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The Parihaka Woman by Witi Ihimaera: book review



The Parihaka Woman (2011) is set in New Zealand among the Taranaki Maori in the 1870s and 1880s.

 

The narrator is in his seventies recounting the history of approximately a thousand English migrants arriving in six ships and settling on his ancestral land between 1841 and 1843. Trouble started when the British wanted more land. His descendant Erenora, the Parihaka woman, wrote an unpublished manuscript about the battle that occurred when she was four years old – the Pakeha war – the conflict between the Taranaki Maori and the Pakeha (white New Zealanders) and the confiscation of Maori land.

 

At the time, there were more British troops in New Zealand than in any other country in the world: ‘that’s how great the odds were against the Maori.’

 

This is Erenora’s story. 

 

At thirteen, Horitana, the boy who became Erenora’s husband, joined the fight. It made him a man – and ‘a hardened killer.’ But the British troops were too strong: ‘By musket, sword and cannon, Major-General Chute cut a murderous swathe from Whanganui to the Taranaki Bight.’ There were no birds singing, ‘Nature itself was showing its disquiet.’

 

Erenora, the intelligent Parihaka woman, didn’t look as beautiful as her sisters Ripeka and Meri, but she married before them – to Horitana, the bravest and most handsome of all the men. But he had enemies. At some point Erenora knew that they would come for Horitana. With him in exile, Erenora had to use her intelligence, strength, and courage to protect him and all she loved. 

 

Erenora’s tale of the events – her personal history – does not match the British history books. ‘This is the problem with history,’ says the narrator. ‘You think it’s one narrative but most often it’s three or four or more, all like a twisted rope, tangled and knotted.’ 

 

The Parihaka Woman is a beautifully written history in story form that tells of the impact of conflict, invasion, and confiscation on a community and a nation. It goes beyond the formal and traditional roles of women, men and societies in the protection of land and love. It writes of ‘gender switching’ roles as women fight alongside their men, and assume great dual strength and power. 







Mount Taranaki by anonymousswisscollector.com




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MARTINA NICOLLS  is an international human rights-based consultant in education, healing and wellbeing, peace and stabilization, foreign aid audits and evaluations, and the author  of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce  (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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