A Parable

A Parable

 Around the year 1300 CE, a Polynesian voyaging canoe arrived at the 790 sq.km Chatham Islands, (800  km to the east of New Zealand). They travelled via New Zealand, picking up a large lump of obsidian with which to make tools and weapons on the way.

These colonists, calling themselves Morori, were not a large group, but they soon multiplied and occupied the main islands in 6 distinct groups.

Their oral history records that as population pressure increased and easy food sources were depleted, fighting erupted.  A leader by the name of Nunuku then called a meeting and convinced them to live in peace.  From then, they foreswore cannibalism and settled disputes by ritual combat using thin sticks in favour of whoever first drew blood.  They also instituted various food gathering rules and some population control measures for sustainability.

When the first Europeans arrived in the Chathams in 1795 (Captain Broughton, commanding the Brig Chatham) their population was around 2,500.

In 1835 two New Zealand M?ori Iwi (tribes), Ngati Mutunga and Ngati Tama, (who'd had the worst of intertribal conflict), coerced the Brig Lord Rodney to transport 900 of them in two journeys to the Chatham's, having heard that the living was easy there and the locals weren't fighters.

Moriori gathered for a meeting to decide their response and chose to hold to Nunuku's law even though some of the younger males wanted to resist.  Ngati Mutunga and Ngata Tama later fell out and fought a pitched battle, but by then they had variously, enslaved, raped, killed and sometimes eaten the Moriori.  By the 1860's there were only 60 or so Moriori left on the Chatham's with a few more in New Zealand.  Tommy Solomon, the last full blood Moriori died in 1936.

Because in New Zealand Law, possession in 1840 establishes ownership, Ngati Mutanga and Ngati Tamar gained title to substantial land on the Chatham's even though by far the majority had returned to New Zealand by the 1870's, having plundered everything plunderable.  Bizarrely, they have recently been awarded substantial compensation by the New Zealand government for wrongs they claim to have suffered there.

Moriori, for all their honourable principles and commitment to sustainability have left faint echoes- though their few remaining descendants have recently also received compensation from the NZ taxpayer.

A strong argument against pacifism and of the pitfalls in relitigating the past.

                                                       Peter Lynn, 2022