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Download AudioTe Ringa Mangu (Dun) Mihaka, whose protests led to te reo Māori becoming an official language, has died aged 81.
Shane Jones, who was arrested with Mr Mihaka on the grounds of Government House in Wellington in 1980, says he was a great standard bearer for Maori.
During the 1975 Maori Land March he led a splinter march around Te Tairawhiti rather than coming through the centre of the island with Whina Cooper, and in 1983 he won international attention by baring his buttocks at Prince Charles and Princess Diana in the traditional whakapohane protest.
He used his many encounters with the courts to stand up for his right to speak te reo Maori, which triggered a 1986 Waitangi Tribunal recommendation that the government should introduce legislation making it an official language of New Zealand.
Mr Jones says he originally came across him at the Fort St Tavern in Auckland, where boarders from St Stephen’s used to sneak off to.\
“The former (Auckland) director of Maori Affairs, Nau Puriri, died so we all had to go to his tangi and we promised to take Dun up and my mate Arthur Rex from St Stephen’s School said ‘whatever we do, we’re not having Dun in the car’ so we drove by and there we has hitchhiking. When we arrived on the marae Dun had got a ride and he found we were part of the group that drove past him. The language wasn’t flash after that,” he says.
Te Ringa Mangu Mihaka will be taken overnight from Whanganui a Tara to Parawhenua Marae in Te Whare Tapu Ngāpuhi.
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