Quote by Te Kooti Arikirangi Te Tūruki: “I shall yet live, though you think me dead.”

Said in the face of those who expected him to be destroyed, this is a declaration of survival against impossible odds. It is not just about one man's life — it is about the survival of a people and a tradition that colonial power assumed it had extinguished. The line carries centuries of resonance.

Te Kooti escaped from the Chatham Islands in 1868 and led guerrilla resistance during the New Zealand Wars, a series of armed conflicts between the British colonial government and Māori tribes over land sovereignty. By 1869 colonial forces were pursuing him across the North Island as New Zealand was being rapidly settled by European immigrants.

Māori religious prophet and military leader who founded the Ringatū faith in New Zealand in the 1860s while imprisoned without trial on the Chatham Islands by the colonial government. After escaping, he led a guerrilla campaign before receiving a pardon in 1883. He is a complex and contested figure in New Zealand history.