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By Alex Braae in The Spinoff's The Bulletin. Deep wounds shown by Captain Cook vandalism...
A Gisborne Captain Cook statue has been vandalised, and the message painted on it shows the depth of tensions that will surround the 250th anniversary of his arrival in New Zealand. You might recall a different Cook statue was painted red back in 2016, to symbolise the killings of Māori people during his first visit. The message that has been painted on it this time cuts to the heart of what happened after that visit – the words 'thief Pakeha' is on the front, and 'this is our land' on the back – here's a report on it from Te Ao News.
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Local Gisborne councillor Meredith Akuhata-Brown says the
conversations to come around the vandalism will be hard but necessary. Speaking to Radio NZ,
she said she wasn't in favour of vandalism, but saw it as a form of
activism. "It is based on history and it's based on that history never
being given a chance to be spoken of, talked about or understood, and
people want that."
The idea of contested histories is going to become more and more important as the official ceremonies about Cook's arrival get closer. On Te Ao News there was a recent story which highlighted just how important even how we talk about it will – at its heart, the story was about a dispute between MPs Kelvin Davis and Paul Goldsmith about whether the events should be commemorated or celebrated. It might seem like a small difference, but it conveys a vastly different interpretation of history. These are concepts museums have grappled with intensely over recent decades.
And the long legacy of those first encounters still holds weight, and arguably can still be seen playing out in seemingly unrelated news stories. Take, for example, recent comments in the NZ Herald (paywalled) by regional economic development minister Shane Jones, where he unloaded vitriol on the hapū Ngāti Oneone. They oppose extension of the Gisborne Port, which Mr Jones described as "hillbilly thinking."
But Ngāti Oneone's history in the area goes back far further than Mr Jones' does, and while the minister himself is tangata whenua, in this situation he is a representative of the Crown. But Ngāti Oneone were there at that first contact with Cook – in fact their ancestor Te Maro was one of those shot dead by Cook, another representative of the Crown. Many will argue that such connections are irrelevant, because the country can't live in the past. But to ignore less savoury aspects of New Zealand history would be to blind ourselves to relevant reasons as to why the country is how it is now.
The idea of contested histories is going to become more and more important as the official ceremonies about Cook's arrival get closer. On Te Ao News there was a recent story which highlighted just how important even how we talk about it will – at its heart, the story was about a dispute between MPs Kelvin Davis and Paul Goldsmith about whether the events should be commemorated or celebrated. It might seem like a small difference, but it conveys a vastly different interpretation of history. These are concepts museums have grappled with intensely over recent decades.
And the long legacy of those first encounters still holds weight, and arguably can still be seen playing out in seemingly unrelated news stories. Take, for example, recent comments in the NZ Herald (paywalled) by regional economic development minister Shane Jones, where he unloaded vitriol on the hapū Ngāti Oneone. They oppose extension of the Gisborne Port, which Mr Jones described as "hillbilly thinking."
But Ngāti Oneone's history in the area goes back far further than Mr Jones' does, and while the minister himself is tangata whenua, in this situation he is a representative of the Crown. But Ngāti Oneone were there at that first contact with Cook – in fact their ancestor Te Maro was one of those shot dead by Cook, another representative of the Crown. Many will argue that such connections are irrelevant, because the country can't live in the past. But to ignore less savoury aspects of New Zealand history would be to blind ourselves to relevant reasons as to why the country is how it is now.
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