Story: Public protest

Twelve-year old Kia Kingi practises flax weaving beneath the pumpkin-headed statue of John Ballance during the 79-day occupation of Whanganui’s Moutoa Gardens (Pākaitore). The demonstrators believed Ballance – a former Whanganui MP and premier of New Zealand – had encouraged Māori land alienation, so they beheaded him as a symbolic protest. During the occupation the body was also removed from its plinth; the head and body were never recovered. A new bronze statue of Ballance was unveiled outside Whanganui’s civic centre in 2009.