I was stoked when my cousin Tia moved to Wellies. And when I say moved, I mean got sent. Dunno what it is with my relations. Their teenagers start to act like teenagers, and they freak out and send them to live here.
Tia, this is Te Aro Pā, I said, this is where our whānau lived. Developers were building apartments here and they dug up these whare. See that photo on the wall? The woman there is one of our tūpuna.
Yeah cool cuz, she said. Can we go get some BK?
And this is Pukeahu, I said. You wouldn’t believe the stories of this place, cuz. Our tūpuna had lots of uses for this hill, like gardens – maara kai. The Crown built military barracks here, had guns pointing at Te Aro Pā. This is where our tūpuna who were ploughmen from Parihaka were locked up before the government sent them down south to Ripapa Island.
Really? She said. How much longer we gonna be in town for?
This is Te Raukura, the wharewaka. They take those waka out on the harbour every Sunday. We could go along for a paddle.
Yeah nah I can’t swim, she said. We getting a feed here? Is it free?
Then she called me one day. Hey cuz, when the story of Parihaka is told, why do they say Parihaka is about peace?
True that, I said. When Parihaka was invaded, there was nothing peaceful about it.
And then the next time she called. Hey, she said. I been doing a bit of research about Pukeahu. The Government took some of our land to build that park. That wasn’t even in the 1800s – it was in 2012! Why did they even need a park?
You know what kind of park I would have built there? I wouldn’t build a national war memorial park, I would build a national Parihaka memorial park.
I would build a park to remember the Parihaka prisoners, with bricks to make, ploughs to push and fences to rebuild.
I would build a papakāinga for the descendants of the ploughers and the fencers.
I would build the homes we could have had, and replant the maara kai that were destroyed.
I would build a new Parihaka.