RĒKOHU AND THE MORIORI
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
Updated: 8 hours ago
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. 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 were the Moriori, who first arrived by canoe and settled this place 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.) And for centuries the Moriori chilled, growing to a population of roughly 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 the 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 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. The community’s 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 with the Māori, even in self-defence. The consequences were devastating.
300 Moriori were slaughtered at the outset. As Maui Solomon (legal expert and descendant of the last full-blooded Moriori) explains, many of those killed were then cannibalized (as was common among the Māori, especially during times of conflict) and the remaining survivors were held as slaves on their own land by the Māori. Within a generation only 100 Moriori remained.
Eventually, in 1862, Moriori elders petitioned New Zealand’s colonial British governor, George Grey, for emancipation, recognition of their status as the original inhabitants of the land, and for restoration of the islands to them. In 1863 the Moriori were officially released from slavery by the mainland Māori. But they were granted no land. In 1870, a court was set up to settle the matter of land ownership. Judge John Rogan, determined the Moriori were a conquered people who forfeited their rights. Nearly all the land on and around the Chatham Islands was granted to those who invaded.
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 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 National Library of New Zealand, 2018 - The feathers of peace
E-Tangata, 2019 - Moriori: Still setting the record straight
