[4] In 1833 local chief Wiremu Kīngi Moki Te Matakātea held off a war party from Waikato for several weeks with a single musket, and eventually triumphed.

[5] The town was first settled by Europeans in the 1860s, when British army soldiers landed at Ōpunake in April 1865 in the Second Taranaki War.

[6] In May 1867, the redoubt was gifted to Wiremu Kīngi Moki Te Matakātea's people, and the area became a location for flax mills, outside European influence.

In October 2020, the Government committed $153,419 from the Provincial Growth Fund to seal the driveway of the marae and paint the outside of all buildings, creating 12 jobs.

Wiremu Kīngi Moki Te Matakātea and his men won the battle partly because of the Geography and because of the singular musket that they had.

[12]"Greg O'Brien, poet, painter, editor and journalist, remembers Te Namu's association with Parihaka.

He wrote: "my mother recalls an elderly aunt's recollection of the Parihaka siege—her description of a line of women singing, surrounding the settlement as the troops approached.)

What escapes us, the land, kumara-pitted, remembers—adze heads recovered from among boulders, the faded shadows that were trenches around Te Namu pa.

In 1917, father Doolaghty secured land for a larger school, and by 1923, the new building was officially opened by archbishop Thomas O'Shea.

[15] The area’s first secondary education began in 1920, with nine students receiving lessons at St Barnabas Church Hall.