Mike Butler: Nursing the Parihaka grudge

The Catholic Church this year used a song by Tim Finn and Herbs to teach forgiveness and reconciliation in its schools to mark November 5 as Parihaka day. But church leaders do not see that Parihaka is rooted in staunch opposition to white settlement.

November 5, 1881, was the day that government troops evicted 1600 people from a village built on confiscated land between Mount Taranaki and the Tasman Sea.