In November, our Women’s Discussion Group made a long-planned pilgrimage to Northland to visit sites of historic significance for the relationship between the early Anglican missionaries and local Māori, including Marsden’s Cross at Rangihoua and the Mihinare (Tikanga Māori Anglican) community of St Michael’s Ōhaeawai. Rangihoua marks the site of the first Anglican service held in Aotearoa New Zealand on Christmas Day 1814 and we shared eucharist at Marsden’s Cross. St Michael’s was built in 1871 on the site of the pā that Ngāti Rangi successfully defended against a huge British force and their Māori allies at the Battle of Ōhaeawai, the penultimate clash of the Northern War (1845-46). After St Michael’s was built, in 1872 in an extraordinary act of reconciliation and manaakitanga, the Ngāti Rangi chief Heta Te Haara arranged for the many British troops who had died in the Battle to be exhumed and given a Christian burial in the consecrated grounds of the church. Their names are recorded inside St Michael’s.
