Parihaka Day is celebrated on 5 November each year. 

Parihaka is a settlement gathered around the kaupapa (principles) of empowerment, dialogue and non-violence, which emerged in the midst of the 19th century Taranaki land wars. For many New Zealanders, Parihaka is synonymous with peace, a precursor of Gandhi, a source of inspiration. For others, a page in a history book.

For the people who live now in Parihaka, it is a home still shining with the legacy of their tūpuna (ancestors), but also still living with the legacy of colonisation. Community leader Ruakere Hond describes it: 

"The war hasn’t finished. People aren’t falling from muskets. They are falling from youth suicide, chronic poverty, intergenerational poverty." 

But I won’t speak for the people of Parihaka, they have their own story to tell.

For me, ko Parihaka tōku Petekote — Parihaka is my Pentecost. On my first visit, I thought the miracle of tongues had literally occurred. One moment I was listening to Ruakere speak in Te Reo Māori without understanding. And the next moment he was addressing our Caritas group and I found to my amazement that I understood. Then I realised the miracle was in the man — before I had said a word, he had assessed my knowledge of Te Reo and chosen vocabulary that I could understand. My ears were opened. On our next visit to Parihaka I found I could speak.

When Caritas staff members first visited Parihaka, before preparing a resource to assist parishes and schools to commemorate Parihaka day (5 November), we thought we were going to learn about peace. That is part of the legacy of Parihaka. But the present-day community stresses it is not its only or most important message.

What matters is not just how the people of Parihaka responded non-violently to the confiscation of their lands, but how they decided what to do.

Once a month, for five years in the 1870s, people from all around Taranaki and further afield gathered with the prophets Tohu Kākahi and Te Whiti o Rongomai. They met to discuss the situation they were facing and to plan their response.

Their response was to send out ploughmen to plough confiscated lands, to assert their rights to them. The first ploughmen were arrested; others came to take their place. They too were arrested; more took their place. Fifty years before Gandhi, the people of Parihaka found a peaceful way to resist strongly and protest the injustices they faced.

The present day community of Parihaka says the lessons of their tūpuna are found in bringing people together to search for collective responses to injustice. Their legacy is the kaupapa of empowerment and self-determination — the right of people to determine their own lives and their own futures.

Recently, I had the privilege to attend a meeting of Caritas agencies in Rome to discuss the Middle East crises. The directors of the Caritas organisations in the region each expressed their belief that no military solution was possible for the current violence in Iraq, Syria and Palestine. They said political solutions had to be found from within and not imposed from the outside.

Later, I found myself with some European Caritas colleagues, each experiencing anguish that they could not personally see a solution. Though they considered themselves pacifists, they felt that not only did the West have the military resources to end the conflicts in the Middle East, but also the responsibility to do so. They saw no alternative. They thought our colleagues from the area naïve and unrealistic.

Initially, I was shy to offer my perspective that a situation created by colonial military action would not be solved by more colonial military action.

Then I realised, these Europeans do not know what it means to be colonised. They do not know what it means to have their lands confiscated, and their crops and homes burned by an army that believes itself militarily and culturally superior. They do not know the realisation that to bear arms against such an enemy will bring only more destruction. They do not know that it is possible to live as displaced people amidst such violence while striving to find non-violent solutions. They do not know Parihaka.

I found I was able to share something of what Parihaka has taught me — those of us who have inherited the benefits of colonisation must learn to listen to those who have inherited the suffering of colonisation. We must find ways to support people building places of dialogue and non-violence in seemingly impossible situations. We must find the Parihakas of the Middle East, and hear the words of their prophets.

Tui Motu Magazine, Issue 188 November 2014: 3