Music and images of the Tuhoe community showing Kenana and his followers refusal to fight and participate in war.
|
Rua Kenana was a key historical figure during the time of WWI, because Kenana was a prophet to the Maori people of Tuhoe and shared many of the same views and opinions as Christian Pacifists.
Rua Kenana’s generation of Tuhoe were the first to have extensive contact with Pakeha, working as workhands for European farmers. This contact to Pakeha standards of living brought into contrast the unfathomable poverty of Maori, but it also gave the prophet a good understanding of Pakeha skills and ideas, some of which he embraced. He realised that the key was maintaining control of Tuhoe land, and growing Maori prosperity so the land could be established. Following the example of Moses and the Israelites in the Old Testament, Kenana formed a separatist Maori society at Maungapohatu, in the Urewera, appealing to supporters from Tuhoe, Ngati Awa and Whakatohea who had been severely affected by government seizures of land following the land wars of the 1870s. When the call came for voluntary admission for the First World War, very little Maori from Tuhoe took up the proposal to go and fight for the British Crown. Part of this was due to aggression to the Pakeha government, but it was also in response to Kenana’s pacifism, derived from the bible and sayings of Te Kooti Arikirangi Turuku. Kenana’s followers believed that war would not reach Aotearoa, and their pacifism, founded on the bible, led them to call themselves maungarongo, ‘people of lasting peace.’ Openly suggesting that any man was permitted to go to war, but actively discouraging volunteering, Kenana’s resistance came to the attention of Pakeha officials, along with his prophecies that the British would leave Aotearoa, and that Maungapohatu would be visited by the world’s leaders, including the Kaiser of Germany. In effect, Rua Kenana’s reputation as disloyal was a product of war hysteria, and his resistance to the government’s attempts to recruit Tuhoe members of the Maori contingent. The government, keen to end Kenana’s reign, accused him with vending alcohol to Maori, which was illegal, and fined him. A first attempt to arrest him in February 1915 was unsuccessful, so 67 police officers returned in April 1916. While Kenana forebade resistance, due to his pacifist beliefs, shots were fired. Two Maori were killed, and four policemen and an unknown number of Kenana’s followers were wounded. Rua received a sentence of one year’s hard labour, and the Maungapohatu community was fined over 2000 pounds, effectively abolishing the settlement. |