March 12, 2018
He Ra Maumahara brings history home
The Minister for Crown Maori Relations says the weekend's first official commemoration of New Zealand was a reminder his new position was 173 years in the making.
He Ra Maumahara started with a welcome of Friday at Te Tii Marae in Waitangi with a welcome for tribes from around Aotearoa and finished yesterday at Russell, where on March 11, 1845 Hone Heke cut down the flagpole for the fourth time, triggering the Northern War.
Kelvin Davis says not only was he at Russell representing the crown but he was there as a descendant of those in Ngati Manu who went to war because their concerns weren't being listened to.
He says although there may be five or six generations separating events, in the north is feels a lot closer, and he remembers his grandfather telling him stories he heard from people who were alive at the time.
"My tupuna Pomare has his pa plundered and set on fire and everyne was hounded and that to get our of town and had to resettle. Pomare was unable to collect customs duties from the ships coming in to the Bay of Islands and all that sort of wealth creation was talken away from him, and we became second class citizens in our own land and we still feel the effects of that today," Mr Davis says.
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