1933: The Last Moriori

November 26, 2024

By AHNZ

On 29 December, 1986, Prime Minister David Lange unveiled a life-size statue of the last Moriori, Tommy Solomon, who had died ion 19 March,1933.

The Prime Minister told the crowd that Moriori were not a myth but that “We cannot make them live again, but we can tell the truth about what happened to them.” It was clear, and official, that the race was dead.

As it turned out he was completely, 180 degrees, wrong. We could make them live again and we could not tell the truth!

Lange and others were at pains at the time to establish that Moriori ever existed at all. Michael King (1989) quotes a Tainui leader [Mr Maniapoto] responding to the statue: “It is a fraud because…Solomon was no more Moriori than I am.” Another Maori wrote “Let us get one thing straight: there were no such people as the Moriori…Maori people are wounded every time ignorant talk about the Moriori arises. Please let us have no more of it.”

Leader of the statue campaign, young Wellington lawyer Maui Solomon had only recently given himself a crash course on Moriori history. The purpose was to gain recognition that Moriori were no myth. And, secondly, to establish that such a group had ethical sovereignty (“aka tchakat henu, aka tangata whenua”) status over the Chatham Islands. And, all the money and power that came with that. Some heavy lifting for a concrete statue!

Maui had grown up knowing little or nothing about the people. Then, when the dollar signs started flashing, found he could connect the dots. Maui Solomon discovered he was Culturally Fluid. He resolved to self-identify as a Moriori and claim that cash! He travelled to the Chatham Islands, fought his way to the top of the political hierarchy, and then cashed in his grievance chips with Labour 6.0’s Andrew Little. Bullshit for dollars.

His own father struggled to understand how Maui could bring himself to do this. His mother was white, his father part-Maori. The Last Moriori’s wife had been a Singaporian-Maori woman¹. Having secured the Chatham Islands was he going to next take his legal campaign to the Singapore Islands and lobby for a slice of the Republic of Singapore? It makes about as much sense…

“Germans, interestingly enough, soon appeared on the Chathams as missionaries of the Moravian denomination. They brought flourishing agriculture and literacy to the Chathams and witnessed the passing away of the Moriori slave race. The last of these to die out (19 March 1933) was Tommy Solomon however he lived the life of a Westernised Maori man and Ratana churchman. The Moriori culture had already been merely academic for a long time before.” – 1835: Chatham Islands Anschluss, AHNZ

“While attending teachers’ college in the early 1990s I was told instead that there were no such people as the Moriori, and their existence was a myth created by Pakeha to discredit Maori.” – Imagining Moriori, Jacinta Blank, University of Canterbury thesis (2007)

“They were not a myth. They were in these islands a real people. We cannot make them live again, but we can tell the truth about what happened to them.” – David Lange, p192, Moriori: A People Rediscovered. Michael King (1989)

“I salute the efforts of all of you who have strived to make sure that the Moriori people of these islands do not pass forgotten into history but stay in our memory as they were in reality” – Tu Tangata (1987,) Papers Past

“…as a child growing up in Temuka with his 14 siblings, he knew little about his Moriori history, identity and culture…He grew up more Māori in his culture and language than Moriori. He wanted his family to survive and prosper so he wasn’t going to dwell on the past…”My father never knew anything about Moriori so he didn’t have anything to pass on to us…There was no learning at my father’s knee because he had nothing to teach, which is sad. I think he struggled to understand why I was doing what I was doing for Moriori later on in my life.” – Stuff (2020)

“Maui Solomon’s walking, talking, living proof Moriori are very much alive, well and going places fast.” – NZ Herald (2019)

“The Chatham Islands had, to this point, for generations, lived together as one community in peace. Suddenly, now, there was a bounty of money and power going for those who could self-identify in the required grouping. Who should get the land? Who should be in charge of vast fishing catchments? The temptation was too great. Besides, if stakeholders did not give in to temptation someone else would certainly make this Faustian deal with The State. Islanders now started turning on each other and even those who had been away from the Chathams for decades, or generations, “rediscovered” the connections that were now paying.” – 1989: Moriori- A People Resurrected, AHNZ

“Prater punched him in the jaw..He then alleges Solomon left him with a bloodied nose, abrasions to his temple and a black eye….Eyles says some factions wanted to sign up as many people as possible to maximise Treaty compensation.Thirty years ago, he says, Moriori had no land or assets and were not officially recognised as an iwi – today they have $53m worth of assets.” – Divided Tribe, Feuds and fisticuffs in the Chatham Islands, Stuff (2019)

The Last Moriori didn’t identify as one at all. He lived as a Westernised Maori and knew little and cared less about the heritage. Ref. p179 King (1989) He was a wealthy, well-fed, politician, patriarch, and farmer. The world knew him as The Last Living Moriori and he never refuted that and his funeral in 1933 proclaimed it widely.

This is a problem for 2020s definition of identity which is that it’s not what you are but how you feel that counts. Feels Over Reals. If you “identify” as Moriori (or as a woman, man, apache attack helecopter, etc…) then that’s what you are. The Pakeha-Singaporean-Maori-Moriori Maui could re-classify himself and we abide. However when the full-blooded Moriori man self-identified and presented a Pakeha-Maori in the 1920s he remained Moriori.

Revising history to bring an extinct race back from the dead seems like a bit of a stretch. However, Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations Chris Findlayson of the National 5.0 Ministry had converted so many grievances into cashflow that there wasn’t much left. Poor Andrew Little of the Labour 6.0 Ministry had to resort to finding a “Lost Tribe” because anything close to legitimate had already been processed. Ref. 2002: Discovery of Lost Tribe, Ngati Hinerangi, AHNZ

Moriori, then, had to come back to life (or “life” re-defined) so the Treaty Industry would have some raw material to process. The Moriori Claims Settlement Act (2021) gave moral authority, money, fishing grounds, and land to the group Maui Solomon represented. In return for providing this ethical cover you can be sure that other figures behind the scenes were getting their cut of this resource re-shuffle.

Thanks to a useful historian in Michael King, and the concrete statue the Prime Minister unveiled in ’86, Mr Solomon (image left) has made out like a bandit. Of course he has to put some time in physically being on the Chatham Islands to make things legitimate and I don’t know how much he minds that. In return though he is lord of his own fiefdom with more power than his paternal grandfather dreamed of. Unfortunately New Zealand history and genealogy just needed to be bent a bit out of shape to allow all of this to happen. Still, you’ve got to hand it to him.

—
1 Frank Nicholas Fowler, Geni

Image ref. David Lange at the unveiling of a statue to Tommy Solomon, South Canterbury Museum (1988,) Digital NZ; Color by AHNZ (2023)

Image ref. Mr and Mrs Solomon, Andrew Warner, NZ Herald (2019)

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