Ripapa Island and the Parihaka Prisoners: Southern Connections to the New Zealand Wars
Channel: Difficult Histories: The New Zealand Wars
Date: 2020-12-30

The small island of Ripapa, in Lyttelton Harbour/Whakaraupō was one of many locations in Te Waipounamu where members of the Parihaka community were imprisoned without trial for their campaign of non-violent resistance to the confiscation of Taranaki lands in the early 1880s.

As Joanna Kidman and Vincent O’Malley explain in this latest video for the Difficult Histories project, Ripapa Island has many layers to its history – as an important pā site for Ngāi Tahu, and later as a quarantine station, prison and coastal fort. The connection with Parihaka is just one example of why it is wrong to dismiss the New Zealand Wars as merely a North Island story.