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Letter to the New Zealand Listener, February 7, 2021 I want to draw attention to several revealing flaws in John Robinson’s carefully crafted argument that all persons living in New Zealand should be treated as if they were the same (Becoming One People, Listener, February 6). Firstly, he blithely assumes that the nineteenth century model of ‘nation’ that underpinned European nationalism then and into recent times, works universally. With others who espouse such homogenisation, he promotes that specific cultural model as the only possibility. And, like those others, displays the colonising mindset that considered it proper to superimpose foreign practices and institutions while pushing indigenous peoples aside. History’s judgement will be that this model has routinely fostered rancour and division in Europe and wherever it has been imposed. In Aotearoa New Zealand we should all be looking for new possibilities that do not require peoples to surrender their cultural identity just to be ...

This Listener chose not to print this letter. July 27, 2021 The Editor, New Zealand Listener As scientists ourselves we disagree with the attack on mātauranga Māori effected under the cloak provided by a claim to be writing ‘In defence of science’ (July 31, 2021). Central to the practice of the science, that the writers claim is universal, is the strict separation of the scientist from the object, topic or reality being studied. That disjunction between practitioners and what they studied contributed to an explosion of technological advances across Western Europe and those advances aided the exploitation and colonization of other countries and peoples. As if buoyed by those triumphs, the separation of the (would-be) knowers from what they sought to know about became the hallmark of a science expected to deliver universal truths about the natural world, its peoples and societies. Coupled with a readiness to constantly subdivide and isolate elements of the complex systems being studied t...

Colonisation of NZ falls within the era of modernist project(s) and also at a late stage of British imperialism, when both the techniques and justifications were well-established. This accounts for a lot of settler attitudes and actions. For example, assumptions about their own superiority and entitlements were not thought of as questionable, but as knowledge. Somewhat garbled Darwinism was rife. The English were the fittest, and therefore destined for survival, at the expense of ‘inferior’ humans and all other species. Self-appointed scientists, all over Europe and North America, pursued the study of extinction as an interesting and inevitable phenomenon. Buller and his ilk sent thousands of the skins and skeletons of birds back to the Natural History Museums of Europe, in Buller’s case this included the shooting of the last Huia.

I remember buzzing along that big main road in Rotorua, Fenton Street, and idly wondering where the name came from. Well, I’ve just done a spot of research so now I know. Francis Dart Fenton was a lawyer who became the first judge of the Native Land Court under the legislation of 1865. This Act put in place what was needed for the direct purchase of land – putting land into individual title. Recognising that huge numbers of acres hand been wrongly confiscated, the Court’s early task was the return of that land, but whereas the land had previously been communally held, and administered by rangatira, it was returned in individual title.

General Sir Duncan Cameron, who led the Highland Brigade at Balaclava during the Crimean War, arrived in New Zealand to lead the army assembled by Governor Grey. Made up of British troops, various volunteer settlers, and some “friendly” Māori  (fall-out from divide and rule tactics).

This land war monument stands on Symonds St, Auckland, in a triangle of grass and trees at the top of Wakefield Street. As I recall, the lady used to be holding up a laurel wreath, which must have fallen victim to protest or student humor. When I first encountered it I should think I must have been five years old. I was excited to be in a city where even the buildings had writing on them! I was into reading in a big way, and my patient mother was no doubt glad of a few minutes to pause in front of a whole page of challenge.

On 6 th  February 1840, Governor Hobson is reported to have first proclaimed the famous words “he iwi kotahi tātou” to Māori rangatira as they signed Te Tiriti o Waitangi. These words have often been translated to mean ‘we are one people’ and have had an enduring impact on our colonial relationships.