Otago Sculpture Trust

In Site Library - Greater Dunedin: Rongo ( Portsmouth Drive) (1987)

Insite

Rongo (Taranaki Memorial).... Portsmouth Drive

This simple memorial, a rock brought from Taranaki and raised on a plinth with commemorative plaques, was erected in memory of the Maori prisoners from the nineteenth century wars in Taranaki who died in Otago during their term of imprisonment.

The memorial was proposed after a visit to Otago by Taranaki Maori, among them descendants of the original prisoners, on the hundredth anniversary of the arrival of the first prisoners. The invitation had come from Ricki Ellison whose family had historical connections with Taranaki. His ancestor Raniera Erihana had come from Taranaki to Otago in search of gold in 1862.

After that visit, one Taranaki elder decided that it was important that the dead should have proper commemoration. With support of his local elders, Tom Ngatai conceived a memorial whose simplicity would reflect the humility and peace-loving philosophy of the Taranaki prisoners, many of whom were followers of the prophets Te Whiti o Rongomai and Tohu Kakahi who set up the community of Parihaka on the slopes of Mount Taranaki.

The story of the finding the stone has the quality of legend. Tom Ngatai and the great North Island tohunga, Sonny Waru, were searching the coast for a stone when the tohunga's hat flew off in the wind leading the men to a rock that was revealed by the outgoing tide. Its surface was decorated with ancient carving long worn down with the action of the sea. It was clearly the rock they wanted.

The stone was raised from the sea and taken to Hawera where it was inscribed with the single word "Rongo". Te Whiti and Tohu had called their first settlement Te Maunga a Rongo o te Ikaroa a Maui Tiki Tiki a Taranga which alludes to their hopes for peaceful resolution of conflict. Rongo is the god of peace and cultivation. This choice of name for the rock seems significant in the way it seems to allude to the aspirations of the Parihaka movement whose members followed the biblical injunction to turn spears into ploughshares. As part of a campaign of passive resistance to land confiscations, they  uprooted  surveyors' pegs across their land by ploughing through them. This was agriculture as civil disobedience.

The memorial was unveiled on March 22, 1987 by the Governor General Sir Paul Reeves who was himself a descendant of the Taranaki detainees. There were about eighty people from Taranaki and two hundred from Dunedin present during the two-hour ceremony. Two Maori clergymen blessed the monument, one with water from a sacred stream in Taranaki and the other with water from the slopes of Aoraki-Mount Cook.

Between 1869 and 1881 around two hundred men were sent from Taranaki for imprisonment in Dunedin. The first 74 arrived in November 1869 and were held until March 1872. The second group of prisoners were Te Whiti's ploughmen who arrived between August 1879 and January 1880. The prisoners were put to work on the city's infrastructure including the Andersons Bay Causeway which is within sight of the Rongo monument. During their incarceration the Taranaki men were visited by Maori from Otakau who provided them with companionship, warm clothing and food.

The prisoners found the Dunedin weather very cold and eighteen are believed to have died. The most common cause of death was given as tuberculosis. These men were buried in the city's cemeteries but when these were reshaped the location of the graves was lost. Therefore, many of the detainees have no known place of burial, and no memorial except Rongo.

Richard Dingwall

April 18, 2009

Text Copyright Richard Dingwall