Maoris see drownings as result of curse

Press, 11 January 1978, Page 1

Maoris see drownings as result of curse

PA Hamilton Raglan Maoris say that the deaths of eight persons off the North Island west coast over New Year result from a curse put on the coast in retribution for damage done to sacred places. The leader of New Zealand Te Matakite, Mrs Eva Rickard, said from Raglan yesterday that the ancestral course was strengthened last year by two elders. The elders, Messrs Kuru Riki and Herepo Rongo, prayed to the Raglan taniwha. Te Atai Rongo, to help the Maoris stop the destruction of their sacred places. Raglan Maoris are upset about the building of a new sew'age pond on the foreshore, and are fighting to regain land taken for a military aerodrome during World "War 11. The land now being used by the Raglan Golf Club contains the mounds of sacred Maori graves. Mrs Rickard said that when the Maori elders heard of the drownings they knew it was the curse working. Only elders in the Maori King movement

could lift the curse and they would not do this until the land was given back. “The drownings will continue as long as the land is in other hands,” Mrs Rickard said. The taniwha was the spirit of a man who had lived in Raglan and been killed by his brother, she said. He had been taken to Kawhia and his spirit was changed to the guardian taniwha for the coast from Kawhia to Port Waikato. “He is the protector of the Maori people in the area. I have lived here all my life and never seen a Maori drowned,” said Mrs Rickard. A prayer for protection by the Maoris would be considered a curse to the pakeha, she said. The Tainui people of the west coast objected to the building of a sewage plant at the base of the taniwha early least year. “The Raglan County Council thought we were just funny Maoris living in a dreamworld,” Mrs Rickard said.

The council has since been plagued with financial problems in building the plant. Late last year the contractor had problems with raw sewage at the ponds and tried to release some into a nearby stream. District Maoris were outraged when they heard this, because the stream was the taniwha’s base. However, the sea rose to such a height that pipes carrying the sewage were broken. Mrs Rickard said the curse was particularly strong because the Tainui were a sea people with close links with the taniwha. The sea had taken no Maori people because they knew how to read the signs and knew not to go out.

She said her own brother was one of a group of Maoris who had been asked to go out in the Kawhia fishing boat which was wrecked, but had refused after watching the sea. A boy aged 13 was the only survivor of seven persons who were aboard the boat when it capsised south of Kawhia on New Year’s Eve. Mrs Rickard said that no tapu had been put on the area since the drownings. The Maoris had the protection of the taniwha and did not know whether to place a tapu on the area for the pakeha. "We did not know whether it was our duty to protect the pakeha from something he does not believe in,” she said.