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Zealanders over the past 250 years. The third is how that story could be told in the future.

Unpacking each of these provides a discussion on the kind of story we want to tell about ourselves as a nation.

The Ma¯ ori story of the encounter at Poverty Bay/ Turanganui-a-kiwa has too often been forgotten by historians. The controversy in 2019, however, is less about Cook the explorer, a man of his time and place, and more about the way in which his image and memory has been used at different times in New Zealand history.

The first monument to Cook’s 1769 landing was raised in Gisborne in 1906. The 150th anniversary in 1919 was a similarly local affair.

The excitement and pride of these commemorations located New Zealand in a grand story of British civilisation and progress.

Eighteenth-century Cook was re-imagined in the 19th century as, in James Belich’s famous phrase, ‘the first of a Pa¯ keha¯ pantheon of deified ancestors’ who augured an imperial destiny.

Christchurch’s own James Cook statue is a good example of this story. The handsome carrara-marble monument was commissioned by Matthew Barnett, a self-made businessman.

The Governor-general, Lord Bledisloe, unveiled the statue in 1932.

Lord Bledisloe celebrated Cook’s 1769 arrival as the first and foremost of ‘three outstanding landmarks’ in the history of New Zealand, followed by the arrival of Christianity and the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi.

This story, in Bledisloe’s view, would advance ‘the effectiveness of Empire partnership’, putting Europeans