AN EVENTFUL CEREMONY

Te Ao Hou, December 1961, Page 10

AN EVENTFUL CEREMONY Primarily it was an occasion chosed by Rapata Wahawaha to re-affirm the loyalty of Ngati Porou and also of some of the neighbouring tribes. Many of them, as I have said, had been in arms against the Crown. Many of them had, in fact, been taken prisoner in the Urewera campaign by Rapata and his Ngati Porou. They were gathered together on this June day of 1872 to unite in re-affirming their loyalty to Queen Victoria and the British Crown. They did so by marching under the flag which had been hoisted on Rapata's flagpole and by taking part in the service of re-dedication conducted by the Rev. Mohi Turei and Rapata himself. Paratene Ngata, father of the late Sir Apirana and adopted son of Wahawaha, records that there was one solitary Maori rebel who refused to take the oath. He ran in a direction away from the flag, chanting as he did so a little haka: Tieke taretare; tieke taretare; Po! Tu ana i waho e. which might freely be translated Thou ragged Jack, thou tattered Jack; Behold! I stand aloof from thy circle. I like to think of that rugged individualist, defying both the distant Queen and the nearer and more grimly terrible Rapata Wahawaha. There is always a place for the noncomformist, the intransigent and the upholder of the old order. But I like even more to think of those thousands of others sinking their ancient enmities and their conflicting ideologies in a new affirmation of a common purpose.