Rua was released in April 1918 and returned to Maungapōhatu, the community was however in decline and by the early 1930s, most people had left to find work elsewhere.

Rua was a member of the Tamakaimoana hapū of the Tūhoe tribe and, although not a chief in his own right, was of high birth and could trace his descent from Potiki and Toroa of the Mataatua canoe.

He worked on sheep stations in the Gisborne and Bay of Plenty districts and was a member of a shearing gang on the East Coast.

[6] Rua's statement that he was the successor to Te Kooti was first announced through an experience that he underwent on Maungapōhatu, the sacred mountain of Tūhoe.

The oral narratives tell how Rua and his first wife, Pinepine Te Rika, were directed to climb the mountain by a supernatural apparition, later revealed to be the archangel Gabriel.

At least 50 people died that winter, most of them children, from the inadequacy of the houses, an outbreak of typhoid which came from the valley camps, and a measles epidemic which devastated the community.

Two groups had come together to build 'te pa tapu o te atua', the sacred pā of the Lord, the Tūhoe, about half the entire tribe, and the Whakatohea, who through confiscation were almost landless.

To signify the union between these two Mataatua tribes, Rua constructed the house of the Lord, Hiruharama Hou, built with two gables.

His prophetic sayings (nga kupu whakari) gave meaning to a harsh existence, and offered hope to the future.

Rua built a curious two-storied circular temple of worship at Maungapōhatu, called the Hīona (Zion) that also became his parliament from where the community affairs were administered.

This circular meeting house, built in 1908, was decorated with a design of blue clubs and yellow diamonds, and stood within the inner sanctum of the pa.

Its unique cylinder shape would make it one of a kind[6] He grew his hair long and affected a bushy beard in the patriarchal tradition fashioned on the Jewish Nazirite.

From the King-ite tradition he inherited the idea that Māori possessed a separate nationality, and this, together with the success of his community, aroused the jealousy of local chiefs and incurred the Government's enmity.

He wanted to remove the Tūhoe people totally from European influence and induced many to sell all their stock and farming interests.

By 1908 Rua's struggle for power had brought the Tūhoe to the brink of civil war and the Prime Minister Sir Joseph Ward intervened to curb the prophet's influence.

Rua, flanked by some of his wives and supporters while seated on a chair that had been borrowed from the pub, acknowledged Joseph Ward approaching.

[10] Rua had become a political embarrassment, and there arose the need by the Government to make an example of this man widely seen as an agitator, hoping a crackdown would discourage other Māori activists.

[12] As a result of a number of charges of obtaining alcohol in 1910, Rua was fined for sly grogging and, in 1915, served a short gaol sentence for a similar offence.

Rua insisted that his people boycott military service, arguing it was immoral to fight for a Pākehā King and Country given the injustice meted out on Māori under the British crown.

"[13] This was taken by the establishment as sedition and finally gave the Government and Rua's detractors the incentive to intervene against Kenana and the Maungapōhatu community.

The Government arrested Rua after a 1915 hahunga, a bone cleansing ceremony, where he allegedly supplied liquor without a licence.

After a trial on sedition which lasted 47 days, New Zealand's longest until 1977, he was found not guilty; but sentenced to one year's imprisonment for resisting the police.

[16] Eventually Rua moved downstream to Matahi, a community he had founded on the Waimana River in the eastern Bay of Plenty in 1910, where he lived until his death on 20 February 1937.

[5] The bill giving effect to the pardon was introduced to Parliament on 22 August 2019, received its third reading on 18 December 2019, and was given royal assent three days later by the governor-general, Dame Patsy Reddy, at Maungapōhatu.