Learning about battle that nearly wiped out tribe
Schools are being encouraged to develop localised teaching units now that national standards have been abolished. Simon Collins continues his five-part series
Almost 200 years after his ancestral tribe was almost wiped out, Savea Saua knew little about his heritage until he studied history at Otamatea High School.
In 1825, about 1000 of Saua’s Nga¯ti Wha¯tua forebears gathered near the Otamatea inlet of the Kaipara Harbour to face an invading force led by the Nga¯ puhi chief Hongi Hika in what became known as the
Battle of Te-Ikaa-Ranganui.
At first the defenders prevailed, killing several of the smaller invading force of perhaps 300 to 400 men, making them retreat.
But then Hongi Hika arrived with guns acquired on a visit to England, giving him a huge advantage. Hundreds of Nga¯ti Wha¯tua dies and historian S. Percy Smith wrote in 1910 that the Waimako Stream “is said to have run red with blood”.
The historic Kakaraea Church at Otamatea Marae now stands on a site where the last Nga¯ti Wha¯tua in the area were cooked and eaten.
“My ancestors were pushed as far as the Waikato, and that’s why we have Nga¯ti Wha¯tua descendants who relate at Nga¯ti Wha¯tua ki Waikato, because that’s as far back as they can go,” says Saua, now 20.
“A lot of people in my generation and a few generations before it were not having a sense of belonging because it was essentially taken away. People were not knowing where they came from.
“I have been standing and speaking [on marae] since I was about 12 because I didn’t have elders who spoke Ma¯ori. It stems all the way back to them not being there, because essentially they were pushed away.”
History teacher Arina Bosch, who is also descended from the Nga¯ti Wha¯tua hapu¯ Te Uri o Hau, says no one was
learning about this history when she arrived at the high school six years ago even though the battle was “the pivotal event in this area”, causing Nga¯ti Wha¯tua to welcome British settlers as a defence against Nga¯puhi.
“There was nothing even New Zealand-focused, let alone local-focused,” she says.
Although Bosch did a master’s degree on England’s Tudors and Stuarts and believes students need to learn widely to be “citizens of the world”, she believes their own local history needs to give them a place to stand.
“I didn’t want to spend the next 20 years teaching kids about Henry the Eighth.”
But introducing students to their own history was not easy.
“You can’t just hit the books,” she says. Although Smith wrote a chapter on TeIka-a-Ranganui, he wrote from a British perspective and his sources were limited.
Hazel Kaio, an Otamatea Marae kuia, says: “A lot of our history you can’t get from books, you have to have that ongoing relationship.” Bosch took it slowly. “I didn’t teach this topic in my first three years at the school. I thought there was a real time of listening,” she says.
She went on a history trail organised by the marae, consulted with a local Ma¯ori historian Roi McCabe, and invited Nga¯ ti Wha¯ tua speakers to the school.
Finally, when she started teaching about Te-Ika-aRanganui in 2016, she brought Saua and his classmates to stay on the marae so they could hear the history directly from people who had kept it alive in oral traditions.
Saua, who has a Nga¯ti Wha¯tua mother and a Niuean father, says the girls in the group learned to karanga, calling in response to the call from the marae as they entered.
“It was great,” he says. “It was a good learning experience, not only for myself but for the whole group.”