on the hundredth anniversary of the arrival of the first prisoners. The invitation had come from Riki Ellison whose family had historical connections with Taranaki.

After that visit, one Taranaki elder decided that it was important that the dead should have proper commemoration. With support of his local elders, Tom Ngātai conceived a memorial whose simplicity would reflect the humility and peace-loving philosophy of the Taranaki prisoners, many of whom were followers of the prophets Te Whiti o Rongomai and Tohu Kākahi who set up the community of Parihaka on the slopes of Mount Taranaki.

The story of the finding the stone has the quality of legend. Tom Ngātai and the great North Island tohunga, Sonny Waru, were searching the coast for a stone when the tohunga’s hat flew off in the wind leading the men to a rock that was revealed by the outgoing tide. Its surface was decorated with ancient carving long worn down with the action of the sea. It was clearly the rock they wanted. The stone was raised from the sea and taken to Hāwera where it was inscribed with the single word “Rongo”. Te Whiti and Tohu had called their first settlement Te Maunga a Rongo o Te Ikaroa a Māui Tiki Tiki a Taranga which alludes to their hopes for peaceful resolution of conflict. Rongo is the god of peace and cultivation.

The memorial was unveiled on March 22, 1987 by the Governor General Sir Paul Reeves who was himself a descendant of the Taranaki detainees. There were about eighty people from Taranaki and two hundred from Dunedin present during the two-hour ceremony. Two Māori clergymen blessed the monument, one with water from a sacred stream in Taranaki and the other with water from the slopes of Aoraki-Mount Cook.”