Richard Shaw tells the story of how Parihaka Māori used non-violent resistance in the face of the colonial adminstration confiscating their land and using unconstitutional legislation against them.

Some 146 years ago the people of Parihaka began a process of non-violent resistance to attempts to survey and “settle” land which had been taken from them by the colonial administration. In time, the nascent New Zealand state would overwhelm the efforts of the people of Te Whiti o Rongomai and Tohu Kākahi, but it would do so only by mis-applying its own legislation, breaking its word and broaching constitutional fundamentals. The moral victory, for what it may be worth, was and is still Parihaka’s.

Government Confiscated Taranaki Land

This particular episode in Aotearoa New Zealand’s unsettled colonial past can be traced back to 1865 when, under the provisions of the New Zealand Settlements Act 1863, the government had confiscated the entire province of Taranaki. Although the policy of taking others’ land was ostensibly aimed at "rebellious" iwi in Taranaki, the Waikato and the Bay of Plenty (that is, at people who took issue with the invasion of their land), Māori who had been allies or had not taken up arms against the Crown, including the people of Parihaka, also lost their land.

Māori Moved Back onto Their Land

By the mid-1870s the government had effectively abandoned most of the confiscated area of Taranaki. However, the land’s original inhabitats had not abandoned their home, and many moved back once it seemed clear that the government had walked away from it.

Government Surveying to Sell Land

But in mid-1878 the government began its surveying programme. The first surveys took place on Ngāti Ruanui land on the Waimate Plains in south Taranaki. Te Whiti, whose mana extended the full length of the west coast, ordered that the surveyors be removed from the Plains, and so mana whenua politely packed up each survey camp and carted it back over the Waingongoro River.

The following year the government applied itself more assiduously to the process of surveying, and on 25 May 1879 Te Whiti and Tohu sent men to plough land on the Pitone Road near Ōakura, just south of Ngā Motu New Plymouth.

Māori Plough Surveyed Land

In keeping with their pacifist teachings, the ploughers were unarmed, and over the coming weeks they also ploughed settler-occupied land at seven locations from Pukearuhe in the north to Hāwera in the south.

The symbolism is pretty hard to miss: as the Waitangi Tribunal noted in its 1996 Taranaki Report, “[t]he sword had been replaced by the biblical representation of peace, the ploughshare, but the ploughshare was being used to plough lands unjustly obtained.”

Māori Use Non-violent Resistance — "the Ploughshare"

Te Whiti and Tohu’s strategy is usually described as passive resistance. In fact, it was extremely active. What’s more, the tactics extended well beyond
non-violent protest to incorporate a range of forms of non-violent intervention, persuasion and social and political non-cooperation. The options were rich and varied: that they were non-violent should not be taken to mean that they were passive.

Government Uses Violence — "the Sword"

On the other hand, in keeping with its own decidedly non-pacifist methods, the government retaliated by making widespread arrests. Some 420 ploughers were eventually imprisoned, 40 of whom were brought to trial in New Plymouth where they were found guilty of “malicious injury to property”. The remainder were incarcerated, initially in Wellington and subsequently in Hokitika, Dunedin and on Rīpapa Island in Lyttleton Harbour.

The inconvenience of having a sizeable group of men imprisoned for actions which broke no law was initially taken care of by the Confiscated Land Inquiry and Maori Prisoners’ Trials Act 1879, which retrospectively validated the arrests of the ploughers and gave the governor the right to hold them without charge and to defer their trials.The Maori Prisoners’ Act 1880 legalised the prisoners’ detention and dispensed with the need for trials entirely.

Opposition to Government's Actions

There was some parliamentary opposition to these measures. During the debate on the 1879 legislation, for instance, one member argued vehemently that “by passing this measure the House would be indorsing [sic] a species of legislation of a very dangerous and unprecedented character.” (Neither did the arrests play well in London. An MP in the UK House of Commons asked the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies to “at once take some action on behalf of these men, who are all, I am credibly informed, absolutely ignorant of the English language, and utterly defenceless against this wrong.”)

But the response to such concerns by the Native Minister, John Bryce, tells you all you need to know about the administration’s commitment to constitutional niceties. As far as Bryce was concerned, both Magna Carta and the principle of habeas corpus (the ancient legal principle that protects citizens against unlawful and indefinite detention by the state) were “mere legal technicalities”, and he could entirely see habeas corpus “might become a curse for a country if it could not be set aside when occasion demanded it.”

Government Uses Sword of Law Against Ploughers

The unconstitutional detention of Parihaka’s ploughers would not be the last occasion on which the Crown’s lust for other peoples’ land demanded the suspension of the British constitution.

A year after the first of the ploughers were taken south, more summary arrests took place, as 216 Taranaki Māori who obstructed the building of the South Road across their land were also arrested and shipped off to prisons in Te Wai Pounamu South Island.

In the Maori Prisoners Detention Act, which took effect on 6 August 1880, Te Whiti and Tohu’s fencers received their very own piece of legislation denying them the right to a trial.

But in May 1879 all of that lay ahead, as did the 1881 invasion, destruction and subsequent five-year occupation of Parihaka, as well as the many other consequences of the exercise of brute force against the subtlety of active, non-violent resistance.

In May 2025 we continue to live with the legacies of both.

Tui Motu Magazine. Issue 303 May 2025: 20-21