Where did Te Kooti Arikirangi Te Turuki grow up and live?

📍Poverty Bay, Gisborne, New Zealand

1832 – 1893

“Ko au ko Te Kooti Arikirangi Te Turuki. I was born around 1832 of Rongowhakaata descent in the Poverty Bay region, and I was deported without trial to the Chatham Islands in 1866, accused of collaboration with Pai Mārire. On the Chatham Islands I received the visions that became the Ringatū faith — a new religion drawn from the Hebrew scriptures, a faith of the exiled people who would be brought home through divine intervention. In 1868 I led three hundred people in the seizure of a ship and we returned to the mainland. What followed — the Poverty Bay Massacre and the years of pursuit through the Urewera — was a war of survival that I did not choose but could not avoid. I was pardoned in 1883 and spent my final years establishing marae for the Ringatū church. The faith I founded survives and grows.”

👍 LovedThe Ringatū faith that emerged from the Chatham Islands imprisonment — the vision of an exiled people finding their way home through scripture. The Urewera forests that sheltered us during the years of pursuit. The marae established in my final years.

👎 DislikedThe deportation without trial. The Poverty Bay killings that I have always understood as war rather than massacre, though the grief of them was real. The years of pursuit through the forest.

Map showing where Te Kooti Arikirangi Te Turuki lived — Poverty Bay, Gisborne, New Zealand

🗺️ Approximate location today

Location associated with Te Kooti Arikirangi Te Turuki

📷 Location image · via Wikimedia Commons

Sources: Binney, J. Redemption Songs: A Life of Te Kooti Arikirangi Te Turuki (1995), Auckland University Press; Belich, J. The New Zealand Wars (1986), Auckland University Press