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The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.
-Milan Kundera
Te Rauparaha (Ngati Toa Rangatira) was a prominent nineteenth-century Maori leader, warrior, military strategist, and provider for his people, whose life and deeds have fueled the national imagination of Aotearoa New Zealand for the greater part of the last 170 years. Correspondingly, Te Rauparaha is well remembered in literature: in waiata, poetry, prose, and haka. He is mentioned, for example, in Ahumai's tangi for her Ngati Tüwharetoa relative Te Momo,1 and he is also remembered for his own compositions, including his lament for his tribal homelands at Kawhia, "Tëra ia nga tai o Honipaka," and the ngeri, "Te Hökioi," to warn Taranaki iwi of impending danger in the form of Waikato under Pötatau Te Wherowhero (Royal). Te Rauparaha has furthermore been immortalized by non-Maori in, for example, Thomas Bracken's late colonial period poem, "The March of Te Rauparaha" (1890), while closer to the present day, the unsettling specter of Te Rauparaha both haunts and inspires the Cook Island Maori and European poet Alistair Te Ariki Campbell in his 1963 sequence of poems, Sanctuary of Spirits. Even more recently, Te Rauparaha has featured in novels; in for instance, Tom O'Connor's Tides of Kawhia and Hamish Clayton's Wulf, based on the infamous brig Elizabeth incident in which the English captain and crew participated in the utu (payment, reciprocation) that Te Rauparaha exacted upon the Ngai Tahu chief Tamaiharanui. The most famous composition with which Te Rauparaha is associated is the haka still performed today by the national rugby team, the "All Blacks," other sporting teams, community groups, and individuals, "Kikiki Kakaka," better known by its last section beginning "Ka Mate Ka Mate."2 This is probably the most well-known haka in the world today.
Additionally, Te Rauparaha leaves a firm textual imprint in Aotearoa New Zealand's sociopolitical history; a mass of material published in newspapers, shared via correspondence, and included in official communications, was generated by and around him. Much of this material, at least that which was written in the English language, is negative. As I have discussed elsewhere, in Taua: 'Musket Wars, ' 'Land Wars' or Tikanga? Angela Ballara notes that one of the key reasons for the overwhelming condemnation Te...