Description
The decade of warfare that divided the land in nineteenth-century New Zealand is conventionally seen as the end of the Maori struggle. But at Parihaka, at the foot of sacred Taranaki Mountain, resistance took a remarkable new turn. With the white feather as their emblem, two chiefs, Te Whiti and Tohu, began preaching the then unknown doctrine of passive resistance. Maori ploughmen wrote its message across the settlers' acres, and Maori fencers underlined the point with barriers across the Queen's highway.Parihaka was a village of peace and plenty, some said, where 'the finest race of men in the Pacific' could be found. Others saw it as a den of criminals in which had gathered 'the turbulent, indolent scum of New Zealand. When 2000 soldiers marched to destroy the village, expel its inhabitants and exile its leaders, it was only the first, not the last, round of contention that has continued to the present day.Drawing extensively on official papers and settler manuscripts, the book is illuminated by oral history passed to the author by Parihaka elders. Now in its fifth reprint, Ask That Mountain has become a classic study of resistance to colonial greed and duplicity.Dick Scott, a third generation New Zealander, was born in Palmerston North in 1923. After graduating from Massey College he share-milked in a Maori farming community at Kai Iwi before making a career as a journalist and historian. His first study of resistance in Taranaki, The Parihaka Story, published in 1954 and now a collector's item, was the first New Zealand book to be translated into Russian. In recognition of his contribution to Maori history the author in 1972 was presented with the key to the Parihaka meeting house Te Niho-o-te-Atiawa.ISBN:9780790001906
