Fragments from a Contested Past: Remembrance, Denial and New Zealand History

by Joanna Kidman, Vincent O'Malley, Liana MacDonald

'What a nation or society choose to remember and forget speaks to its contemporary priorities and sense of identity. Understanding how that process works enables us to better imagine a future with a different, or wider, set of priorities.'

History has rarely felt more topical or relevant as, all across the globe, nations have begun to debate who, how and what they choose to remember and forget. In this BWB Text addressing 'difficult histories', a team of five researchers, several from iwi invaded or attacked during the nineteenth-century New Zealand Wars, reflect on these questions of memory and loss locally.

Combining first-hand fieldnotes from their journeys to sites of conflict and contestation with innovative archival and oral research exploring the gaps and silences in the ways we engage with the past, this group investigates how these events are remembered – or not – and how this has shaped the modern New Zealand nation.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, History

Kindle Edition

Published March 29, 2022

Reviews

[Malcolm · Rating 5 out of 5]

Towards the end of her powerful and compelling discussion of fieldwork during the events ‘marking/commemorating’ 250 years since James Cook and the rest of the Endeavour ensemble arrived in Aotearoa, Joanna Kidman notes that “In settler nations like New Zealand, national identity lives on the borders of history and memory, and is open to revision and debate.” (p41) This, then, is the central issue of the superb collection of essays exploring aspects of the remembering of New Zealand’s past(s). The collection is one of several products of a project exploring especially the remembering of New Zealand’s colonial wars of the 1860s – and it balances the expectations of scholarship with the accessibility of texts for that mythical creature, the ‘general reader’. [In the interests of transparency: Joanna and I have been friends for many years.]

The collection’s six essays take two principal forms. Three are more conventionally academic – the 250 years since Cook, one Joanna has written with Vincent O’Malley rewritten from a paper in the journal Settler Colonial Studies exploring responses to a petition organised by a group of school students calling for New Zealand history to be taught, and one by O’Malley alone unpacking the complexities of a small Waikato town that was on the border of settler and Māori controlled lands at the end of the British invasion of the Waikato in the 1860s. These are sharp, clear, insightful essays that unpack and unravel many of the crude simplicities of New Zealand’s colonial histories, making clear that the Indigenous experience of colonisation and empire did not fit the dominant motifs and stories.

The other three essays do something quite different and pack a very different kind of punch. Liana Macdonald visits battle sites around Wellington where some of the earliest conflict occurred in the 1840s, finding commemorations that tell only settler stories, and wondering over the location of soldiers’ burial sites that seem to have been ‘lost’ beneath what is now a golf course. She also, with Keziah Wallis, explores the Great South Rd, one of Auckland’s major thoroughfares and originally a military road built to allow the Waikato invasion, looking again for memory sites along the way – memorials and battle sites. These are rich narrative accounts of Indigenous women exploring the memorialisation of their colonisation.

The final essay is a transcript of a conversation between Joanna and Tom Roa as they discuss the Waikato war (both have Ngāti Maniapoto descent, one of the most mythologised of Waikato iwi), how it is remembered and especially the 1864 massacre at Rangiaowhia where colonial and imperial troops killed 120 or so, mainly women and children, by burning down the church they were sheltering in – an atrocity written out of official histories, but well-remembered in Indigenous worlds. This is perhaps the most powerful piece not for the attention it gives to Rangiaowhia but because of Roa’s emphasis on remembering and forgetting, on the way the effects of the invasion were woven into the everydayness of his childhood, and of the ways the old people carried more than they shared managing the effects of intergenerational trauma. It is a compelling piece of Indigenous history and brings home forcefully what it is that exists at the ‘orders of memory and history’.

Part of the fantastic BWB Texts series – small books on big subjects, goes the tag line – this collection gives sharp insight to the contours and forces at play in thinking and rethinking colonial histories, to the work needed to ensure the Indigenous voices in those pasts and presents are no longer silenced, and of the dangers and sensitivities associated with no longer being silenced. It may be New Zealand specific but the points resonate much more widely across other settler colonies. Essential reading.

[Thu · Rating 5 out of 5]

required reading for all tauiwi, especially those who aspire to the label of Tangata Tiriti.

[Susan Wilson]

A number aspects resonated with me strongly and I learned a number of things. 1. That the argument we should let sleeping dogs lie regarding less Pakeha palatable aspects of our history, is easily countered by the argument that we never say that about ANZAC. There, we say “we will remember them”. 2. That memories are always coloured by perspective. 3. That there is so much not known, and will likely be lost in the memories of those no longer with us, about the NZ wars. 4. That the Great South Road was built in the 1860s to enable the invasion of Waikato. 5. That repeatedly commemorating aspects of our colonial history like Cook arriving must be deeply troubling for our mana whenua who do not view many of these events, like the arrival of Endeavour, as anything to celebrate.

It certainly was a short book with a big subject.

[Benjamin Foster · Rating 5 out of 5]

A good overview touching on how New Zealanders fail to recognise - or refuse to acknowledge - our own history

[Mark Field · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Learning about colonial history can be as much about uncovering the silenced or hidden narratives of the past as understanding how contested histories are embedded in our everyday landscapes. In doing this, I think we can take the opportunity to question not only whose history counts but also what counts as history." - Liana MacDonald

I studied history throughout my schooling and university days in the early 1980's and have always persued an active interest in our history and the changing narratives of history. I have also been interested in and curious around the hidden history in our landscapes and environment. This little snapshot of writings and meditations on our past and the current re interpretation of that past in and under a different lens is fascinating to me both from the point of view of correcting the narrative as much as reinterpreting the narrative. With the current debate around the reinterpretation of the Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and the mobilisation against the proposed bill in Parliament, I reflect on what I have witnessed and paid testament to over my life:
- the 1975 Land Marches
- the Apartheid and anti Springbok protests of the 1980's
- Takaparawhau / Bastion Point occupation
- Foreshore and Seabed protests ... etc etc
And more importantly the growing recognition and a deeper understanding and acceptance of "contested past".

It's a reminder in Vincent O'Malley's words "History is not in the past; it lives alongside us in the present."

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oosh, so many feels reading this.

Firstly I’m appalled at how little of my own countries history I realistically know. Secondly many of the places discussed in this book I have either lived, worked or studied close too and still had no idea of the significance of these places, all the while going about my day.

There was a moment as I was reading the final chapter where I was completely overwhelmed with the brevity of the words and meaning of the trauma hit home. This is our story and the reality must be acknowledged!

This is a small book that packs an enormous punch. It is a beautifully crafted mix of personal experience and informed scholarship. Each chapter opened up whole new perspectives and insights that due to the author’s and publisher I knew I could trust.

So many moments of brutal important truth. My world view shifted today upon the completion of this book. Roads traveled will be with new curiosity and I suspect much insight awaits.

I fully recommend this for everyone born in New Zealand.

[Nick Sutton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great read. One book I unreservedly recommend to all tauiwi in New Zealand and in particular fellow pākehā.

[Anne Herbison · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating essays of field work made while discovering historic sites of the NZ wars in the Waikato. Sobering.