In her hair are three white albatross feathers, the symbol of Parihaka, the village of peace to which she belongs. Mahinekura greets us with warm hugs, and we follow her back to her healing center, where we are greeted with an honouring ritual of song and speeches.

In the Maori tradition, speech making is always followed by a song, and so, after our speech of respect and appreciation for the welcome we are given, we do our best to sing a song, no match for the beautiful voices of the Maori. We pick a Starhawk chant - ‘Air my breath and fire my spirit, earth my body, water my blood.' Afterwards, they treat our tired bodies to a healing massage.

Mahinekura takes us back to her house, an hours drive down the coast. On the way we stop on the tribal boundaries, and walk to the ocean where she performs another blessing ceremony for us, singing in her beautiful voice as we walk bare footed to the ocean, to splash some water on our faces. We have truly arrived.

After a few hours sleep, we awake to a barbecue, with a number of the elders of the community. We are being gifted with the full Maori welcome, a sacred tradition that is well maintained.

The next morning we head up the hill to Parihaka, the reason for our pilgrimage to this land. It is here, in the 1880s, that one of the early great stories of nonviolent resistance was born, a story that became a source of inspiration to a young Gandhi. Years later, his grandson, and the descendants of Martin Luther King and Ikeda, the founder of Sokko Gakkai came to Parihaka to pay homage.

The 1800's was a time of warfare, Maoris fighting desperately to stave off the invaders, the Pakeha (white people), who were unrelenting in their determination to own their land. The Pakehas had the latest technology - the best guns, cannons, and an unending supply of soldiers and settlers, greedy for the new world. The Maori are a warrior people, and return fire with fire. But again and again, this resulted only in carnage.

At the foot of a sacred volcano named Taranaki, two prophets arose, Te Whiti and Taho. They preached a different path, a path of peace, a path of active resistance that drew from both the spiritual wisdom of their ancestors, and the new wisdom that the very invaders themselves brought with them in a book they called the Bible. It seems this book taught a message of ‘Peace and goodwill to all mankind.' The prophets chose to inhabit these teachings in a way the Pakehas themselves seemed unwilling to do - to truly live a life of peace and fellowship, even in the midst of war and greedy land grabs.

They practiced cheerful non-cooperation with the invaders, pulling up the stakes of surveryers again and again, ploughing troughs through their roads, removing their fences, and, again and again, going to jail for their troubles. The village of Parihaka became a magnet for Maori from all across the land, a village of peace and prosperity, self sustaining, with it's own bakery, a place of intertribal co-operation, of community and vision. It was this, more than anything, that threatened the Pakehas - they called it socialism, and even back then, demonized those who chose to live in community, as opposed to fierce capitalism.

Things came to a head in 1880, when 1500 soldiers gathered a few miles from the village of peace, preparing to raze it to the ground. As they approached the village, a sound grew, like the music of cicadas, growing louder as they approached. To their astonishment, they were greeted by 200 hundred children, swinging their Poi, skipping on ropes, singing and playing, and offering the soldiers plates of delicious fresh baked bread.

The soldiers mde it through that day, and arrested the leaders and many members of the community, some of whom were imprisoned for as long as 18 years, but the village was never completely broken. The descendants of Parihaka continue to teach their message of peace, the village still stands, the community still meets on the 18th and 19th of each month, as it as for well over 100 years, and today, a new vision has emerged - this weekend marks the 100th year of the death of the two prophets, and is commemorated with a fantastic Peace Festival. Which I'll tell you about in my next blog...