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RYAN ANDERSON/STUFF
Hinerangi Himiona and Hone Mihaka tell the story of their tupuna who was the first person executed by the Crown in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Nearly 180 years ago, at a central Auckland intersection, a teenager was hanged before hundreds of settlers, changing the course of history. The execution still haunts the boy’s whanaunga, a legacy to the disproportionate treatment of Māori in the justice system today. Early one morning, a Māori teenager named Maketū woke to the sound of carpenters building the instrument of his death. For months, he had lived in a wretched, rat-infested jail cell on Queen St in central Auckland as he waited to stand trial. It was early in 1842, and the new colony’s justice system was literally being built; the finishing touches were being made to the new Supreme Court building next-door while Maketū awaited judgment.