Whakapohane – the end of the tale

Tu Tangata, Issue 21, 1 December 1984, Page 22

Whakapohane - the end of the tale

Whakapohane, the story behind the ‘so called’ indecent exposure to Prince Charles and Princess Diana whilst on their New Zealand tour in 1983, has been told. And it’s only fitting that the person at the centre of the exposure, Te Ringa Mangu Dun Mihaka should tell it.

The book is titled Whakapohane, which is the maori term for showing disrespect to a person. Whakapohane was used by Maori to deliberately insult or show contempt to another and usually meant exposing the buttocks. Both men and women performed the act.

That Te Ringa Mangu was arrested on April 20, 1983 near Wellington Airport and charged with disorderly behaviour is now history. That the event would attract world-wide attention was surprising. However most media saw it as no more than a ‘down trou’ to royalty. The subsequent court appearance of Dun and his wife Diane Prince on July 28 and 29 and August 1, 1983 charged under the summary (police) offences act saw Dun explain his actions.

As he says now, he never denied the act was intended to show disrespect but he says it was a culturally sanctioned act. However in the book he points out the case had no precedent and so hinged around the meaning of the word offensive. Suffice to say Dun is most persuasive about his argument in ‘Whakapohane’ which is based on the court record and lively anecdotes. Dun and his wife were found guilty but appealed against the fine. That appeal was heard on May 4, 1984 with Diane accepting the fine. However Dim has appealed yet again. As he says, “My first case was like being heard in Wellington Railway Station in rush hour traffic. I want St Paul’s Cathedral.”

Predictably ‘Whakapohane’ has had publishing trials and Dun is publishing the book himself, not he says because there’s doubt about it selling, but because of contractural difficulties with another publisher. Dun’s confident his book will be out around Christmas time and he intends slogging the country selling the first limited edition. A review of ‘Whakapohane’ will appear in a later Tu Tangata.

We publish part of the introduction by Tim Shadbolt, perhaps Dun’s pakeha counterpart, who sets the scene for the background to ‘Whakapohane’. “Calling Te Ringa Mangu Mihaka Calling Te Ringa Mangu Mihaka Ha! There’s a name that shakes the consciousness. And now steps forward a Maori. But he doesn’t shuffle into the dock with head bowed, plead guilty, and growl

quietly that he has nothing to say. What’s this? A voice raised in defiance He won’t step into the Dock and condemn himself. What! On an Island where 80 million sheep wait patiently to be railroaded daily to the slaughter houses. A land where bulls are castrated, dogs are debarked and all species are subject to mutilation in the name of progress.

A land where even the mildest tones of defiance are defined as an attack upon the state where criticism is considered the hallmark of a traitor. And here stands a man who dares to refuse to recognise the charges.

In this country, I have met many brave people who have faced up to tough situations. But in the Courtroom there are few who remain resolute. The whole architecture of a Courtroom is designed to intimidate the victim. The language and procedure are formal and overbearing. The Dock is designed like a three-sided mini-cell. The atmosphere is oppressive and condemnation is almost certain.

I have been in Court nearly 40 times and am reasonably well educated and articulate but I still feel totally inhibited and sickenly ill at ease when entering a Courtroom. It takes a strong spirit indeed to resist the assault on the senses that takes place when you enter the dock.

So, how did the spirit of Te Ringa Mangu Mihaka manage to survive and grow in Aotearoa? He took me to his old family home once. We were on our way north to a hui. First, we visited a small graveyard. There were many Mihakas. The graves were well cared for but the nearby marae was but a haunted shadow of its former glory. Then we drove along a narrow winding road. There by the road stood a small bach, surrounded by a tragic sense of silence. We felt uneasy wanting to whisper as we crossed the doorless threshold.

As we gazed around the single tiny room of kauri boards covered with 1920’s newspapers, we wondered how a man and wife with nine kids could possibly live in one room. “Dad was a farmer cows. The milking shed was over the road.” He spoke abstractly as though he was a tourist guide visiting a lot village, but we felt that the past was ringing with historical drama. “On several occasions, you know that old bugger used to chase us on horseback, and beat the living daylights out of us with whatever he laid his hands on. “What a bastard”, I intervened. “No he wasn’t”, said Dun defensively. “His theory was probably that it was a bastard of a world we were going into and if we were going to survive, it was his job to make sure the Mihaka kids were some of the toughest bastards around”. I watched Dun carefully for a flicker of emotion, but there was none. My Aunty had been the Matron at Rawene Hospital for 18 years. She often told me that the rural poverty of the northern Maoris was far worse than the Spanish peasants in the midst of a civil war.

Dun went labouring and joined the Army at a young age. A proud young warrior who faced the judicial system rather late in life. He violently resisted the spiritual suppression of a prison institution and faced brutal retaliation as a result. Though heavily scarred, he remained uncrushed. Although the clubs of the prison guards hurt him, it was the humiliation of repeated Court appearances, the pleading servitude of a duty solicitor and his own silent numbness that hurt him more. The Church made Gallileo carry instruments of torture down the main street and then retract his statements about the earth travelling around the sun. Dun soon realised that humiliation and the infliction of a sense of guilt were even greater tools of repression than physical force. During his long periods of solitary confinement, he was allowed a Bible. He began to read it. For a short while he even became a Christian. Then he asked for a dictionary because he couldn’t understand some of the words in the Bible.

They gave Mihaka a dictionary! That was one of the first great mistakes the judiciary made. Dun soon realised that the dictionary was a more powerful weapon than his fists. Page by page he spent his time in solitary learning from that dictionary. I’ve seen this prison dictionary new words underlined several times in colour. Exiled from society, he began a forced march into self-education. It was a long and painful journey. Soon he was able to read legal journals. Karl Marx and Stalin made a deep impression as he wrestled with dialectic materialism and tried to analyse the power structure of our legal system. He began to realise the enormous powers of the monarchy and the role it played as the ultimate justification of our system. There aren’t many Maoris in New Zealand who can stand up in Court and quote at length from the Law Practioners Act 1955, the Acts Interpretation Act 1924, The Crimes Act 1979, The All England Law Reports 1970, Origins of the Common Law 1966, and John Chipman-Gray’s Nature and Sources of the Law.”