‘This one was personal’: Mihi Forbes on the new Tainui wars documentary
The latest documentary in the New Zealand Wars series hit different for presenter Mihingarangi Forbes. She explains why to Leonie Hayden.
Content warning: contains descriptions of the murder of women and children, and sexual assault.
The military campaign by the British Crown to suppress Māori sovereignty and acquire Māori land for the new settler colony played out in different parts of New Zealand, over a number of battles and massacres between 1845 and 1872.
In Waikato, that campaign began in 1863. Governor George Grey built his supply line – what we know today as Great South Road – to transport more than 18,000 troops from Auckland all the way down to the Mangataawhiri River, the northernmost border of more than a million acres of sacred Tainui lands. King Taawhiao, the second Māori king, had warned that crossing Mangataawhiri would be considered a declaration of war.