Creating our own prosperity – human rights from a Tainui perspective

Creating our own prosperity – human rights from a Tainui perspective

Te Aho, L. (2007)

Central to this paper is the prophetic saying of Tāwhiao, the second Māori

King, that describes a future dream of prosperity for his people.

If one is to provide a Tainui perspective,it is necessary to set the scene by outlining, albeit briefly, an explanation of the Kīngitanga, the King Movement. The Kīngitanga began in the 18 0s, some years after the arrival of Europeans, and largely as a unified response by a number of tribes to the upsurge of unauthorised land sales.It was also designed to bring an end to intertribal warfare, and to achieve mana motuhake, or separate authority.3

While the movement enjoyed the support of many tribes, it became centred in the Waikato region in the central North Island. Tribes from all over the country, including the South Island, had debated who should be offered the kingship, and those debates resulted in the reluctant agreement of Waikato chief,Pōtatau Te Wherowhero, who was raised up as king in 18 8. Pōtatau was soon succeeded by his son, Tāwhiao and it was during Tāwhiao’s term as King that the settler Government, seeing the Kīngitanga as a threat to its stability, sent its forces across the Mangatawhiri River in July 1863, labeling the Waikato people as rebels and subsequently confiscating Waikato lands and driving people away from their villages alongside their ancestral river.5

Tāwhiao’s people were embattled, weak and destitute, when he declared:

Mākū anō hei hanga i tōku nei whare,

Ko ngā pou o roto he māhoe, he patatē, ko te tāhuhu he hīnau. Ngā tamariki o roto me whakatupu ki te hua o te rengarenga, me whakapakari ki te hua o te kawariki