Roger Childs: Dispelling appalling lies

Setting the Record Straight on Rangiaowhia 1864

On 21 February 1864, 1000 British troops marched into the tiny, defenceless village of Rangiaowhia and wantonly slaughtered a hundred women and children. Or did they?
- Piers Seed

There is no way that General Cameron, the chivalrous Commander of the Colonial troops in the Waikato War, would contemplate the killing of women and children. He had criticized Kingite general, Wiremu Tamihana, for having women in the front lines at the earlier Battle of Rangariri.

Cameron did want to occupy Rangiaowhia, because it was the major source of food for the Kingite forces, notably at the powerful set of forts at Paterangi. To get to the village he had cleverly by-passed these fortifications in the dead of night to avoid casualties.

Bruce Moon: Rangiaowhia – Setting the Record Straight

“How gruesome is regime propaganda when directed at infants”
- Christopher Hitchens, “Arguably”, 2011, p.659

It was reported in Stuff for 3^rd April 2021 that Leah Bell spoke at a Fairfield College Assembly a few days earlier to commemorate the battle at Orakau Pa 157 years ago.  Well, well, anything wrong in that?  Yes actually there is  - quite a lot!

Leah Bell, it may be recalled, first had her mind poisoned by a teacher – or the teacher’s spouse – when a student at Otorohanga College. She mounted a petition based on a false version of New Zealand’s history and presented it to Nanaia Mahuta at Parliament.  So she has something of a record as a political activist. It is reported that she is a “Research Consultant” for Vincent O’Malley, author of dubious accounts of New Zealand history, notably about the events at Rangiaowhia during some Waikato tribes’  Kingite Rebellion, wrongly termed a “New Zealand War”.[1],[2]

As reported, the account stated that “Leah Bell won't forget the tears rolling down the elders’ cheeks as they stood at the green fields of Rangiaowhia. ‘We felt the immense grief and mamae there ... at the lack of justice given, the lack of apology for an atrocity where innocent women, children and elderly people were murdered’.”

“[O]n February 21, 1864, British forces unexpectedly attacked the flourishing agricultural centre of Rangiaowhia – burning homes and churches, killing women, children and elderly people.”

What is utterly appalling about this account is that there was never, simply never, any atrocity committed at Rangiaowhia by British forces.

Bruce Moon: An Open Letter to Arena Williams, MP for Manurewa

Dear Arena Williams,

In your “Conversations” column for 18 February 2021, you state that “in an age of misinformation online and social media noise” .. “learning our history ... teaches us to think critically”.  Yet you repeat one of the grossest lies which have ever been perpetrated about the history of New Zealand.  Yes, you repeat one of the most frequently chanted lies with which our history is sullied: that “Colonel Nixon was famous for razing unfortified Rangiaowhia while men, women and children burnt in their church.”  Not a word of this is true.

Murray Reid: Rangiaowhia Affair

Two years ago, I learnt that my grandsons are direct descendants of Thomas Power and Rahapa te Hauata. Until then I was ignorant of the history of the settlement at Rangiaowhia. To improve my knowledge, I visited the site and the Te Awamutu Museum. The museum has an impressive display of the locality and holds the Taonga of Mrs. Power, gifted to the museum by the West family. I then did follow up research on the genealogy of the couple and read up on what I could find.

A few weeks later at a historical group meeting I mentioned my family’s connection to Rangiaowhia to be told by a Kaumatua of a NE Waikato Iwi that “that was where the British locked over 100 Maori men, women and children in the church and burnt them to death.”

Bruce Moon: Rangiaowhia incident

As long ago as 1815, J L Nicholas observed that "amongst the moral vices to which many of the New Zealanders are prone, may be reckoned the odious practice of lying, in which they too frequently indulge ... [it is]seldom of a harmless nature ... to serve their own interested purposes".[i]

There is much evidence to show that today, two hundred years later, the same practice continues.  The Tainui tribes are one such source, a 2014 example under the heading "The Latest Tainui news from Eraka's Blog" being the following.