A weathered bronze figure that has watched over the southeast coast of the Chatham Islands for four decades is a step closer to being restored, after the project to save it landed a $60,000 grant.
The statue of Tame Horomona Rehe, far better known as Tommy Solomon, has stood at Manukau on Rēkohu, the Moriori name for the Chatham Islands, since it was unveiled in 1986. Forty years of salt air and island weather have worn the figure down, and it is now covered and fenced off for safety while the community works out how to bring it back to life.
The money comes from the Rātā Foundation and lifts the restoration fund to roughly a third of its $200,000 target, which leaves about $160,000 still to raise. The work is being led by a restoration committee on behalf of the Moriori community and the Solomon whānau, with Bryan Solomon acting as communications lead.
Bryan Solomon told RNZ that Tommy Solomon was far more than a face cast in bronze. He said Tommy Solomon “embodied the values of our Moriori culture, which is peace, resilience, unity, and service to not only family but others”. Those values sit at the heart of why islanders want the memorial standing again rather than quietly crumbling away.
Tommy Solomon was born in 1884 to Rangitapua Horomona Rehe and Ihimaera Te Teira, who belonged to the Ōwenga and Ōtonga Moriori tribes. He grew into one of the most successful farmers on the islands during the 1920s, at one point running around 7,000 sheep and cattle. He was also a jockey and a family man who married twice and raised five children. When he died in 1933 at the age of 49, he was buried at Manukau, the same windswept stretch of coast where his statue would later stand.
For most of the last century Solomon was described as the last full-blooded Moriori, a label that helped feed one of the most stubborn and damaging myths in New Zealand history, the idea that the Moriori people had simply died out. That is not the case. People of Moriori descent live today on the Chatham Islands and right across mainland New Zealand, and the culture is being actively revived and taught. Modern historians describe Moriori not as a vanished race but as a distinct people descended from early Māori who reached the islands centuries ago and developed their own way of life, including Nunuku’s covenant, a commitment to peace that bound the community to settle disputes without killing.
That history makes the statue more than a local landmark. When Prime Minister David Lange unveiled it on a summer day in 1986, he used the moment to push back directly against the myth, telling the crowd that the Moriori “were not a myth, they were a real people”. The bronze itself was sculpted using old photographs and guidance from Tommy Solomon’s own sons, who helped the artist get the build and bearing of their father right.
The decades since have brought a measure of justice as well as recognition. In 2021 the Crown settled the Moriori historical claims and offered a formal apology for past wrongs, acknowledging the suffering caused by invasion, enslavement and the long denial of Moriori identity. Restoring the statue is, for many, part of the same long arc of putting the record straight and giving the community a place to gather and remember.
The Rātā Foundation said it was proud to back the work. Head of community investment Kate Sclater said the project restores visibility to Moriori identity, describing it as one “led by the Moriori community and grounded in local knowledge, bringing hūnau, whānau and the wider Chatham Islands community together to honour history and identity”. “In doing so, it not only improves accessibility for visitors, but contributes to long-term cultural resilience and recognition for future generations,” she said.
With a third of the budget now in hand, the committee’s next jobs are to confirm a contractor who can carry out the specialist work, and to restore not just the figure but the site around it so visitors can once again stand at Manukau and pay their respects. Fundraising is continuing through a public Givealittle appeal, with islanders hoping the rest of the country will help close the gap.
The Chatham Islands lie about 800 kilometres east of the South Island, home to roughly 600 people, and the statue has long been one of the first things visitors seek out when they step off the plane. For a small and remote community, getting Tommy Solomon back on his feet is about far more than repairing a piece of metal. It is about keeping a story alive, one that reminds the whole of New Zealand that the Moriori never went away.
You can read more about the memorial and its history on the Chatham Islands heritage pages and in 1News coverage of the rebuild.
What does the Tommy Solomon statue mean to you, and have you ever made the trip to the Chathams to see it? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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