M AU Ī J OH N M I TC H E L L
Mauī John Mitchell a life-long passion for whakapapa Mauī John Mitchell (Ngāti Tama, Te Ātiawa, Ngāti Toa, Taranaki Tūturu) and his wife, Hilary, spent over ten years researching and writing the four-volume series Te Tau Ihu O Te Waka, a history of Māori of Nelson and Marlborough. The series covers the history of Māori in Te Tau Ihu, the impacts of colonisation and European settlement on Māori, and land issues arising from colonisation. Included in the books are lists of baptisms, marriages, census and land ownership records. The books are taonga for current and future generations. A former Wakatū board member, John shares with us some stories from his whānau and childhood, and influences that led to a life-long fascination with whakapapa and history. A young John Mitchell in 1959.
I
was born in Tākaka in 1941. Mum was
over four years old. We then went back to Tākaka,
pregnant with me when Dad volunteered
spending a lot of time with my cousins at my Aunty
and went overseas with the army, serving in
Dool’s farm at Motupipi.
the Middle East. Grandad Jack Small (Pop) had
The farm was still being broken in, so a few of
also volunteered, serving in the Pacific in the
us boys did the hard work with the hand augers
airforce. Since Mum and Nanny Small were both
drilling the holes to take the gelignite. We’d pick up
without husbands, it made sense for Mum and her
the debris after each explosion and fill in the craters
newborn (me) to shift to Nelson to live with Nanny.
where the stumps had been. Exciting stuff for young
World War II was Pop’s second world war – he had
boys! My cousin Bob and I certainly learnt the
volunteered as a teenager, serving in the trenches in
tricks of that trade, to our eventual regret: we stole
France during World War I, where he was seriously
a couple of sticks of gelly, fuse wire and detonators,
wounded. The family joke is that Pop twice lied
and decided to give the local community a rev-up by
about his age, adding years to serve in World War I,
setting them off in the fork of an old tree in Bracket
and subtracting years to serve in World War II.
Bickley’s walnut orchard, beside the Motupipi Hall
Pop returned home first, but Mum and I
and School. We just intended for a loud bang to
stayed on in Nelson until Dad, badly wounded, was
wake everyone up. We got the loud bang all right,
repatriated some months later, by which time I was
but hadn’t counted on the tree being demolished.
11
