Redemption SongsRedemption Songs

Te Kooti Arikirangi Te Turuki was one of the best-known Maori leaders of the 19th century. Today he is remembered mostly as a guerilla fighter: a feared opponentof colonial forces with a price upon his head. The stereotype does him little justice. Throughout his adult life, in both war and peace, he sought to redeem his people and the land. He founded the Ringatu church, which continues to this day. The causes of Te Kooti's struggles are larger than personal injustice: he fought a war against land confiscation and illegal land purchases. Though frequently described as a murderer, he limited his attacks - even the most notorious, at Matawhero, Poverty Bay in 1868 - to specific targets for precise reasons. In the difficult time for Maori after the wars of the 1860s and early 1870s, Te Kooti was committed to the cause of peace and to working through the law. He engendered a renewal of Maori pride, which can be seen in the great painted meeting houses the construction of which he often directed. He worked to ensure that the leaders of the Maori communities listened to the voices of their own people - not simply responding to their own interests or those of the colonisers. He was an extraordinary figure, a man of enormous vitality and large paradoxes. Judith Binney has drawn on numerous sources in writing this book. Traces of Te Kooti's many journeys remain throughut the North Island and he left records of his remarkable life not only in government files but in personal letters and diaries, as well as in songs, stories and sayings among his own people in many places.