November 19, 2020
Rangiriri event a celebration of survival
Tainui iwi will this weekend mark the anniversary of the start of the 1863 Waikato Invasion by celebrating 157 years of resistance.
Te Pūtake o te Riri organiser Brad Totorewa says the focus will be Rangiriri Pā, where 500 Kiingitanga warriors were overwhelmed by 1400 heavily armed British soldiers.
He says against all odds, the people of the area survived to fight again.
That was the message the Māori King Pootatau Te Wherowhero sent to Governor Grey.
"'You can send your cows down to us Governor Grey to drink up all our waterways, but my people come from a wellspring deep in the earth. We will not dry up.' What we believe he was saying was that against all odds to survive – the latest artillery of the time in 1863, cannons, hand grenades – (against) our taonga Māori, our hand weapons, our double barrelled guns, we survived," Mr Totorewa says.
Brad Totorewa says the iwi is also celebrating a $3 million grant from the Provincial Growth Fund to restore trenches used on the site for education purposes, and also its purchase of a 12 hectare block behind the pā which formed an escape path after the battle.
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