Some of the original documents of the Ringatū religion Te Kooti Ārikirangi Te Turuki founded more than 150 years ago are being shown in an exhibition.
Te Taniwha: The Manuscript of Ārikirangi are on display at Victoria University of Wellington’s Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery.
They were given by the prophet to Richard Niania’s great-great-grandfather in 1869. He passed them to Niania’s grandmother. He himself has had them since 1988.
Niania commissioned Joyce Campbell to photograph the pages and these are hanging on the walls with the original manuscript displayed on a table.
Niania said Te Kooti founded the religion after escaping imprisonment by the Crown on the Chatham Islands.
While jailed there he began to write the founding documents of the church – inspired by the book of Exodus and a yearning to be free.
“It all hinges on Te Kooti’s visions which he had in May of 1866, and the manuscript’s actually inspired by that revelation … that he had.
“It said ‘you are like unto Moses, and your job is to do what Moses did for the Israelites out of Egypt … your job is to take your people home from the Chathams’.”
Te Taniwha: The Manuscript of Ārikirangi is the latest version of Niania and Campbell’s decade long project to capture and preserve kōrero about the people of Whakapūnake te maunga (the sacred mountain of the Wairoa region) and Ruakituri awa (a major tributary of the Wairoa river).
At the centre of the exhibition is a rare manuscript containing hymns, prayers and whakapapa written by the founder of the Ringatū faith, Te Kooti Ārikirangi Te Turuki.
This is one of the founding documents of Te Haahi Ringatū mentioned by Judith Binney in an appendix to Redemptions Songs, her biography of the prophet.
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