Historiography in Te Puna

It’s popular right now for historians to emphasise the “story” aspect of history.  Neat, straightforward, direct.  Everyone has a story.  Historians who are serious about their profession know, however, that every story has a story.  This is one.

Title page of Keepers of the Faith

A somewhat battered copy of the book compiled to commemorate the centennial of St Joseph’s Church, Hatu Hohepa, in Te Puna, titled  Keepers of the Faith, has come to the Te Puna Archive. [1]  Its provenance is reasonably clear: it was initially acquired by the Te Puna Community Library, had apparently sustained water damage, in which state was withdrawn from the library’s holdings and came into the possession of the Gravits (Peter Gravit was for a time a member of the Community Library Committee).

Peter and Jen Rolleston authored the book.  Peter died in 2007, [2] but Jen is still very much with us, and was very willing to talk about the way this very local history was brought together.  As a direct consequence of the work she, Ellen Nicholas and Peter did to research the Pirirākau Claim: WAI 227, Peter Farrelly of the Parish Council approached them on behalf of the Church Centennial Committee for a publication to support the celebrations attendant on the little wooden church’s one hundredth anniversary.  The first service there was held on 1 January 1900.

Compared to the work required to support WAI 227, this job seemed, and was, Jen says, relatively straightforward.  It took between six and nine months to write; photographs were readily available, and the community it described were all people known to each other, or whose memory was still well alive among them.  Most people came forward with their recollections of the church and its place in the Te Puna landscape.

Jen Rolleston

Compared to the gaps and contradictions that had to be resolved for the raupatu claim, Jen told me, getting material for the St Joseph’s book was far easier.  “People had papers, photos and bits and pieces about the church in all sorts of places – for instance, [co-builder with Werahiko Borell] Hone Bidois’s papers were put together in a box held in the Tuhakaraina homestead.”  Hone was the grand-uncle of Martin Tuhakaraina, Chairman of the Centennial Committee. 

Despite these advantages, writing a local history is not always easy.  Jen called it “interesting” when I asked her if it was fun to do.  Peter, who, she said, “Put his heart and soul into the WAI 227 claim”, was a serious historian whose work entailed deep analysis and careful assessment of the evidence.  “It’s hard for us to really understand how things were then,” Jen muses.  “We think we know but we don’t really.”  Nevertheless, the experience gained by the team from the raupatu claim – Peter doing the narrative, Jen and Ellen ferreting out the information needed to fill the gaps – has clearly shaped Keeping the Faith.  It’s a book that, quite deliberately, has almost no conflict.  But it does have a clear historical arc, situating the story of St Joseph’s into a wider context, and balancing the secular forces of history with a moving account of a miracle, set out in an (ahistorical) Appendix.

A careful reader of this local history can, however, detect the threads of tension through the stories.  This is one of the great skills of good local historians: to let past voices speak so that people can, later, make their own minds up.  This short book, citing primary sources, oral accounts and memoirs, is foundational for deeper, more scholarly explorations of the way spirituality and institutional religion contend with and complement each other. [3]  It also offers very practical insights into the life and work of missionary fathers: the St Joseph’s complement were mostly from Holland, speaking te reo with a noticeable Duch accent, authoritative, hands-on and pragmatic.  The Convent school, which ran from 1958 until 1980, was staffed by the Sisters of St Joseph of Cluny in Ireland, [4] another missionary order. Furthermore, the function of evangelism itself is illustrated: once the Church determined that there were no new converts to be gained, the priests were withdrawn and the school was closed. The Little Sisters of Carmel, under the chaplaincy of the combative Father Jordan, lived in it as a retreat for the next decade, until “the effects of a Priest shortage had a direct and dramatic impact upon the Parish”.[5] The response to this crisis came directly from the devout within the Te Puna Catholic community. The book includes an account from the Guardian of the Sacred Sacrament, Rosina Borell.

I am happy to confirm that – quite aside from the rough dealings that resulted in the return of St Joseph’s bell to that church [6] - another conflict reported in Keeping the Faith [7] has also been resolved.  Father Jordan’s cottage, controversially located, in 1982, “squarely in front of the Church, almost completely obscuring [it] from the road frontage”, was at some stage moved to another position, behind the church, and in the background of this photo.

St Joseph’s site, looking southeast

Although Jen cannot remember when, exactly, her book was thus rendered out-of-date, we agree that the cottage’s removal was probably tactfully managed by the Centennial Committee to make way for the welcoming waharoa that bears the plaque and blessings made in the new millennium, January 2000.

References

---

[1] Kindly deposited as part of the Gravit Collection, 7 March 2024.

[2] See Elisha Rolleston’s essay for Te Mahi Rangahau, https://temahirangahau.wordpress.com/2022/05/01/peter-rolleston/ also published on the Tauranga Historical Society blog, 7 June 2022, https://taurangahistorical.blogspot.com/2022/06/peter-rolleston-1949-2007.html

[3] See, for instance, Cameron, G B: That you might stand here on the roof of the clouds.” The development of Pirirakau theology from encounter to the end of conflict, 1839-1881, Master of Theology thesis, University of Otago, 2015

[4] http://sjc.ie/

[5] Rolleston, P and J: Keeping the Faith, p.55, quoting Rosina Borell

[6] Ibid, p.36

[7] Ibid, pp.48-49

The Newsletter: A Moment in Historical Research

Extract from Tauranga Historical Society Journal, Aug 1971

For someone seeking a sense of the local energies at work in any given social moment between, say, 1950 and about 2010, the search term, “newsletter” will prove to be unexpectedly powerful.  It is plain, from even a simple exploration of the records held on Pae Koroki, that the (usually) month-to-month business of putting together a set of pages designed to encourage, entertain and inform a (usually) captive audience can be a rich and apt illustration of historical force and even importance.  Provided, of course, your research field is timed to be after the cyclostyle machine and before Facebook.

Two hundred and thirty results – 129 of them digitized - from Pae Koroki show the power of the newsletter as an instrument of history.  Where better to start than with an example from our own Journal of the Tauranga Historical Society, August 1972:

Observant readers will note the search-term in the white field on the upper left; and the power of the search engine to drill deep into the digitised document to find the exact match at the centre of the image, mauve. 

Newsletter policy can be important.  In the Tauranga Historical Society, for instance, the Journal was the place for long-form, considered and often rather scholarly writing.  The Journals were intended to be kept and were archived by the Society as well as being made available to the public library (and, eventually, digitized on Pae Koroki).  Newsletters, on the other hand, were intended to fill the gap between Journal publications with updates and administrative details about near-future activities.  Their shelf-life was brief and few early examples survive.  In practice, however, there was a lot of overlap, as can be seen from the extract above.

Compare this approach with that of the Hauraki News[1]:

Cover of Hauraki News, No 11, May 1998

.. a cheerful (and enduring) mix of serious military history, ceremonial commemorations, personal reminiscence and soldierly cartoons, firmly in the tradition of WW1 trench newspapers[2].

Title Page of Trench Echo, Easter 1916

No doubt these both were considered to be ephemera, things of the moment, intentionally disposable.

But not always.

A sad event in Te Puna – the disestablishment of its Community Library – led to the acquisition, for the Te Puna Archive, of a near-complete series of the Pirirakau “X”Press.  Some 29 issues of the 36 numbers that came out over the period February 2002- 2004 were accumulated in a humble cardboard standing file, labelled, but with no accession number or other catalogue information.

 

Pirirakau "X"Press standing file

It turns out that a full series of the Pirirakau “X”Press  is held at the Tauranga Public Library, although it has not yet been digitised or accessioned on Pae Koroki.

The holding at the Te Puna Archive represents the second iteration of the “X” Press, which had an earlier life between 1994 and 1998, at the inception of Mark Nicholas, who took over the Chair of the Pirirakau Incorporated Society with the aim to keep people informed in the face of diminishing attendance at meetings.  He also wanted to collect Pirirakau history, and to funnel this into what became the WAI277 claim.  The “X”Press was a means of gathering and spreading information on the process of the claim before the Waitangi Tribunal.  Funding was provided by the Crown Forestry Rental Trust.

Your writer knows all this from a recent interview with the editor of the “X”Press, Chrissie Rolleston[3].  When CFRT funding ran out, at Issue No. 37 in 1998, people found that they missed this link with their past and their future.  With the residue of CFRT funding and a pretty prompt injection from the Lottery Grants Board, publication resumed in 2002.  The second series of the newsletter is another lively mix of history notes, often contributed by Patrick Nicholas, news items and practical panui, legal articles that came through from the team working on the WAI277 claim, personal reminiscences and adventures, an op-ed column from a hard-headed woman pseudonym’d Panemaaro, quizzes to stimulate the critical reader (and the purchase of the next issue, which had the answers) and a great deal of reo.  At the front: usually a mihi from an eminent Pirirakau personage and always Nga Mate o te Marama – those who had passed away.

Chrissie Rolleston
Photograph by Beth Bowden

Chrissie put the publication together on a computer at the Pirirakau Environment Centre, and printed it using variably reliable photocopiers, often having to clear jammed paper in the middle of the night.  Print run:  about 200.  “The problem was,” says Chrissie, “that people loved the “X”Press and sent it on and around their whanau.  They didn’t get that they should take out a subscription to help it go on.”

So, the Pirirakau “X”Press ran out of steam.  Valiant but sad messages in the last three issues show that efforts were made to maintain its flagging inputs and rising costs.  The writing, however, was on the Facebook wall:  social media would soon overtake the solid look and feel of a folded A4, black and white, mail-delivered magazine.   So many things together amount to an historical force, one that is generally recognised but rarely locally documented.  The story of the Pirirakau “X”Press is a real example of the impact and consequences of relinquishing expensive print to ‘free’ web-based publication[4].  Easy to access; very very hard to archive.

Parish records, rent rolls, proceedings under the Black Act[5] and the Inquisition[6] have all provided rich source material to European historians.  A search for original voices among source materials available to local NZ historians need not be confined to diaries and personal letters.  Those editors who troubled to collate and publish (and send to their local library) the notes and heartfelt contributions from the communities they were working within have also created a resource in which the authentic reactions of locals, beset by larger historical forces, can be identified.

References

[1] An example: part of the May 1998 cover of the Official Newsletter of the 6^th Battalion (Hauraki) Regimental Association (1995-2012)

[2] Image credit: https://www.europeana.eu/nl/

[3] Kōrero on 5 December 2022, Oikimoke, Te Puna

[4] Corey Doctorow, Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free, McSweeney’s 2015

[5] E P Thompson, Whigs and Hunters, Peregrine 1977

[6] Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Montaillou, Penguin 1978 (trans. Barbara Bray)

Colin Maungapōhatu Bidois and Te Hokingamai o Mauao

Colin Maungapōhatu Bidois and Te Hokingamai o Mauao [1]

The Orange Folder

The yearning felt by the Nameless One for his beautiful maunga, Puwhenua, was matched in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by the iwi of Tauranga Moana as they saw Mauao taken out of their kaitiakitanga “through Crown breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi, through Crown manipulation and laws which were aimed at dismantling the social and political infrastructure of Maoridom, laws such as the New Zealand Settlement Act 1863, The Native Land Act 1873, The Waste Lands Act 1876, The Public Reserves Act 1854, The Harbour Act 1878 and other statutes.” [2]

C.M. Bidois' Grave

The words quoted are those of Colin Maungapōhatu Bidois, a kaumatua of Ngāti Ranginui whose archive of papers relating to his work for the iwi of Tauranga Moana has passed into the keeping of the Te Puna Memorial Hall Society. This blog is a very preliminary acknowledgement of his generous gift and a humble, necessarily brief, exploration of just one aspect of this remarkable man’s life – his part in the return of Mauao to the tāngata whenua. I am indebted to Wikitoria Bidois for permission to access these particular papers.

Maungapōhatu would be the first to say that he was one of many. His submission, quoted above, opens with a gracious acknowledgement of another eminent kaumatua, Kiritoha Tangitu, who had, Colin said, promoted the possibility of the return “approximately 10 years ago.”

That takes us back to another document in his papers: the well-marked and flagged pages of Roimata Minhinnick’s Report on Mauao/Mount Maunganui, WAI 540, received at the Waitangi Tribunal on 13 June 1999. [3] Colin’s interest in this document was intense. From his highlighted sections and Post-it notes the researcher can see his mind at work and the threads of argument being woven into a firm fabric to enfold him as he took his seat before the Maori Affairs Committee. Like Kiritoha, he was a Pirirakau man. He was determined to assert their agency in the confusion and collusion that followed the so-called “Pacification Hui” that followed the battle of Te Ranga. He stood the Pirirakau claim up against the convenient Crown fiction that Governor Grey’s Promise to Tauranga Iwi [4] (actually, a deal struck only with Ngai Te Rangi) had settled (pun intended) all arrangements [5] between the Crown and tāngata whenua.

But Colin was also wise enough not to pursue only narrow interests. Elsewhere in his collection I found a faded orange folder with a mysterious label in his handwriting. In order, I list the first four documents it contains.
 
First, a draft Deed of Trust of the Mauao Trust, undated but for the year (2007 [6]) and unsigned, but intended for signature by eminent representatives of Ngai Te Rangi, Ngāti Ranginui and Ngāti Pukenga as well as Colin himself as Chairman of Te Rūnanganui o Tauranga Moana. Colin has marked several elements of the draft in an evident effort to guide discussion to his salient points – phrases like, “stand possessed”, “receive and hold” “protect and preserve.” A question mark appears alongside clause 3.3, “Objects and Purposes Independent.” He endorses processes around appointment and removal of Trustees with the simple word, “Iwi.” Administrative details concerning bank accounts and use of the Common Seal are marked with arrows. Tax, remuneration and liability references are circled.

C.M. Bidois' Grave

Colin had prepared carefully for what the next document suggests was a hui to take place on 16 July. It is a handwritten list of significant dates, absences and appointments, and three heavily-scored items for lawyer Spencer Webster’s attention. Touchingly, the last entry on the page is a note to self: “Thank Rahera [probably, Rahera Ohia] for letter.”

The third item is another handwritten list, undated, but headed, “Set Adgenda [sic].” Once again we get a glimpse into the mind of a master of situations: an orderly sequence of topics for korero, attention to cost implications, a note lining Rahera and Spencer up for a rewording of a specific clause, and a firm conclusion: “then Response to MoMA [Minister of Maori Affairs].”

Most telling, perhaps, is the fourth item: a newspaper clipping dated 29/05/07 in Colin’s handwriting. The Herald had invited the chairman of the Ngāti Whātua o Orakei Trust Board to write an article it headlined, “Ngāti Whātua to move forward minus theatrics.” Colin has underlined the first sentence of the second paragraph: “Any Treaty settlement is going to involve claims and counter-claims ...” and has marked at the margins other remarks warning of the arduous and adversarial path – the hard yards – that lie ahead of the “real negotiators.”

And this, in reality, was just the beginning. There are 30 more documents in the orange folder, evidence of face-downs, stand-offs and compromise as Mauao stood tantalisingly in the shadows. But the last item, a folder in its own right, contains the introduction copy and associated speech notes and press statement for the Mauao Historic Reserve Vesting Bill. The patupaiarehe had vanished into the night and the light of legislative scrutiny shone on the return of the maunga. The Act was passed in May 2008. Even so, ten more years went by before the Mauao Historic Reserve Management Plan [7] was concluded.  Three other sets of documents, largely unexamined, detail Colin’s part in this protracted negotiation.

Researchers of the future will find much to value in this archive. Those of us who knew Maungapōhatu can feel privileged to get glimpses of his personal approach to public life. Those who will now never meet him will find a mother lode of insights and narrative on aspects of iwi development and tenacious purpose in te rohe o Tauranga Moana. Just as he wanted.

References

[1] As Chair of the Rūnanganui, Colin preferred the term “The Vesting of Title to Mauao Historic Reserve.”  See letter, 2 August 2007, to Huata Palmer, then Chairperson of the Ngaiterangi Iwi Incorporated Society.

[2] Colin Maungapohatu Bidois, Submission to the Maori Affairs Committee re Mauao Historic Reserve Vesting Bill, 27 February 2008.

[3] Roimata Minhinnick, Report Commissioned by the Waitangi Tribunal for the Tauranga claim (Wai 215), endorsed WAI 540 – A2 and WAI 215 – A49.

[4] AJHR 1867, A20.

[5] In the words of the Tauranga District Lands Act 1867: “all grants, awards, contracts or agreements”.

[6] Colin had begun the process in 2003: see email, Ngāti Ranginui Iwi to Spencer Webster, November 3 2003.

[7] https://www.tauranga.govt.nz/Portals/0/data/council/plans/files/mauao_reserve_management.pdf