Reflections on Battle Centenaries

Te Ao Hou, September 1964, Page 34

After a ceremony on the site of the battle, wreaths were laid at the memorial gates of the Rangiriri Maori war cemetery. Here Mr Pei Te Hurinui Jones of Taumarunui lays a wreath on behalf of King Koroki. Behind him, with black beret, is Lieutenant-Colonel J. Playle, Colonel Commandant of the Royal New Zealand Armoured Corps, who also laid a wreath, and (with taiaha) Mr D. Manihera, of Ngaruawahia. Reflections on Battle Centenaries by Harry Dansey In a six-month period stretching from last November to April this year the 100th anniversaries of three major engagements of the New Zealand wars of the 'sixties were commemorated. In addition there were the anniversaries of some minor actions. The major anniversaries were those of the Battle of Rangiriri, observed on November 23, 1963; the Battle of Orakau, observed on March 31, 1964; and the Battle of Gate Pa, observed on April 29, 1964. To one familiar with most of the standard and some of the unofficial history of that troubled period of our nation's life, especially to one of Maori ancestry, these anniversaries can be the subject of much thought and not a little concern. A sense of being ill at ease in this matter, felt indeed by many, was manifest as far as I was concerned in a seemingly illogical combination of sorrow, anger, pride, foreboding and amusement. There was sorrow that the relationship of the two races from which I am myself descended should have once reached

such a stage that no course was left but to kill one another; anger that Pakeha greed dictated the viciously unjust confiscation of land; pride in the peerless courage of men and women irrespective of which cause they espoused; foreboding that those who were arranging ceremonies would not recognise such sorrow, anger and pride; amusement, wry though it may have been, at how so many Pakehas could have lived so long and closely with Maoris and yet brick by dropped brick demonstrate that they had learned next to nothing of their neighbours.