Parihaka
| Parihaka | |
|---|---|
 Parihaka
|
|
| Coordinates: 39°18′0″S 173°50′0″E / 39.30000°S 173.83333°E | |
| Country | New Zealand |
| Region | Taranaki |
| District | South Taranaki District |
| Population | |
| • Total | Fewer than 100 |
Parihaka is a small community in the Taranaki region of 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 about 1866 by Māori chiefs Te Whiti o Rongomai and Tohu Kākahi on land seized by the government during the post-war land confiscations of the 1860s. The population of the village grew to more than 2000, attracting Māori who had been dispossessed of their land by confiscations and 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. From 1876 some Māori in Taranaki accepted "no fault" payments called takoha compensation, while some hapu, or sub-tribal groups, outside the confiscation zone took the Government's payments to allow surveying and settlement. 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, given the government's failure to provide the reserves it had promised. The campaigns sparked a series of arrests, resulting in more than 400 Māori being jailed in the South Island, where they remained without trial for as long as 16 months with the aid of a series of new repressive laws.
...
Wikipedia