The story of Parihaka performed at the Taranaki Treaty settlement in September. Photo: RNZ / Robin Martin
Fireworks will be lighting up the sky around New Zealand tonight, 410 years on from a failed attempt to blow up Britain’s House of Lords, but November 5 also marks an event closer to home.
The Maori Party is renewing calls for Parihaka Day, to commemorate the sacking of the pacifist settlement in Taranaki by government troops and militia in the aftermath of the Land Wars.
Party co-leader Marama Fox says it makes more sense for New Zealanders to recognised the significance of Parihaka rather than Guy Fawkes, a foiled act of terrorism in a faraway land.
Parihaka was an inspiration for Indian independence campaigner Mahatma Gandhi and American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, and deserves recognition, Fox says.
"We could celebrate peaceful action, but also peace amongst families, peace amongst communities and advocate for something that is not a terrorist action in a far-off country that we hold very little allegiance to in this day and age."
About 1500 colonial troops marched on Parihaka in 1881, plundered the settlement and arrested and exiled prophets Tohu Kakahi and Te Whiti o Rongomai, leaders of a passive resistance movement to land confiscations.
Fox says it’s inappropriate for New Zealanders to be celebrating Guy Fawkes, which marks the Gunpowder Plot being thwarted in 1605.
"When I was a child they used to still make a guy from straw and hay bales, and set it on fire. That's effectively burning an effigy and in fact as a child I thought that was the scariest thing I'd ever seen in my life."
The speaker for Te Paepae o te Raukura, at Parihaka, Ruakere Hond, says there is a desire in Maoridom for recognition of what happened during the Maori land wars and a Parihaka Day could provide that.
"What were the strategies used by our tipuna to assert tino rangatiratanga. It wasn't just about fighting and violence, there were many other forms of communities striving to survive and find strategies and ways of living and surviving in difficult times, and Parihaka is a good example of that."
Hond says there are many events worthy of commemoration and that for any Parihaka Day to work for his community there would have to be a recognition of what the settlement represents.
A Parihaka Day will help to provide a living legacy for the teachings of the prophets Tohu Kakahi and Te Whiti o Rongomai, he says.
Parihaka memorial services will be held today at the Taranaki Cathedral at noon and at the Wellington Catholic Centre in Thorndon at 5pm.
A version of this story was first published on radionz.co.nz.