Navigating some difficult histories
How exactly should we remember the important early encounters in New Zealand history? Should we praise or condemn or find a difficult but honest middle ground? The Government announced in February it has committed $3.5 million to a national commemoration of the 250 years that have passed since Captain James Cook first visited New Zealand. Words like ‘‘discovery’’ have long since been outmoded. Former arts, culture and heritage minister Maggie Barry talked instead of the first encounters between Europeans and Ma¯ ori, with a replica of Cook’s ship, the Endeavour, stopping at important sites of contact, beginning with Gisborne in October 2019.
Barry said the Endeavour will be part of a flotilla, the Tuia 250 Voyage, honouring Polynesian sailing traditions alongside European ones. Dame Jenny Shipley, appointed to co-chair the National Coordinating Committee for First Encounters 250 because of her ‘‘experience, knowledge and mana’’, described it as ‘‘a commemoration for all New Zealanders to own, a commemoration which will lead to a greater understanding of our unique heritage in the Pacific and who we are as New Zealanders’’. Shipley’s co-chair is Hoturoa Barclay-Kerr, of Tainui descent.
These histories will be hard to navigate, and the pun is entirely intended. The legacy of Cook and colonialism has been more openly and painfully contested in Australia, where settlement was much more devastating for indigenous populations. Australia Day has been routinely dubbed Invasion Day. In New Zealand, indigenous rights advocate Tina Ngata laid a complaint with the United Nations over the ‘‘doctrine of discovery’’ she expected to see in the planned commemorations. There is a need to be mindful of recent and changing thinking about colonisation, at both the academic and the popular level.
Actor Sam Neill’s critically praised TV series Uncharted put a revisionist view before a mass audience. It took Neill around the Pacific that Cook encountered and colonised. Despite the title, which suggested no-one sailed the Pacific before Cook and his men, the series took a nuanced, even view of the dark side of colonialism – disease, war, poverty and land appropriation. People still live with the effects.
Cook’s legacy is being reconsidered in other ways. The Cook Islands is considering changing its name to properly reflect its Polynesian identity. Nearly 60 possible names are being evaluated, with an ultimate contender to be shortlisted in April. Dual naming has taken hold in New Zealand. Poverty Bay, given a bad name by Cook, was officially renamed Tu¯ ranganui-a-Kiwa/Poverty Bay in February. Land Information Minister Eugenie Sage spoke of the delicate balancing act of New Zealand history: ‘‘On one hand the restoration of the traditional Ma¯ ori name Tu¯ ranganui-a-Kiwa for the bay is long overdue for local iwi, given the importance of their tu¯ puna or ancestor. At the same time there is significant heritage value associated with the name Poverty Bay being given by Captain James Cook and recognising his first landing in New Zealand, as well as use of the name by local people.’’
It is apt that this important change has been made ahead of the re-enactment of Cook’s landing, which could easily look kitsch or insensitive. The anniversary needs to reflect painful histories as well as triumphant ones.