NZ History MapAotearoa 1800–2000
Treaty & Crown–Māori relations

The invasion of Parihaka

Te pāhuatanga o Parihaka

When
5 November 1881
Where
Parihaka
Reach
Several regions

Some 1,600 troops marched on a village that met them with singing children and offered loaves of bread. Te Whiti and Tohu were arrested, the settlement destroyed, and no one resisted.

Parihaka had become the centre of a campaign of non-violent resistance to confiscated-land surveys — ploughing settler paddocks and pulling out survey pegs, then filling the colony’s jails without complaint. On 5 November the government moved. Te Whiti o Rongomai and Tohu Kākahi were imprisoned without trial, homes were levelled, crops destroyed, and women assaulted. The tactics developed at Parihaka predate Gandhi’s campaigns by two decades. The Crown apologised in 2017.

Regions affected

Taranaki

Sources

Written for this project from these references rather than copied from them. Follow a link to check the account against the original.

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