Sunday 10 September 2017



Our Book of the Week for Maori Language Week is Sleeps Standing / Moetu by Witi Ihimaera, with parallel text in Maori by Hemi Kelly. 
The three-day siege of the Battle of Orakau in 1864, in which 1700 Imperial troops laid siege to a hastily constructed pa sheltering 300 Maori men, women and children, marked the effective end of the Waikato War. Ihimaera tells the history from the point of view of a Moetu, a boy on the side that refused to submit and fought to the end. First-hand accounts and documentary illustrations are included in this book. 

>> Read Stella's review

>> Rewi's Last Stand

>> Remembering the Tuhoe and Ngati Maniapoto who defended Orakau

>> A strange computer-generated simulation of the fortifications

>> Commemorative haka, 150 years later

>> Hemi Kelly on Radio New Zealand

>> "Ka whawhai tonu matou, Ake! Ake! Ake!"  Rewi Maniapoto continues to fight for Maori land

>> Vincent O'Malley's The Great War for New Zealand: Waikato, 1800-2000 gives excellent analysis of the wider Waikato War and its contexts. 



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