Waikato Waiata, Waikato Tangata: Songs of the Rangiriri Prisoners

Date: 7 October 2016 Time: 12.10 pm

After the Battle of Rangiriri in 1863 some 180 Maori were taken prisoner, transported to Auckland and incarcerated on the prison hulk Marion. Separated from their families, kept in suspense as to what was to be done with them, and faced with both the loss of their lands and resources and grossly inhumane living conditions aboard the Marion, these Prisoners of War, in a remarkable feat of perseverance, wrote down some 142 pages of waiata (songs), whakatauki (proverbial sayings), karakia (ritual incantations) and korero (narrative passages). This seminar explores these texts as a means of articulating contemporary Maori perspectives on the realities and effects of the bloody nineteenth-century New Zealand Wars, perspectives which are largely absent from the mainstream historiography.

Arini Loader is a lecturer in History and Mike Ross is a lecturer in Te Kawa a Maui/School of Maori Studies at Victoria University.

For more information contact Professor Charlotte Macdonald (charlotte.macdonald@vuw.ac.nz; 04 463 6761), History Programme Seminar Convenor.