He Kara - Te Hakituatahi o Aotearoa - Te Tohu Pono o Te Whakaputanga o te Tangata Whenua o Aotearoa:

Te Hakituatahi ō Aotearoa (The First Flag of New Zealand)

Te Hakituatahi ō Aotearoa (the First Flag of New Zealand) was first hoisted in 1834 and gazetted in the New South Wales Gazette on 19 August 1835 as the flag of The United Tribes of New Zealand or Te Wakaminenga ō ngā Hapu ō Nu Tireni. Up until that date, New Zealand built ships were not registered and hence received no international recognition and could legally be treated as pirates. 

When the Sir George Murray was seized and sold and her cargo impounded in 1830, something had to be done. On 28 October 1835 the United Tribes of Aotearoa declared their independenceunder this flag, granted and recognised by the Crown of England, which became known as "Flag of the Confederation of Chiefs of the United Tribes of New Zealand and the Crown of England".

The image above has been drawn based on The New Zealand Official Yearbook 1998. This flag can also be viewed in Te Papa Tongarewa, the museum of New Zealand, in the Signs of a Nationexhibit.

When first gazetted, the description neglected the black border on the smaller St George's cross and did not specify the number of points of the stars. Hence various variations on this flag have been flown as the flag of the United Tribes. 

The heraldic description (quoting from the Yearbook): "on a white field, a red St George's cross, in the upper canton, next to the staff on a blue field, a smaller St George's cross in red, severed from the blue by a fimbriation of black, half the width of the red and in the centre of each blue quarter a white eight point star."

He Kara has never been decommissioned, and remains the official flag of the United Tribes of Aotearoa, a potent symbol (tohu) of our independence and sovereignty, he whakaputanga.  John Key's recent $26,000,000 flag fiasco completely ignored this FACT and was an utter waste of $26,000,000 and an insult to tangata whenua.

Ka whawhai tonu ahau ki a koe, ake, ake ake!

This sign-scuplture is part of an exhbition called Enquiries bing staged by Manu Scott at Auckland's Oedipus Rex gallery. Scott's sign refers to the famous photo of Whina Cooper and her great-grandchild walking down a road near Hapua, New Zealand's northernmost settlement, on the first day of the epic 1975 Land Hikoi:

The words 'Ake, ake, ake' refer to Orakau, site of the last major battle of the war that began when Europeans invaded the Waikato in 1863. Near the end of the battle, when his troops were forced to fire plum stones because they had run out of bullets, the great Tainui chief Rewi Maniapoto jumped onto the battlements of the pa he was defending and shouted 'Ka whawhai tonu ahau ki a koe, ake, ake ake!', which translates as 'I shall fight against you, for ever and ever'.

I remember ten thousand people chanting Rewi's words during the Waikato leg of the Seabed and Foreshore Hikoi of 2004, which retraced the route taken by marchers in 1975.

As well as the sign-scupltures, Scott's show includes a series of sad but beautiful photographs of the ruins of a Maori Boys School which recall Mark Hamilton's snapshots of the disused hospital at Tokanui. You can catch Enquiries until the end of the month.