When it’s good to be wrong

Brick and mortar memorials have never been good at telling history.

Well, that’s not quite correct. Brick and mortar monuments tell a great history. It’s just their story gets stuck in a time that is all too soon unrecognisable from the one we are in now.

Values and interpretations change and because memorials set in stone don’t, they are lucky if they make it two decades before they become insulting, insensitive or just plain wrong.

Thank goodness this happens. The alternative is a society in stasis. A society in short supply of forgiveness, compassion and a reverence for learning.

You only have to look to last month’s chaos in Charlottesville USA to see the damage clinging to one interpretation of the past can create.

Here in Taranaki it is telling the statue of a colonial soldier atop of the Marsland Hill New Zealand Wars memorial in New Plymouth has not been replaced even 26 years after it was toppled.

When it happened it was an act of vandalism that scandalised the community. It is now widely understood as activism against how Pa¯keha¯ chose to remember the civil wars in Taranaki that ‘‘legitimised’’ the massive confiscation of Ma¯ori land and destroyed their economic and cultural sovereignty. The wonder these days is how it did not happen sooner.

The inscription on the 1909 memorial honouring the ‘‘the officers and men of H.M. Naval, Military and Colonial Forces and Loyal Maoris who fell in action or died during the Maori Wars 1845–47:1860–70,’’ seems comically mistaken.

After all, it completely ignores the ‘‘disloyal Ma¯ori’’ who were protecting their property rights and honours those who used arms to steal land.

There is nothing wrong with honouring soldiers involved, no matter what side they fought on. They are instruments of policy so while their actions can be deplored, their involvement in war is the height of patriotism.

The Marsland Hill memorial is proof of how highly the soldiers were regarded by the majority and therefore it is possible to understand how each could justify their involvement in the conflicts as the right thing to do.

But with time and distance it is possible to see the land wars for what they were. Without defaming the individuals involved we can now say the wars were a tragedy in which violence was used unjustly to ruin one people and advance another.

Ultimately both sides emerged poorer and weaker. It has been 147 years since the guns fell silent and Ma¯ori are only just beginning to rebuild their economic and cultural identity. Pa¯keha¯ are themselves only beginning to genuinely build the partnership with Ma¯ori guaranteed to them by the Treaty of Waitangi. We should always value our monuments from yesterday and today for reminding us where we are and where we have been.

But we must never believe they are an incontestable history.

Doing so would only show how little we are willing to learn from our mistakes.

Matt Rilkoff

Chief News Director