SYMBOLISM OF THE FLAG

Te Ao Hou, December 1961, Page 11

SYMBOLISM OF THE FLAG The name of that flag, under which they marched, is I am told, Ngati Porou. I am indebted to Pine Taiapa for an earlier name, ‘Pari Arau’ which might very broadly be translated ‘Shadow of the plume’ the inference being that the rebels expressed their allegiance by walking under the shadow

Mr Arnold Reedy explains the history of the flagstaff. Eastland Photographers of the flag which was the ‘Plume of Queen Victoria’. Some stress was made, in the speeches at Kiekie, on the symbolism of the flag in its uniting of the Maori and pakeha people. I think that its greater symbolism is in its standing as a token of the need for a closer uniting of the various sections of the Maori people themselves into one united race. Both aspects of this symbolism are as important and as urgent today as they were in that historic past when Rapata Wahawaha first erected his ‘Rakau i Mataahu’ A few books in which further information on these events may be found are the following: James Cowan, The New Zealand Wars and the Pioneering Period, 2 volumes, Government Printer, 1955. Thomas W. Gudgeon, Reminiscences of the War in New Zealand, 1879. G. W. Rusden, History of New Zealand, Vol. II, 2nd edition, 1895. Major-General Sir George S. Whitmore, The Last Maori War in New Zealand, 1902. Lieut.-Col. Porter, The History of the Early Days of Poverty Bay, Major Ropata Wahawaha, The Story of his Life and Times, Gisborne, 1897.