Parihaka is a small community in Taranaki Region, 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.
The village was founded in 1867 by Māori prophets Te Whiti o Rongomai and Tohu Kakahi on land seized by the government during the post-war land confiscations of the 1860s. Recognising the destructive effects of war, Te Whiti and Tohu declared they would use spiritual powers rather than weapons to claim their right to live on land they had occupied for centuries. The population of the village grew to more than 2000, 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. Some Māori in Taranaki accepted payments as compensation, but Māori near Parihaka and the Waimate Plains rejected the payments, however, and 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. The campaigns sparked a series of arrests under martial law, resulting in more than 400 Māori being jailed in the South Island, where they remained without trial for as long as 16 months.
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. They marched into the village with 1600 troops and cavalry 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, 1600 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. Some reserves that had been promised by a commission of inquiry into land confiscations were 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." This movement was part of a much wider Kingitanga movement to have separate Maori development.
The Parihaka International Peace Festival has been held annually there since 2006.
Read more about Parihaka: Settlement, Land Pressures, First Resistance: The Ploughmen, Imprisonment, West Coast Commission, Further Resistance: The Fencers, Invasion, Trial of Te Whiti, Tohu and Titokowaru, Campaign Renewed, Parihaka Restored, Redress, Later References