
It is against the story of late nineteenth-century holocaust and hardship that the main conceit of this novel is set. And just to make sure we understand that there is no mistake in the use of the word holocaust, Ihimaera quotes from a contemporary newspaper the feelings being expressed immediately preceding the attack on the Parihaka township: ‘The time has come, in our minds, when New Zealand must strike for freedom, and this means the death-blow to the Maori race!’ Also quoted is ex-premier Harry Atkinson who was reported as saying at a public meeting that he hoped: ‘if war did come, the natives would be exterminated.’ Following the aftermath of the racist rhetoric through, Ihimaera quotes from the 1996 Waitangi Tribunal Taranaki Report: ‘The graphic muru of most of Taranaki and the raupatu without ending describe the holocaust of Taranaki history and the denigration of the founding peoples in a continuum from 1840 to the present’.
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