'I would argue, from this Document [the 1835 Declaration of Independence], that it clearly establishes ... that New Zealand is recognised by this Country as an independent and sovereign State; consequently any Act on the Part of the Government or Legislature of [Great Britain] which would infringe the acknowledged national Sovereignty is one which the British Government cannot warrantably [sic] adopt.'

Dandeson Coates

Lay Secretary of the Church Mission Society

(14 May 1838, Minutes of Evidence before Select Committee on the Islands of New Zealand, House of Lords, 1838.)

Patron

Trust announces patron - Rt Rev Te Kitohi Wiremu Pikaahu

September 2012

Bishoppikaahu

The Karuwhā Trust board has great pleasure in announcing the appointment of Bishop of Te Tai Tokerau (Northland-Auckland), The Right Reverend Te Kitohi Wiremu Pikaahu LTh, MTh (Oxon) as the Trust’s patron. Bishop Pikaahu was ordained Bishop in 2002 at the age of 37 and remains one of the youngest Bishops in the worldwide Anglican Communion. Bishop Pikaahu is of Ngāpuhi descent.

Samuel Carpenter, the current chair of the Karuwhā Trust board, says: ‘Bishop Kito’s acceptance of the board’s invitation to become trust patron is a fitting endorsement of the trust’s vision to engage Aotearoa New Zealand in a conversation on identity and history. The humanitarian and missionary movement in Britain was a critical spur to British intervention in New Zealand by te Tiriti o Waitangi (the Treaty of Waitangi) 1840. Anglican missionaries in New Zealand were the crucial bridge-builders and translators between British imperial agents and rangatira Māori in that engagement. They later were strong advocates of Māori interests in various imperial and settler-government administrations. Anglican missionary work also stimulated an indigenous Māori missionary movement. As Aotearoa New Zealand continues to confront the meanings and implications of its early history, it is fitting that Bishop Kito – a significant leader in the Māori community in Tai Tokerau and throughout the country – has agreed to become the Trust’s patron. E te rangatira, ka nui te mihi ki a koe, me tōu whānau whānui hoki.’

Bishop Kito says: ‘I am looking forward to being involved with the work of Te Karuwhā Trust. I am proud of the heritage that my tūpuna left to my generation as Māori and as a Christian. With that sense of pride comes the responsibility to uphold the values and principles to which those same tūpuna, in whakapapa and whakapono, lived by, what they sought to nurture and pass on, and which I must preserve for the next generation. This is an opportunity to assist the work of the Trust in every way that enables the true legacy of the early missionaries and the relationships they forged with Maori, to continue to be the foundation for present-day society in Aotearoa New Zealand.’

<ENDS>

Early New Zealand Beginnings

Aitanga: Maori-Pakeha Relationships in Northland

Prof Alison Jones and Dr Kuni Jenkins of the University of Auckland recently produced a fascinating interpretation of early interactions between Maori and Pakeha in the north. They quote some riveting original accounts of the huge welcome Marsden received on his arrival in Aotearoa in December 1814, along with original accounts of the first church service on Christmas Day 1814.

See article below: used with permission.

Full citation: A Jones & K Jenkins, 'Aitanga: Maori-Pakeha Relationships in Northland between 1793 and 1825', Technical Report for Paparahi o te Raki/Northland inquiry, Waitangi Tribunal, Wai 1040,#A26.

Jenkins_Jones_Report_2010.pdf

Maori Language Week

I am a Chinese-Kiwi

Blog 5 (4 July 2011)

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This week is Maori Language Week and themed around Manaakitanga or Maori custom and identity. I noted in last week’s current affairs the 20 or so years it took to achieve conclusive findings and to respond to a Treaty claim called WAI 262, also known as the flora and fauna and cultural intellectual property claim. That is a long time, however I also thought that the delivery of the report to Maori in Tuhoe territory by the Minister of Treaty Settlements, Chris Finlayson, was a noble thing and a step in the right direction for Maori-Pakeha relations. I have always felt empathy for Maori on the matter of the protection of their taonga, or treasures, especially for their language Te Reo Maori. It is a loss I myself partly share, as I do not speak Mandarin above the level of a ten year old, and have at times grieved over all that is not able to be accessed by me about my heritage because I only operate within the bounds of the English language.

The Hone Heke Ngapua story

Say it Again Sam!

thumb_hone-heke-ngapua

Issue 41, 2 May 2011

Contemplating the life of Hone Heke Ngapua - a personal reflection:

Paul Moon, Ngapua: The Political Life of Hone Heke Ngapua, MHR (Auckland: David Ling, 2006)

Hone Heke Ngapua was born in Kaikohe, Tai Tokerau, in1869 to parents of distinguished Ngapuhi, Ngati Whatua and East Coast lineage. His paternal grandfather was brother to Hone Heke, and his gt-gt-grandfather was the noted warrior Pokaia (who was Hone Heke’s grandfather). Schooled at Omanaia and Kawakawa Native schools, and then at St Stephens Anglican in Parnell, Ngapua became a key leader of the pan-iwi Kotahitanga (‘unity’) parliament movement and its foremost advocate in the House of Representatives in the 1890s after being elected the Member for Northern Maori. He was opposed in the House by Sir James Carroll at least in part for the movement's aspirations for autonomy (or semi-autonomy), though he later worked with Carroll and Ngata on native land reform in the early 1900s, once he saw that the aims of Kotahitanga were too ambitious for those times. His political star continued to shine, though it dimmed somewhat before his untimely death from tuberculosis at the age of 39.