Public History Review
Vol. 30, 2023
ARTICLES (PEER REVIEWED)
A New Zeal for History: Public History in New Zealand
Alex Trapeznik
University of Otago
Corresponding author: Alex Trapeznik, alexander.trapeznik@otago.ac.nz
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5130/phrj.v30i0.8380
Article History: Published 30/03/2023
Keywords
New Zealand; Public History; Historic Places; Heritage; Museums; Treaty of Waitangi; Māori
Public history is still a relatively unknown term in New Zealand, an island nation in the southwest pacific with a population of around 4.6 million people. Until the late 1980s it was rare for professional historians to practise their profession outside the academy. Most of the few who did were public servants attached to institutions such as the Department of Internal Affairs or the major museums. Expanding work opportunities in the institutional, museum and historic heritage sectors have, however, fostered an increase in the number of freelance historians, some of whom are now participating in the identification, assessment, interpretation and management of New Zealand’s historic places. In the ‘turf wars’ common to new fields of enterprise an ‘us and them’ approach has given way to a recognition that public and academic historians utilise the same skills in research, analysis and writing that are taught in universities.1
The establishment of the Professional Historians’ Association of New Zealand Aotearoa (PHANZA) in 1994 has provided a forum for representing and advancing the interests of New Zealand’s professional historians. The formation of the Centre for Public History at the University of Otago in 1995, along with several course offerings at other universities, were concrete indicators of the growth of public history in this country.2 In the early 2000s Victoria University began to offer a Masters in Public History, and in 2009 the Waikato University Centre for Public History was established to facilitate and promote public history projects. However, by 2014 the Victoria degree course lapsed and the Waikato Centre had changed its name to the Public History Research Unit and has since become simply the History Research Unit. The New Zealand context has shown that academic programmes in public history have only a small niche market and a limited shelf life. Today the focus has turned to heritage and museum studies.3
A critical literature devoted to public history developed from 2000 with the publication of key texts such as Common Ground? Heritage and Public Places in New Zealand, (2000) and Going Public: The Changing Face of New Zealand History, (2001) were complemented by many scholarly historical works, most of them supported by the state. As Nancy Swarbrick has observed, ‘Alongside and underpinning this developing literature, there has been an increased demand for historians and historical analysis beyond the education sector. For some time, the Waitangi Tribunal and the History Group of the Ministry for Culture and Heritage have been major employers of historians and the historical method.’4 Until 2000, this group had been the Historical Branch (previously the Historical Publications Branch) of the Department of Internal Affairs.
In addition to the Waitangi Tribunal which investigates long-standing Maori claims against the state, historians are employed in a number of other government organisations dealing with Treaty of Waitangi issues (the Office of Treaty Settlements, the Crown Forestry Rental Trust and the Crown Law Office). There is also a great deal of historical research conducted at the local level, in museums, archives and historical societies. In addition, there are many freelance and contract historians currently employed across New Zealand on historical projects that speak to audiences beyond the academy.5 To enhance, stimulate and facilitate public history research in New Zealand the electronic journal the New Zealand Journal of Public History first appeared in 2011. It is published intermittently by the History Research Unit at the University of Waikato and is devoted to the discussion, debate and dissemination of ideas about the practice of public history in New Zealand.6
Recent scholarship in the field evaluates the potential of a new method of public history by exploring the contemporary meaning of history and the relevance of history, historical knowledge and historical methodology for organisations through a novel adaptation of a consulting methodology, the ‘Learning History Approach’, to understand what individuals and communities say and do about history. This approach sits at the intersection of interdisciplinary research on historical consciousness, public history and ‘learning histories’ from organisational studies. It shows how an adaptation of the original learning history methodology can both fit within and challenge the conceptual frameworks of public history. Raising historical consciousness and engaging more people with the historical discipline is vital for the health of the historical discipline. Therefore the learning history approach can be an effective means of expanding participatory historical culture. This is because the approach draws participants into reflective and often transformational conversations about historiographical issues such as historical community and heritage. Ultimately, this view reflects the need to build a more participatory historical culture and the active role of academic, professional historians in realising that culture.7
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Difficult communications for much of the nineteenth century made European settlement in New Zealand highly localized, and strong regional identities and loyalties persist to the present day. Early local histories were mostly celebratory and sentimental, applauding the achievements of the ‘pioneers’. From the late nineteenth century – when the country’s population was around 800,000 — Jubilees of schools, churches and small towns nearly always produced publications, but these were often small-scale and amateurish by modern academic standards. Publishers began to show interest in more serious works of local history in the 1920s and 1930s, many of which first appeared in serial form in local newspapers. The centenary of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1940 and subsequent provincial centenaries aroused greater public interest in local history. Local and regional history are now well-respected genres of New Zealand history. Several important works appear most years, almost all of them well up to professional scholarly standards.
Since the late nineteenth century local and central government have sponsored many projects in both Māori and Pakeha (non-Māori) history and the study of Māori origins and culture. Emerging, at first modestly, governmental backing of historical activities expanded significantly from the 1980s; for example, The Official History of New Zealand in the Second World War 1939–45 is a 48-volume series published by the War History Branch (and its successors) of the Department of Internal Affairs which covered New Zealand involvement in the Second World War. The series was published during the period 1949 to 1986. Some landmark government-sponsored history projects from the 1980s include the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, which was published in print in 1990 and digitally in 2001, and the Bateman New Zealand Historical Atlas, published in 1997. The latter drew on the expertise of a range of historians and archaeologists as well as cartographers, under the editorship of Malcolm McKinnon of the Historical Branch of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The atlas ‘broke new ground in its spatial representation of history.’8
Work on the pioneering reference website Te Ara — The Encyclopedia of New Zealand began in 2002, ten ‘themes’ being released sequentially until the ‘first build’ was complete in 2014. By then, the work comprised about a thousand entries making use of 30,000 resources, which included photographs, works of art, sound recordings, film, maps and interactive features. The general editor was Jock Phillips of the Ministry of Culture and Heritage.9 ‘Te ara’ in Māori means ‘the pathway’ and this website offers many pathways to understanding New Zealand. Short essays and multimedia combine to present a comprehensive guide to New Zealand’s peoples, natural environment, history, culture, economy and society. It was the world’s first ‘born-digital’ national encyclopedia. Te Ara is also a gateway to cultural information from other institutions, with links to the digital collections of libraries, archives and museums around the country. An important feature of Te Ara is its Māori content. The Māori perspective is presented prominently, and items with substantial Māori content are available in te reo (the Maori language). Te Ara also provides access to the 1966 Encyclopaedia of New Zealand and the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography.
Museums began to employ trained historians as curators from the late 1960s. At the Dominion Museum for instance the impending bicentennial of James Cook’s discovery of New Zealand led to the appointment of the first ‘curator of colonial history’ in 1968. Changes to the law governing historic places led to the wider employment of professional historians. Often on short-term contracts, they researched management plans for historic reserves for the Department of Lands and Survey from 1977 on. Historians and archaeologists were also needed from 1975 to carry out research for the Historic Places Trust’s new register of pre-1900 archaeological sites. The Trust’s role in classifying historic buildings was formalised in 1980 and its regulatory powers extended in 1993. Regional and local authorities were given greater responsibility for identifying and protecting historic places under the Resource Management Act 1991, and they too often employed historians.10
Defining public history is not simple. Leslie H. Fishel Jr. admits that ‘it almost defies definition’ but offers ‘a stepping stone towards [a] greater understanding’ of this definition. For Fishel, ‘public history is the adaptation and application of the historian’s skills and outlook for the benefit of private and public enterprises.’11 Some may consider this too narrow. But whatever definition is used, all encompass two important elements.
First, audience is important in public history. It might range from a wide and general one — for example, the audience for television programmes, museum labels or heritage trail guides — to a narrower one — such as an audience for tribunal reports, school centennial histories or government agency reports. Nevertheless, the audience for public history will almost always be wider than that for academic research. Secondly, public history is usually undertaken for a particular reason, for instance to mark a milestone in the history of a group, to promote public understanding of a little-known aspect of history, to advance the legitimacy of a social group or to schedule a historic place. That reason usually forms part of the commissioning process: the group or person commissioning the work will have specific questions to be answered, and specific features upon which focus is to be placed.12 On the other hand, many groups carry out the research and writing of histories themselves; Jorma Kalela has argued that public historians’ ‘prime role is to act as consultants who provide expert advice’.13
Public historians seek to make history serviceable to the present and the future. They are interested in creating a forum where different elements or perspectives of the historical record, broadly conceived, can be presented and caused to produce their own synthesis. Their products include official or government histories; histories of social movements; institutional and business histories; local, community or family histories; museum interpretation; websites; and historic building research and assessment. Public historians are at the forefront in Treaty of Waitangi-related research. Set up by the Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975, the Waitangi Tribunal is a permanent commission of inquiry that makes recommendations on claims brought by Māori relating to Crown actions which breach the promises made in the Treaty of Waitangi. Since the Treaty was signed in 1840, Māori have made many complaints to the Crown that the terms of the Treaty were not being upheld. Often these petitions and protests fell on deaf ears. In the 1970s, Māori protest about unresolved Treaty grievances was increasing and sometimes taking place outside the law. By establishing the Waitangi Tribunal, Parliament provided a legal process by which Māori Treaty claims could be investigated. Tribunal inquiries contribute to the resolution of Treaty claims and to the reconciliation of outstanding issues between Māori and the Crown.14 As Michael Belgarve notes: ‘The historical work that has been undertaken for and by the Tribunal since 1985 is substantial and significant. Its nature needs to be much better understood, particularly by historians little versed in Maori, race relations or Tribunal history.’ 15
The reader, viewer or visitor of or to a work of public history is an integral part and participant in this synthesis of the historical record. Local, community and family historians are ‘active agents’ in breaking down the perception of a ‘rigid demarcation between “historians” and “their publics”’.16 By concerning itself with the presentation of history to a wide audience, public history casts a wide net that covers not only history but also heritage in its many guises. This interrelatedness between history and heritage in a contemporary sense has forced history (and historians) into the marketplace as never before. Nevertheless, instead of defending heritage in purely economic terms, historians, members of one of the few professional groups which studies the past for its own value, find themselves engaging the community as a central component in any synthesis of the historical record. In achieving this new synthesis, our material culture, or that part of it that is comprises historic sites and artefacts, should play a significant part as a source in documenting our past.
In the early twenty-first century the most exploited and misunderstood word or idea in the field of public history is ‘heritage’.17 In a country where land-based heritage or historic places have largely monopolised the term, ‘heritage’ is widely used as a synonym for ‘historic place’. Historic places include archaeological sites, wahi tapu — places sacred to the Māori in the traditional, spiritual, religious, ritual or mythological sense — and natural features with significant human associations. Definitions of heritage and opinions of its cultural value vary considerably. In its broadest sense, ‘heritage is the things of value which are inherited’18 whether on a personal or collective level.
If definitions of heritage remain fuzzy, its move from the private arena to the public is sharply obvious. In its most basic and original form, the concept of heritage was simply conceived as private property, something that could be inherited, bought or sold. Private knowledge and ownership was control. More recently, however, heritage has taken on a new meaning. ‘At first yours or mine’, David Lowenthal observes, ‘heritage soon becomes inherently collective’.19 ‘Heritage’, he continues, ‘more and more denotes what we jointly hold with others — the blessings (and curses) that belong to and largely define a group.”20 At a national level, collective identity incorporates commonly agreed-upon cultural values. With this sort of collective sense of identity we can speak of ‘our’ heritage or ‘national’ heritage. Yet even such broad meanings of heritage are constantly being redefined and reshaped.
There exists an ongoing national self-evaluation and introspection by a changing population base. The renaissance of Māori culture, for example, the Te Māori exhibition was a milestone in the Māori cultural renaissance of the 1970s onwards. Featuring traditional Māori artwork, the exhibition at first toured the United States in 1984 and was shown in New York, St Louis, Chicago and San Francisco. Moreover, and the Māori Language Act 1987 was a piece of legislation passed by the Parliament of New Zealand that gave official language status to the Māori language (te reo Māori), and gave speakers a right to use it in legal settings such as courts, and this together with migration from continental Europe, the Pacific islands and Asia, have altered perceptions of ‘our’ national heritage. In the most jarringly obvious example, the naval ensign no longer runs quietly up the flagstaff to close ceremonies marking the national anniversary, Waitangi Day.
At Waitangi and elsewhere a number of groups and communities have been asserting their identity within a national framework that has traditionally focused on a British heritage. Also, New Zealand has not been immune to recent developments abroad which have witnessed protests about memorials to explorers, imperial rulers, colonial officials and slave-owners across the globe. Here as elsewhere there are questions around and responses to monuments that commemorate contentious aspects of the past and the issue as to whether these monuments should be deconstructed, reconstructed or destroyed. For example, the statue of the British naval officer John Fane Charles Hamilton was swiftly taken down by the Hamilton City Council in response to calls from Waikato-Tainui leaders. There have been calls to remove a number of statues or memorials across the country and criticisms of the Robbie Burns and Queen Victoria statues in Dunedin. The intersections between global protests and local histories was made clear with the graffiti inscribed on the James Cook statue on the Waikanae beachfront in Turanganui/Gisborne: ‘Black Lives Matter and so do Maori and ‘Take this racist headstone of my people down before I do’.21
Recently, the Government Government announced a school curriculum change, making it compulsory for all schools to teach ‘key aspects’ of New Zealand history. The Ministry of Education was tasked with creating a new curriculum to ‘span the full range of New Zealanders’ experiences… with contemporary issues directly linked to major events of the past.’ The draft curriculum has sparked heated debate and controversy amongst historians and the wider public. After 10 years (Years 1-10) of compulsory study all students are expected to understand three big ideas: that Māori history is the foundational and continuous history of Aotearoa New Zealand; colonisation and its consequences have been central to Aotearoa New Zealand history for the past 200 years and continue to influence all aspects of New Zealand life; and the course of Aotearoa New Zealand’s history has been shaped by the exercise and effects of power. It proposes a shift, teaching the history of Aotearoa not solely through a Eurocentric perspective – but incorporating te ao Māori, the environment and the students’ own whakapapa. An Expert Advisory Panel was set up in March 2020 under the auspices of Royal Society Te Apārangi to provide an independent source of expertise to the Ministry of Education on the development of a core curriculum and it noted: ‘While no curriculum can be comprehensive in telling all of Aotearoa New Zealand’s histories, the effect of overly compacting the curriculum has led to major gaps, which in turn may make a good deal of the existing content partial or even incomprehensible.’22
Why do we need to preserve the past, and for whose benefit and at what cost? Opinions vary. ‘To celebrate their patrons’ regimes, Renaissance historians ran down the past in favour of the present’, David Lowenthal observes, ‘whereas antiquarians studying ruins and relics magnified past achievements to the detriment of the present.’23 Preserving evidence of the past is central to individual and collective identity and existence, for it serves as a central point of reference, and contributes to providing life with purpose and meaning. In Māori tradition:
all elements of the natural world are related through whakapapa (genealogy). The Maori world was created through the union of Ranginui (the Sky Father) and Papatua-nuku (the Earth Mother) … Traditional Maori attitudes to the natural world reflect the relationships created through Rangi and Papa: all living things are their descendants and are thus related. Further, the sense of interrelatedness between people and nature creates a sense of belonging to nature, rather than being ascendant to it, as humans are born from “mother earth” and return to her on their death.24
Māori see people, nature and the land as being inextricably intertwined. Their view of history and heritage is based on a shared whakapapa in which ‘all things are from the same origin and … the welfare of any part of the environment determines the welfare of people.’25 Another relevant term is taonga (treasured possessions), a concept which includes both tangible and intangible treasures and korero. H. M. Mead asserts that to appreciate fully the meaning and cultural significance of taonga the word korero needs to be introduced. ‘All objects that are called taonga’, have korero attached to them … [it] means talk associated with creation and production of works of art and particularly with the stories and explanations given by artists and patrons to such works.’26 More specific places that are taonga include wahi taonga, wahi tapu and wahi tupuna. Wahi taonga and wahi tapu have been described as places of special value and places of sacred and extreme importance.27
It is important to note that tangible objects that are fixed and non-living (the built environment) may include, and often do, intangible qualities. This approach towards understanding our built heritage is very much a Pakeha view and is one that focuses on ‘humankind as separate from the landscape.’28 The Māori notion of heritage sees it as an integral part of the landscape and something that is inseparable from daily life. Aspects of this heritage are recognised as matters of national importance.
In the end, despite statutory requirements and definitions that purport to be rigorous, thorough, qualitative and/or quantitative, the whole process is finally based upon a subjective judgment of significance or value. However, we can identify a number of factors for consideration, albeit tangible ones, that may influence a decision to register a building or building site. Some factors determining significance include rarity, representativeness of building style, the architect, builders, cultural significance, significant owners or occupants, local or regional significance, materials, relative age, condition, integrity of landscape and history of use.29
Indeed, it is possible to conclude that historic places offer one of the most promising avenues for public historians. The work of anthropologists and archaeologists has already opened many invaluable windows on the period before Maori-European contact. Without the scholarship of archaeologists and architectural and urban historians, many of the stunning plates of the New Zealand Historical Atlas would not have been possible. The challenge for public historians will be to enter the heritage industry in sufficient numbers to ensure that New Zealand preserves and presents the widest possible range of historic places and to strive to ensure that it clearly and honestly articulates their significance. As the art critic Robert Hughes said while surveying the mess that Sydney has made of part of its historic waterfront, ‘the claims of the past do need to be heard.’30
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Yesterday’s ephemera are today’s treasures. Relics of the past once consigned to eclectic local museums and antique shops now can be found throughout the entire country in a wide range of contexts. We take solace from the past and its buildings, relics and landscapes. They provide us with comfort and a source of collective identity in a globalized, internet-connected world where points of reference are sometimes obscured. There has been surge in the popularity of history in public, for example, historical and genealogical societies, history on the internet, biography, and history on film and television. But there has been at the same time general disengagement with this phenomenon on the part of the academy.
On the internet, the main useful, informative sites are sponsored by the government. NZ History is a website where one can explore New Zealand’s culture and society, politics and government, and the impact of war in particular.31 DigitalNZ, launched in 2008, is aimed at making New Zealand digital content easier to find, share and use. To date there are over 25 million digital items available to view from over 120 partner organisations. These include cultural institutions, government departments, publicly funded organisations and educational and research organisations, as well as the private sector and community groups. The contents of DigitalNZ include photographs, artworks, newspapers, books, other archival material, journal articles, music, film and data sets.32 AncestryDNA is New Zealand’s principal family history research site. There, genealogists can find collections of historical records, historical, and genealogical resources to help them trace their New Zealand ancestors.
New Zealand’s government-sponsored First World War Centenary Programme has provided the shared ‘WW100’ identity for the variety of official, national, community and personal commemorations of New Zealand’s role in the First World War from 1914 to 1919. Formal government ceremonies have been organised at battlefields on the Gallipoli Peninsula, on the Western Front and in the Middle East to mark the centenary of key First World War events. The official government legacy projects include Sir Peter Jackson’s ‘The Great War’ exhibition at Te Papa, the national museum and the Pukeahu National War Memorial Park in Wellington and the development of the Auckland War Memorial Museum’s on-line ‘Cenotaph’ database of New Zealand service personnel. For those New Zealanders visiting the battlefields of Gallipoli or the Western Front, the Nga Tapuwae New Zealand First World War Trails project has provided site interpretation and information at battle sites and museums together with free apps and on-line resources. The Ministry of Culture and Heritage is working with Massey University, the New Zealand Defence Force and the Royal New Zealand Returned and Services’ Association to produce a series of centennial histories on New Zealand and the First World War.
The WW100 programme was supported by the New Zealand Lottery Grants Board, which made available more than $25 million between 2013 and 2016 to support community projects. Creative New Zealand, a government-funded arts council, provided $1.5 million to support collaborative arts projects to mark the centennial of the First World War. A landmark national exhibition, realised with the assistance of Lottery Grants Board funding, is the $8 million Te Papa-Weta Workshop’s ‘Gallipoli: The Scale of Our War’. Eight New Zealanders are depicted in key events during the campaign in 2.4 times life-size dioramas, and the exhibition has already attracted more than one million visitors. Regional and local museums throughout New Zealand continue to mark the centenary of the First World War with exhibitions and events featuring local stories. The Toitu Otago Settlers Museum’s exhibition ‘Dunedin’s Great War 1914–1918’ included a popular in-house documentary ‘The Journey of the Otagos’, and attracted 200,000 visitors in 2014 and 2015. The National Army Museum created the travelling exhibition ‘Heartlanders: New Zealanders of the Great War’ which toured the country in 2016 while in the same year the Aratoi Wairarapa Museum of Art and History presented the popular exhibition ‘Featherston Camp 1916–2016: The Record of a Remarkable Achievement’.
The death of public-service broadcasting other than from Maori television has meant the big growth in interest in history seen overseas – notably on PBS, BBC or the History Channel — has largely passed New Zealand terrestrial television by.33 The BBC History magazine, for example, lists a wide range of historical television and radio programmes that rarely make the screen here, and if they do, they are sometimes shown years late and of course are not about New Zealand. A landmark in New Zealand television was historian James Belich’s five-part series of the 1990s The New Zealand Wars which took a new look at the history of Māori versus Pākehā armed conflict. This popular series reframed New Zealand history. The New Zealand Wars was judged Best Documentary at the 1998 Qantas Media Awards.
Unfortunately, there has been no follow-up series. Occasionally, a foreign series incorporates something about New Zealand. Tony Robinson’s Tour of Duty (2015) included a segment about New Zealand – Dunedin and Auckland for programmes to mark the centenary of the Gallipoli campaign – though it was mostly about Australia. By default local museum curators have become engaged in historical documentary films. In June 2014, Toitū curator Seán Brosnahan embarked on a journey to follow in the footsteps of the Otago Infantry Battalion and Otago Mounted Rifles during the First World War. The resulting documentary — ‘The Journey of the Otagos — was the first film ever to be made on solely on the Otagos’ participation in the First World War. The eleven documentary episodes were shown in the ‘Dunedin’s Great War’ exhibition at Toitū Otago Settlers Museum. There is also his forthcoming documentary about Chinese settlers and their rugged lives in the Otago region.34 It helps to explain why Dunedin has a Chinese garden, and will be called ‘The Journey to Lan Yuan’, after the gardens.
Bridget Williams Books is a publisher of historical works aimed at a wider public. Some notable recent examples of books by academic historians include Barbara Brookes’ History of New Zealand Women (2016), Andrew Sharp’s new biography of Samuel Marsden (2016) and Ben Schrader’s ‘The Big Smoke’: New Zealand Cities 1840–1920. The one non-academic historical periodical, other than Heritage New Zealand’s Heritage New Zealand, is New Zealand Memories magazine, a unique and absorbing bi-monthly publication promoting New Zealand’s heritage.
The sort of public history festivals that attract huge numbers in the America and Britain do not seem to have taken off in New Zealand. Some local examples include the annual Tauranga Medieval Faire and events organized by various military re-enactment societies.
History of technology is catered for by private groups. For example, the Dunedin Gasworks Museum preserves the surviving part of the now closed Dunedin Gasworks, which was New Zealand’s first and last gasworks which operated from 1863 until 1987. It is one of only three preserved gasworks museums in the world and is a significant local and world heritage site. Another is Auckland’s Museum of Transport and Technology, which is New Zealand’s largest transport, technology and social history museum.
Heritage is often confused with nostalgia, a view that equates the past with something that is intrinsically worthwhile and good. It is a view that is safe and secure and that accords with the past being considered a distinctly marketable commodity. Good examples of heritage tourism and how history has become a marketable product are Shanty Town Heritage Park near Greymouth constructed and opened in the early 1970s. It consists of 30 re-created historic buildings making up a nineteenth-century gold-mining town. Ferrymead Heritage Park in Christchurch, which features an early 1900s (Edwardian) township, has exhibits such as houses, a picture theatre, school classroom, church, jail, railway station, lodge hall, post office, printers, tobacconist, general store and lawyer’s office. They promote a view of the past that is comforting and non-confrontational, disseminating a history without context and without people. When history becomes a product it often becomes alienated from the past, bearing no resemblance to what has happened to people in times gone by, yet of commercial necessity claiming to depict accurately all that has previously happened.
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Monuments, markers, buildings, plaques and memorials play an important function in providing social cohesion. Their shared stories help individuals within a society connect with each other and provide a shared community heritage. At a national level, collective identity incorporates cultural values that are commonly agreed upon. With this sort of collective sense of identity we can speak of ‘our’ heritage or ‘national’ heritage. For instance, Jock Phillips’ recent authoritative work on war memorials, To the Memory (2016), builds upon widespread interest generated by the centenary of the First World War, whereas his pioneering publication on the subject, The Sorrow and the Pride, attracted relatively little public attention on its appearance in 1990.35 Yet even such broad meanings of heritage are constantly being redefined and reshaped. A changing population base brings with it national introspection and continual self-evaluation. Migration from Europe and Asia and the rise of Maori culture have altered perceptions of national heritage. A range of groups and communities are now asserting their identity within a national framework that has traditionally focussed on a British heritage.
New Zealand retains a unique assemblage of places of cultural heritage value relating to its indigenous and its more recent peoples.36 Many people feel a common responsibility in trying to safeguard our cultural heritage for present and future generations. Moreover, many people are interested in conserving not only our built heritage but also in understanding their own family or whanau, local, regional and national histories. History is not the exclusive prerogative of the professional historian: the interested public can be ‘active agents’ in creating their own histories.37 The practice of public history, which deals with the public presentation of the past, takes many forms and accommodates varied perspectives and interests, but the goal of the professional public historian remains constant – to broaden the public’s appreciation and understanding of the past. As Ludmilla Jordanova states: ‘Whatever the complexities of “public”, public history is a useful label, in that it draws attention to phenomena relevant to the discipline of history, but too rarely discussed in undergraduate courses.’38
Endnotes
1 For a wider discussion of historians and the New Zealand heritage sector, see Gavin McLean, ‘It’s History Jim, But Not as We Know It: Historians and the New Zealand Heritage Industry’, in Bronwyn Dalley and Jock Phillips (eds), Going Public, Auckland University Press, Auckland 2001, pp158-74.
2 Nancy Swarbrick, ‘Public history’, Te Ara: The Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 30-Sep-14 URL: http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/public-history/print (Accessed 14 November 2016).
3 The University of Auckland offers a Master of Arts in Museums and Cultural Heritage, Victoria University a Master of Museum and Heritage Studies, and Massey University a Master of Arts in Museum Studies.
4 Swarbrick, op cit, np.
5 ‘Introduction’, New Zealand Journal of Public History, vol 1, no 1, 2011, p.2 (Accessed 14 November 2016). https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316050873.001
6 http://www.waikato.ac.nz/fass/research/centres-units/hru/nzjph (Accessed 11 September 2016).
7 M. S. Smith, ‘Using the Past: Learning Histories, Public Histories and Possibilities PhD thesis, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand. See also, Mark Smith, ‘“Every brick a boy”. The Invention of Tradition and the Use of History: Preliminary observations from a “learning history” at Southwell School’, New Zealand Journal of Public History, vol 1, no 1, 2011, pp43-59.
8 Swarbrick, op cit, np.
9 He also served as Chief Historian for the New Zealand Government.
10 Swarbrick, op cit, np.
11 Leslie H. Fishel Jr., ‘Public History and the Academy’, in Barbara J. Howe and Emory L. Kemp (eds), Public History: an Introduction, Robert E. Krieger, Malabar, FL, 1986, p12.
12 Based on unpublished seminar notes by Bronwyn Dalley, Historical Branch, Department of Internal Affairs, Wellington, 1997.
13 Jorma Kalela, Making History: The Historian and Uses of the Past, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2012, p161.
14 https://waitangitribunal.govt.nz/about-waitangi-tribunal/past-present-future-of-waitangi-tribunal/ (Accessed 14 July 2021).
15 Michael Belgrave, ‘Looking Forward: Historians and the Waitangi Tribunal’, New Zealand Journal of History, vol 40, no 2, 2006, p231. See also ‘Colonialism Revisited: Public History and New Zealand’s Waitangi Tribunal’, in David Dean (ed), A Companion to Public History, Wiley, Hoboken, NJ 2018, pp.217-230. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118508930.ch15
16 Hilda Kean and Paul Ashton, ‘Introduction: People and their Pasts and Public History Today’, in Paul Ashton and Hilda Kean (eds), People and their Pasts: Public History Today, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2009, p.1. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230234468_1
17 The Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment’s (PCE) landmark report, Historic and Cultural Heritage Management in New Zealand, PCE, Wellington 1996, observed on page two that the word ‘heritage’ occurs in relevant New Zealand legislation in several places, but its definition (where provided) and usage varies considerably. The PCE accepted that most New Zealanders understand heritage to mean historic places.
18 C. Michael Hall and Simon McArthur, ‘Heritage Management: An Introductory Framework’, in C. Michael Hall and Simon McArthur (eds), Heritage Management in New Zealand and Australia. Visitor Management, Interpretation and Marketing, Oxford University Press, Auckland 1993, p.2.
19 David Lowenthal, The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1998, p55. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511523809
20 ibid, p60.
21 Tony Ballantyne, “Reactions to statues help reframe national history”, Otago Daily Times, 22 June 2020.
22 Aotearoa New Zealand Histories. A response to draft curriculum. Royal Society Te Apārangi 17 May 2021, p7.
23 Lowenthal, op cit, pp35-6.
24 Manatu Maori, He Kakano I Ruia Mai I Rangiatea – Maori Values and Environmental Management, Department of Internal Affairs, Wellington, 1991, p 2.
25 T. Tau, A. Goodall, D. Palmer and R. Rau, Te Whakatau Kaupapa. Ngai Tahu Resource Management Strategy for the Canterbury Region, Department of Internal Affairs, Wellington 1990, pp 3-4.
26 H. M. Mead, ‘The Nature of Taonga’, in Taonga Maori Conference – New Zealand 18-27 November 1990, Department of Internal Affairs, Wellington 1990, p164.
27 Tau, Goodall, Palmer and Rau, op cit, pp.7-12.
28 Hall and McArthur, op cit, p.4.
29 ibid, p10.
30 Robert Hughes, ‘A History Forgotten’, Reflections, Issue 3, 1998, p.9.
31 http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/ (Accessed 14 November 2016).
32 http://www.digitalnz.org/ (Accessed 14 November 2016).
33 Radio also has a paucity of programmes devoted to history, two notable exceptions being the recently defunct Jim Sullivan’s Sunday evening show “Sounds Historical” and Jack Perkins’ ‘Spectrum’ on Radio New Zealand National.
34 From about 1866 until the 1870s, the hills near Roxburgh in Central Otago were home to about 4500 Chinese miners.
35 Jock Phillips, To the Memory: New Zealand’s War Memorials, Potter & Burton, Nelson 2016, a much revised and extended version of Chris Maclean, Jock Phillips and Debbie Willis, The Sorrow and the Pride: New Zealand War Memorials, GP Books for the Historical Branch, Department of Internal Affairs, Wellington, 1990.
36 ‘Preamble’, ICOMOS New Zealand Charter for the Conservation of Places of Cultural Heritage Value, ICOMOS New Zealand, 1993.
37 Kean and Ashton, op cit, p1.
38 Ludmilla Jordanova, History in Practice, Arnold, London, 2000, p141.