Gloriavale on Waitangi Day
| Newsroom | Theophila Pratt |
‘Gloriavale must have been one of the most racist places in New Zealand, especially if you were Māori’, writes a former member
Every Waitangi Day, the choir used to go and sing at the Grey District Waitangi Day Picnic at Dixon Park in Greymouth. It was always a huge event. We’d stay up all night to make thousands of iced buns, which would then be handed out to people at the picnic.
I was never allowed to go with the rest of the choir. One year, all of the young people went to sing at the picnic except for me and maybe four other girls. We were the naughty ones who got left behind at Gloriavale.
I’ve always thought it was strange that the community chose to commemorate Waitangi Day at all, as when I was there, Gloriavale must have been one of the most racist, judgemental places in New Zealand, especially if you were Māori. Growing up, I watched my friends’ families be treated like crap and told they had to forsake their Māori heritage and disown their Māori family members.
Every year at school we watched a ‘documentary’ about the Treaty of Waitangi. It was drummed into us that Māori were evil and killed all the white men, that Māori were the ones that started all the wars, and that they had brought sicknesses on themselves because they were not clean.
If anything, this documentary made me more curious. When I was about 11, I found a stack of New Zealand history books at school. In one of them was a picture of a man who had tattoos all over his face. I thought he was the coolest person ever, especially because he’d cut down a flagpole that had been flying the Union Jack. Then I saw that his name was Hōne Heke. At the time, my name was Honey, which was pretty close to Hone, so I decided I’d call myself his name as a nickname. That decision gave me some big shoes to fill.
The following day, our class was given a maths test, and I decided I would see if I could get away with putting ‘Hōne Heke’ as my name at the top of my test. All was fine until the teacher was giving back the marked test papers. I sat there nervously waiting for my paper, wondering if the teacher would realise what I had done. Next thing, I heard the teacher say, ‘Put up your hand if you put Hōne Heke as your name on your test!’
Everyone turned to look at me as I raised my hand. The teacher was furious not only because I’d used a male’s name but also because it was a Māori male’s name. He said, ‘Do you even know what he did to white people when they came to New Zealand?’ He then told me I was on my first warning and that if I did it again, there would be severe consequences.
The teacher’s reaction sent me straight back to the history book, and as I read about Hōne Heke, I admired him even more.
Although I missed out on seeing the outside world by not going to Greymouth with the choir, I did get to partake in another annual event — our family holiday. For one week every year, each family would get to go on vacation. Of course, we didn’t spend the week outside of Gloriavale. Instead, there were two old farmhouses on the property, which families would stay in. Weeks ahead of our planned holiday, we would prepare all our holiday food and put it into the freezer. It was so exciting that for this one week in the year we would get to eat ‘special food’ — this included things like flavoured ice cream and yoghurt, stir‑fried veggies, oven chips, cheese and crackers, croissants, biscuits, slices and even chicken.
It was always fun going on vacation because, for one week, we got to pretend we were like a ‘normal family’ living in a ‘normal house’, and we got to imagine what it would be like to live that way all the time.
A mildly abbreviated chapter taken from the new memoir Unveiled by Theophila Pratt (Bateman Books, $39.99). The author was born Honey Faithful in Gloriavale, and writes of her childhood being raised as a fundamentalist Christian – and her decision to leave the isolated, sheltered community when she was 18.