RĒKOHU AND THE MORIORI
- Feb 1
- 5 min read
Updated: Feb 7
It was just one more shocking revelation exposing my total ignorance of history and human behaviour. But it seemed like too much of an aside at the time I was writing my last book, and I’d already taken so very many provocative tangents. So I made no mention of it.
CHATHAM
When I was writing my book about this town I went looking for some of the street names I knew nothing about. I used to live on Chatham Street but couldn’t recall coming across a Chatham in my readings. The street turned out to be named after the HMS Chatham, a Royal Navy survey brig. This was the smaller ship that attended George Vancouver’s HMS Discovery during his exploration of the British Columbia coast between 1792 and 1794.
Just prior to arriving in BC the same ship, the HMS Chatham, and its commander, Lieutenant William Broughton, sailed upon a remote archipelago about 800km east of New Zealand, on November 29th, 1791. Those islands would become known as the Chatham Islands.
RĒKOHU
I knew nothing about the Chatham Islands, known to the locals as Rēkohu. The remote and rugged islands, with their mix of ancient volcanic activity, dramatic cliffs, forests, peat lands, and swamps, sandy beaches and expansive lagoons, make for a diverse habitat. And with that, just as you would expect, the islands are home to rare endemic creatures, like the Black Robin (which recovered from just five known individuals), Magenta Petrel, Shore Plover, Forbes’ parakeet, Chatham Island pigeon, Chatham Island mollymawk, Chatham Oystercatcher, and Chatham Albatross. There are dozens of endemic plants, too, including the Chatham Island Forget-me-not (famous for its glossy leaves and blue flowers), the Chatham Island Christmas Tree (with large purple flowers), the Chatham Island Sow Thistle (with buttery yellow flowers) and many more. With its 200 days of annual rainfall, there are also five endemic fungi species, one endemic lichen, almost 300 hornworts and liverworts, and 200 species of mosses on the islands. It's quite the place.
MORIORI
Those calling Rēkohu home when the HMS Chatham sailed up were the Moriori, who first arrived by canoe and settled there in the early 1500s. (Though the Moriori's own tradition holds that, prior to their arrival, the islands were populated by the Hamata, a race descended from the gods.) For centuries the Moriori had there, on this amazing little island, chilled, eventually growing to a population of up to 2,000.
Then everything changed in 1835. In October of that year, about 900 Māori from the Ngāti Mutunga and Ngāti Tama tribes of the Taranaki region of present-day New Zealand seized a British ship, the Lord Rodney, from Port Nicholson, present-day Wellington Harbour, kidnapped its captain and crew, loaded the vessel with around a hundred tonnes of food and weapons, and sailed it to Rēkohu. They arrived there on November 19th. Things got... hostile.
The younger Moriori men were keen to repel the invaders but the community had long ago taken a solemn vow of pacifism and the elders insisted upon respecting their long-standing peace covenant. Known as Nunuku’s Law, after their ancestor Nunuku-whenua who witnessed a horrific conflict and declared a prohibition against murder (and the eating of human flesh), the law forbade any fighting even in self-defence. The consequences were devastating.
Maui Solomon (legal expert and descendant of the last full-blooded Moriori) recounts, hundreds of Moriori were slaughtered at the outset, many of those killed were then cannibalized, and the survivors were held as slaves by the invaders. As explained in accounts from locals:
Mōkai (servants or slaves) were usually spoils of war, condemned to lives of drudgery, danger, heavy physical work and obedience to their masters or mistresses' whims; they were expected to fight under supervision, could be used to negotiate with enemies, or as food if supplies were short. Female slaves might be prostitutes, or become secondary wives to their conquerors. Marriages between victorious chiefs and highborn women of defeated tribes strengthened the invaders' right to the land.
While the British passed the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833, and this law applied throughout their colonies, possessions, and plantations, the British had no jurisdiction over present-day New Zealand or the Māori. In 1840, New Zealand's founding document, the Treaty of Waitangi, made all Māori British citizens, and as such outlawed the taking of slaves, however this had no impact on existing pre-Treaty circumstances and only impacted things going forward. Even then, it was only after The New Zealand Wars (1845–1872), and a thorough display of their ability and willingness to kill scores of Māori in order to impose their will over them, that the British took full political and military control over the territory of New Zealand (resulting in the precipitous decline of key features of Māori culture, such as the keeping and consuming of human chattel.)
Within a generation of being conquered and enslaved, only 100 Moriori remained. In 1862, Moriori elders petitioned New Zealand’s colonial British governor, George Grey, for emancipation, recognition of their status as the original inhabitants of Rēkohu, and for restoration of the islands to them. In 1863 the remaining Moriori were officially forced to be released from slavery by the mainland Māori but were granted no land. In 1870, Judge John Rogan, seemingly with little deliberation, determined the Moriori were a conquered people and, as such, forfeited their rights. Nearly all of the Chatham Islands was granted to those who invaded. I suppose anything else would have amounted to the state's self-indictment of its actions against the Māori.
MORE RECENTLY
More than a century later, after generations of lies and lost history and culture, in 1980 a documentary about the Moriori landed on New Zealand television. Shortly after, Michael King penned a book attempting to recount the events of their past and rectify some of the mythmaking that had taken place. In his book, Moriori: A People Rediscovered, King spelled out how “Nobody in New Zealand — and few elsewhere in the world — has been subjected to group slander as intense and as damaging as that heaped upon the Moriori.” Only then did the word really start to get out about the story of these people.
Legal battles and a cultural renaissance followed, including rights to fishing grounds, protection of land and cultural sites, the reconstruction of traditional gathering places, and renewal of the language. From there, in the 2000s, a collaboration of Moriori and some Quakers and Anglicans from New Zealand established Te Ao o Rongomaraeroa, the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies and a place for dialogue between Moriori, Māori, and New Zealanders at the University of Otago, in Dunedin.
Finally, in 2020, the Hokotehi Moriori Trust settled treaty claims with the Crown, including an apology, an agreed upon historical account of events, transfers of culturally significant land on Rēkohu, and (meagre) financial compensation.
FOR MORE
Shand, 1911 - The Moriori people of the Chatham Islands: their history and traditions
Skinner, 1923 - The Morioris of Chatham Islands
New Zealand Geographic, 1993 - Moriori: A Pride Reborn
The Prow, 2010 - Historical & Cultural Stories From Nelson, Tasman and Marlborough
The National Library of New Zealand, 2018 - The feathers of peace
E-Tangata, 2019 - Moriori: Still setting the record straight
