On 5 November 1881 an armed constabulary force with volunteers, more than fifteen hundred men with artillery, advanced on Parihaka. The Native Minister had issued a proclamation and the community had been given notice.
The village did not resist. Accounts agree on what met the column: children seated at the entrance singing, girls offering food, and the adults of the settlement sitting in the open in silence. Te Whiti and Tohu were arrested and later held in the South Island without trial. The houses were pulled down, the crops destroyed, the stock driven off, and something like sixteen hundred people not from the immediate district were dispersed and told to go home.
The emblem the community wore, and wears, is the raukura, three white albatross feathers, standing for peace. Both leaders returned to Parihaka after their release and rebuilt, and the monthly meetings resumed.
Parihaka has held an unusual place in New Zealand memory ever since, invoked whenever non-violent resistance is discussed and increasingly taught in schools. In June 2017 the Crown made a formal apology and a settlement with the Parihaka community, acknowledging the invasion, the imprisonments without trial and the assaults that followed. The fifth of November is commemorated at Parihaka each year, and the community is a living one, described here rather than assessed.