Dick Scott: His Own Parihaka Journey

The man who wrote Ask That Mountain first learnt about Parihaka when he was bed-bound and bored. "I was sick in bed, desperate for reading material and I had a law report - a big grey boring thing", says Dick Scott, remembering back to the early 1950s. The historian can't recall if he had mumps or measles, but does know he was struck by a childhood illness when aged about 30 and that he turned to the law report for distraction. "It was 640 pages, the bloody thing; 300,000 words", says Dick, from the sunny winter studio in his Auckland home.

The rare book had belonged to the Eichelbaum family in Wellington, where Dick grew up. "When their father died, they said I could pick a book out of the library and I wanted something you wouldn't see anywhere else, so I picked this big grey thing." The weighty tome contained the celebrated 1886 libel case in which Native Minister John Bryce challenged the writings of historian George William Rusden. In his book History of New Zealand, Rusden had accepted an inaccurate report from Bishop Hadfield that at Handley's woolshed Bryce's troops had killed women and children “gleefully”. While there was ample evidence that unarmed boys had been murdered, Rusden's embellishments brought damages of £5,000 pounds, reduced on appeal to £2,531. Bryce finally settled for costs.

Deep in that law report, Dick read about a place that led to a journey of discovery. "In the middle of it, suddenly there was this place called Parihaka and I didn't know where they were talking of." Bryce had told the judge that Parihaka was an asylum for criminals and filled with fanatics who were trying to get their land back. When the day of plunder came up during the case, Dick says the judge asked: "Did some of the women cry during the invasion?" Bryce answered: "Women always cry."

The talk about Parihaka prodded Dick's inquisitive mind and he became determined to know more. "It was quite clear that it was an extraordinary thing", he says of the Taranaki kainga (village) led by pacifist prophets Te Whiti-o-Rongomai and Tohu Kākahi. When he was well, Dick began his investigations. "I read a whole lot of books but they told me nothing."

So he got on a bus and went to Parihaka, arriving at dusk. "I saw a whole lot of rows of empty houses, dilapidated houses. I finally came to a house that looked like someone lived in." He knocked on the door and a big woman invited him in and gave him a cup of tea. "When I told her what I was there for, her attitude changed and she said 'you white people wouldn't like us to tell you about it'."

Dick convinced the woman he was there for the right reasons; that he was there seeking the truth about Parihaka, but when he asked to talk to the old man sitting in the shadows, he said: “It's too late now.” When Dick asked if he could return the next day to speak with him, the kaumātua said he was going out hunting first thing in the morning. The curious visitor left with little new knowledge, except the location of Fort Rolleston, which overlooked the village. "That was where the [invaders] cannon was", the woman told him.

Determined to learn more, Dick visited a Dr Ellison from coastal Taranaki. “He still remembered as a boy seeing Te Whiti.” And later, the doctor saw first-hand the fallout from the 1881 invasion. “He had treated a number of people who had syphilis - the troops had infected the people.”

He also talked with Reverend Paahi Moke of Te Kūiti. "He was very helpful, just as Dr Ellison had been." But still Dick dug deeper, immersing himself in historical archives. "Because the Māori were not expected to read them, a lot of the secret stuff was hidden in Parliamentary papers."

Piecing together the accounts, he wrote a 160-page book about Parihaka. "To write the first book, my wife at the time [Elsie Mary du Fresne] got a job as a school dental assistant", says Dick, who is the father of five children (one is novelist Rosie Scott).

The Parihaka Story was published in December 1954 by Southern Cross Books. "That first book did not have very much Māori input at all", Dick says. There was also little response to the book. "No daily newspaper in New Zealand reviewed it apart from the Taranaki Daily News. They ran a full page feature article nearly every Saturday attacking my book," Dick says.

 “...It is surely no coincidence that a leading member of the communist party has recently published The Parihaka Story with emphasis on the undoubted wrong to the Māori”, wrote Alexander Boyd Witten-Hannah on 29 January 1955. “One wonders also, whether this will not be followed immediately by a book in reply with emphasis on the undoubted wrongs suffered by European settlers (for there was right and wrong on both sides) and whether the result will not be to make the misunderstanding greater. It is certain that we are approaching a time when this danger will become very real.

“Most New Zealanders wish to live in peace and goodwill one with another, and few will welcome a flood of writings likely to worsen racial feeling. It is essential, therefore, that all should endeavour to understand the whole position from all points of view, and to do equal honour to those on both sides who suffered for what they believed to be true...”

In the Daily News two weeks later, Witten-Hannah continued his condemnation of Dick Scott's book, talking of being visited by a Mr Pokai, who: “...came to my home and told me of his feelings in words that give a complete answer to the malicious innuendos in a recently published book by a communist journalist, obviously designed to revive the memory of old wrongs for political advantage. People with minds conditioned solely by western thought habits cannot properly understand the way of thought of the older Maori, much less can anyone warped by devotion to an atheistical ideology expect to grasp the outlook of religious teachers such as Te Whiti and Tohu...”

Dick says his early political leanings were well known. "I have to be honest, I had been a member of the Communist Party when I was young, but I wasn't then."As well as the public lambasting, there were quietly subversive reactions to The Parihaka Story.

While hitchhiking in Taranaki during the mid-1950s, Dick got picked up by a couple of school inspectors. "They said it [the book] was banned in some schools in Taranaki - they refused to have it in the library." But there was a flipside. "Two of my favourable reviews were written by refugees from Nazi Germany. They were from two friends. Any good review I got, looking back, were from people I knew."

The years passed and the minor controversy faded away.

Then, in the 1970s, interest in the story was reborn. "My son Bede was about to be born and the nurse came and said 'you are wanted on the telephone, a doctor wants to talk to you'." But this was not to be a medical conversation. "It was [Dr] Tony Ruakere, and he said people had been trying to find me and they thought I was dead. He said 'we want to bring the book out again'."

This was a coincidence because Dick had been working on improving it. "He [Tony] said 'come down and stay with us in the meeting house and we will help'." With a great deal of assistance from a Parihaka elder, the late Whatarau Wharehoka, the Pākehā writer reworked the story and Ask That Mountain was published in 1975.

This time the scholars blasted his work. "The academics were very hostile to my story. I think they were embarrassed - they had either ignored it [Parihaka] or written ridiculous stuff about it."

One critic wrote: “It's a work of scissors and paste. Readers will find Scott hard going. They will be quickly exhausted by the repetition.”

Another history scholar said: “It's a melodrama masquerading as history, with cardboard cut-out figures in a goodies-versus-baddies tale… Lofty and absurd claims are made for the importance of Te Whiti and Parihaka… the statement is [made] that Te Whiti used techniques of passive resistance 50 years before Gandhi - to which the obvious response is 'so what'.”

Dick says the cutting words have never hurt him. "I know where they are coming from - they are defenders of their special privileges. It's more amusing to watch their antics." The general populace received the book far more openly, with positive reviews from almost every newspaper in the country. One of the most glowing responses came from the Taranaki Herald. "I got a letter from the editor enclosing clippings and saying it [Ask That Mountain] should be in every school in New Zealand." The editor at that time was George Koea, who died in 1987.

It seems the newsman got his wish for Dick's book, which can now be found in school and public libraries nationwide, along with the bookshelves of many households. And it is still for sale in bookshops, its dramatic front cover making it instantly recognisable. Taranaki born artist Michael Smither created the artwork, which features a silhouette of Mount Taranaki at sunset and three white feathers against a blue sky. "Michael Smither wrote to me the other day and said 'it feels like yesterday that we walked along by Paritutū and picked those feathers for the cover'", says Dick, himself remembering that fine Taranaki day in the mid-1970s.

For Dick, the story of Parihaka has been a momentous personal journey. "It's the biggest thing that's happened to me."

Rusden, G. (1895). History of New Zealand. Melbourne: Melville, Mullen & Slade.

Scott, D. (1954). The Parihaka Story. Auckland: Southern Cross Books.

Scott, D. (1981). Ask That Mountain: the story of Parihaka. Auckland: Southern Cross/Reed.