Toppling statues – to do or not to do?

OPINION: Statues celebrating controversial historical figures are being toppled as part of the widening Black Lives Matter movement. We have monuments to Captain Cook, to Edward Wakefield who is widely considered to have cheated Ma¯ori out of large swathes of land, and to dead colonial soldiers without mentioning Ma¯ori who died. Do these reflect our current values as a nation and if not, what should be done about them? An MP from each side of the House gives their views.

our history or address racism by simply toppling statues.

Local communities may choose to remove some, and that is their decision. But we can better tell both sides of our story by erecting new statues of treasured Ma¯ ori leaders and teaching New Zealand history in schools.

The Government has acknowledged the comparative lack of monuments to prominent Ma¯ ori across New Zealand. Funding for new statues can now be accessed through the Te Arawhiti programme, Whai Hononga, which aims to strengthen our shared national identity.

In fact, Dame Whina’s statue was funded through this programme.

In September last year, our prime minister announced that New Zealand history will be taught in all schools and kura by 2022.

I think the minister of education put it best when he said, ‘‘Our diversity is our strength, but only when we build connections to each other. We can move forward together, stronger, when we understand the many paths our ancestors walked to bring us here today.’’

There is more that needs to be done to address racism and really value diversity and promote social inclusion in Aotearoa, and we all have a role to play.

It will require a sustained effort by every one of us to call out and condemn racism, to check our own unconscious biases, and to engage in important conversations about our whole history, and the kind of society we aspire to be.

controversial figures, suggest that these monuments represent individuals whose lives should not be memorialised.

For many people, it can be exhausting and demoralising to always have to remember difficult aspects of the past.

But to remove parts of history will only destroy our ability to learn from the past in order to create a better future.

Nothing can be achieved if we pretend to have a different history.

The statues in our cities and towns were put up by previous generations who held different values and perspectives on political and social matters. These statues teach us about the past, and remind us of the fact that our values change and that actions and values deemed appropriate in the past no longer are today.

Allowing these monuments to stand isn’t to legitimatise the views of earlier slave holders or colonists.

Rather, it provides us with a means to debate the moral questions the monuments may present today. Picking and choosing aspects of our history only reduces the opportunity to learn for future generations.

If it does get to a point where a community can no longer stand a specific monument, then there are democratic processes that must be followed in order to remove it.

To build an inclusive future, we need to be upfront and willing to discuss the difficult aspects of our history and find the gaps in our history that aren’t being acknowledged.

Only honest and fair debate can lead to concrete policy changes which social progressive movements seek to achieve.