‘Settlement’ or slavery?

I was drawn to the article by Peta Carey on pest eradication on the Auckland Islands (“A pig of a job”, February 26). The informative piece, accompanied by impressive images, provided an insight into the ecology of a landscape few can visit but where, if the pig eradication is successful, we can simply know the ecology is “safe and thriving”.

Carey briefly refers to the disastrous settlement of Hardwicke, abandoned in 1852, but glances over the circumstances of Moriori enslavement on the island for 13 years, swapping the term slavery for the more sanitised “settlement”.

What happened on Rēkohu (the Chatham Islands) and in the Auckland Islands should be taught in the new Aotearoa New Zealand history curriculum. In1842, about30youngMoriori were taken as slaves from their home on Rēkohu to the Auckland Islands and forced to work in bleak and brutal conditions by their Ngāti Mutunga Māori captors. After 13 years, Māori abandoned the island and those Moriori still alive made their way to relative freedom