The man of peace and the man of war (Te Whiti and Titokowaru)

The man of peace and the man of war (Te Whiti and Titokowaru)

Before he became an artist, Tony Fomison worked as an archaeologist and hobby ethnologist. Despite his bohemian reputation, Fomison was a meticulous researcher with a particular interest in Māori and Samoan cultural traditions. Throughout his life he sought to straddle multiple cultures, negotiating the difficult terrain of multiculturalism as he struggled with what, for him, was the fraught position of being European in New Zealand. Fomison was profoundly affected by the story of the destruction of Parihaka Pā, and it became an important touchstone in his work.

In 1881, frustrated by the campaign of passive resistance to Māori land confiscations enacted by the people of Parihaka, armed government forces invaded their peaceful settlement. The village’s two leaders, Te Whiti o Rongomai and Tohu Kākahi, were arrested and houses, crops and livestock were destroyed. In The Man of Peace and the Man of War, Fomison commemorates this heinous, historical injustice with a double portrait of Te Whiti and Tītokowaru. Tītokowaru was a Ngāti Ruahine chief, renowned for his skilful and ferocious guerrilla assaults on government forces, who in later years came to live at Parihaka and participate in Te Whiti’s campaign of peaceful resistance. Te Whiti dominates Fomison’s picture, standing with his followers at his back as if at the very moment of invasion. Like Mount Taranaki itself, glowing and luminous in the background, Te Whiti is a presence that looms large in the Taranaki landscape.

Te Whiti and Tītokowaru were united in their attempts to maintain the land and rights of Taranaki iwi, and in their resistance to the drive towards a culturally homogeneous state. In his hair, Tītokowaru wears the white feathers, or raukura, that symbolise the Parihaka peace movement, whereas Te Whiti stands steadfast and confrontational. In Fomison’s painting, they become icons of the strength of their cultural tradition.