Latest news with #Polynesians
DW
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- DW
Holy Surf! - Once Upon a Wave – DW – 07/25/2025
The documentary tells the fascinating story of surfing. With breathtaking footage, the film provides insights into a sport that has its origins in Polynesian culture. It was filmed on the coasts of Tahiti, Hawaii and California. Surfing is a sport that's far more than just a game: It's also the expression of a culture. In this case, it is the culture of a people who live with and on the water - the Polynesians. The art of riding the waves is their ancient heritage. Surfing was on the verge of extinction almost a century ago - a thorn in the side of Christian missionaries. It owes its resurrection to a handful of young runaways, businessmen and rebellious young men and women from all over the world. Their stories are told here. Surfing grew in popularity around the world, and eventually became a competitive sport, earning a place in the Olympics. DW English SAT 16.08.2025 – 11:03 UTC SAT 16.08.2025 – 22:03 UTC SUN 17.08.2025 – 05:03 UTC Lagos UTC +1 | Cape Town UTC +2 | Nairobi UTC +3 Delhi UTC +5,5 | Bangkok UTC +7 | Hong Kong UTC +8 London UTC +1 | Berlin UTC +2 | Moscow UTC +3 San Francisco UTC -7 | Edmonton UTC -6 | New York UTC -4
Otago Daily Times
18-07-2025
- General
- Otago Daily Times
Cat monitoring details shown
Rats, cats, possums, kiwi, tītī and white tail deer star in the first round of camera monitoring on Stewart Island. Details of the monitoring which took place during two weeks in May can be found on the Department of Conservation's Conservation blog website. About 300 trail cameras have been set up across 2300 hectares to record the presence of feral cats, rats and possums before, during and after the aerial 1080 poison operation. Last year the Department of Conservation announced a two-phase operation to drop 1080 bait to reduce the feral cat population endangering the Pukunui/Southern NZ dotterel. Phase one in about 6000 hectares of the island was completed earlier this month. The cameras are set up from sea level at Doughboy Bay to up and over the tops of the Tin Range where one of the last pukunui breeding grounds is. There are also cameras set up outside of the 1080 drop area to serve as a comparison. A lure, often containing rabbit meat, is set up in front of the trail cameras which are programmed to take bursts of photographs when they sense movement. On the blog it states the photographs show there are "lots of cats". The Otago Daily Times asked if Doc knew how many cats were in the area and could it be the cats were featuring in more than one camera and being counted twice or more. Doc Rakiura operations manager Jennifer Ross said the purpose of the monitoring was not count the number of pests. "Our aim is to measure the relative abundance of feral cats, rats and possums in the operational area before, during and after predator control. "This will help us to measure the results of the predator control operation." The results of the monitoring were what was expected and are similar to the non-drop area at Ruggedy Range, she said. Kiore, (Pacific rats) , Norway and ships rats feature in the photographs. Rakiura Tītī Islands administering body member Tāne Davis said kiore were smaller and less common than ship or Norway rats but they still had major impact on insects, land snails, lizards, bats and smaller land and seabirds. It is thought kiore arrived in New Zealand with the first Polynesians about 100 years ago, he said. While Ngāi Tahu acknowledged the cultural importance of kiore rats to some groups its position as kaitiaki or guardians was to eradicate them, he said. ZIP operations director Duncan Kay said Norway rats were a formidable predator. "They can grow much larger than kiore and ship rats — up to 25 cm, including the tail." They were also better swimmers and could easily swim 2km. "While they're not such good climbers as ship rats, they can still reach birds' nests above the ground."
Otago Daily Times
11-07-2025
- Science
- Otago Daily Times
Extinction may be no moa?
Most of us have lost someone dear. It's unhappily the way of things, that in the midst of life we are indeed in death. Who wouldn't give pots of money or anything they owned for even a short time more with a loved one who has died? Instead, we are left with the hurt and sorrow, the feeling we have lost part of ourselves. In the animal kingdom, whole orders and families of creatures have died out, many of them as a result of human behaviour. They have been killed by hunting and by introduced predators, and because we have destroyed their habitat directly by burning or through ongoing insidious changes to their food sources, including plant distribution, as a consequence of climate change. What if we could really bring these animals back somehow, rather than just in our minds? You might say we owe them that at least. Could we start with moa? That's the idea which has burst through into the media this week, courtesy of United States biotechnology company Colossal Biosciences, Ngāi Tahu, Canterbury Museum and film-maker Sir Peter Jackson. Through the use of genetic engineering and DNA in preserved moa remains, they believe South Island giant moa hatchlings could be restored to life in less than eight years. New Zealand has a shocking roll call of species which have become extinct since the first Polynesians arrived some time in the late 13th century. Those settlers were accompanied by the Pacific rat, kiore, which exterminated some bird species, and then Europeans arrived some 500 years later with their deadly cargo of stoats, ferrets, weasels, Norway rats and ship rats. New Zealand ornithologist Dr Richard Holdaway says during about 750 years of human settlement the number of vertebrate species has nearly halved, including the losses of one type of bat, more than 50 birds, three frogs and three lizards, and a freshwater fish. Moa were hunted to extinction by about the early 1400s. Prominent Catlins archaeologist Les Lockerbie proved that those early settlers from Polynesia were responsible for wiping out moa by discovering moa bones next to moa-bone fish-hook points, necklace reels and pendants in coastal excavations. This new plan to "de-extinct" moa has excited a great deal of attention. The idea would be that the Ngāi Tahu Research Centre would oversee the project and own the moa, to be kept on an ecological reserve. Sir Peter is cock-a-hoop at the prospect of success. He says it follows his long-held dream that many scientific wonders might become something more tangible during his lifetime. Paul Scofield, the Canterbury Museum's senior curator of natural history, is also excited about working with Colossal Biosciences, which is also trying to resurrect the dodo, the Tasmanian tiger and the woolly mammoth. Thousands of genes would be required to rebuild the bird's brain, feathers, eyesight and other characteristics. A related living species would then act as a genetic surrogate. However, a dose of reality has been injected into the scheme by University of Otago scientists, including paleogenetics laboratory director Assoc Prof Nic Rawlence. He points to Colossal's supposedly de-extincted dire wolf, which was actually a genetically engineered grey wolf. In the case of the moa, he believes they will simply be creating a GE emu or similar, which might look like a moa but may not function like one. There would also be serious ethical concerns. At least 500 individuals would be needed to avoid dangerous in-breeding — that is, if they are actually able to breed. As well, Prof Rawlence is questioning the level of iwi engagement. While carrying out genome-sequencing on the moa, scientists from the paleogenetics lab have found no appetite from individual rūnanga across the South Island to bring back moa. He says it might also be a better use of the company's technology to use genetic engineering to help strengthen and conserve animals now on the endangered list. We agree. There can be no doubting it would be absolutely incredible were moa to walk the earth again after more than 500 years. But energy, technology and money would be much better used in saving our endangered species right now, rather than attempting to reverse the arrow of time.
Spectator
07-07-2025
- Science
- Spectator
Was Easter Island less isolated than we previously thought?
It's hard to exaggerate how isolated Easter Island was before its discovery by Polynesian sailors eight or nine centuries ago. This tiny island, which you can walk round in a day, is thousands of miles in any direction from inhabitable land. Yet a new study claims that long before the first European ship arrived in 1722, it was reached more than once, and that people sailed back out to other Pacific islands. It seems history's greatest explorers were even more extraordinary than we first realised. The first inhabitants of Easter Island, or Rapa Nui as it's known in the Pacific, have had a bad press. For decades the narrative has been that they cut down all the trees, causing soil erosion and an environmental catastrophe, which led to starvation and wars. Though academics have challenged the thesis (with good reason, in my view), it lives on in books and podcasts as a lesson to the rest of us. Look after our world: it's the only one we have. The new research avoids this issue. Paul Wallin and Helene Martinsson-Wallin, archaeologists at Uppsala University in Sweden, writing in the journal Antiquity, have looked instead at the island's other claim to fame: its thousand huge statues and the elaborate drystone platforms on which many of them were raised. Assembling a list of radiocarbon dates obtained from excavations – some, their own – across the south-eastern Pacific, they set out to chart centuries of exploration and settlement. In the process, they found Easter Island to be less isolated than had been assumed. Ocean exploration began a thousand years ago in West Polynesia, among islands such as Tonga and Samoa, when people sailed eastwards to Tahiti and its neighbouring islands. From there they navigated the vast triangle of East Polynesia, reaching Hawai'i, Easter Island and, finally, New Zealand, within two centuries. To put that into perspective, around the same time in Europe, the Viking Age was coming to an end. Scandinavian sailors mostly explored coasts and rivers, occupying places already lived in. All they had to do was take over villages and farms nurtured by generations of native peoples. Polynesians, by contrast, entered uncharted seas no human had ever seen, where a thousand islands were scattered across 14 million square miles of some of the most dangerous waters on Earth. Every time they discovered a new island, they had to build their lives from scratch, having brought with them people, cultivated plants like yams and taro, and breeding pigs, dogs and chickens. In the eighteenth century Captain Cook recorded ocean-going canoes as long as a classical Greek trireme or his own Endeavour – with two hulls and crews to match. There have never been more accomplished or daring seafarers. Where the archaeologists part from traditional ideas about this great diaspora, is with what happened next. And that, they say, means seeing Easter Island in a new light. It had long been thought that after it was discovered, it was on its own. Too distant from the colonising islands for frequent return journeys, it had no close neighbours. Other islands tend to belong to large groups, like Hawai'i, which officially has 137 islands, and whose population grew to half a million or more with hereditary kings and priests and full-time armies. Rapa Nui was seen as a backwater. Or perhaps not. Not long after the initial ocean colonisation, Islanders throughout the south-eastern Pacific started to build impressive temple-like constructions known as marae. These were old ritual spaces newly monumentalised in stone, with paved platforms and small standing megaliths. According to the new study, the idea for these marae originated in Easter Island, where power struggles in a growing population stimulated by contacts with other communities were creating a divided society. These contacts were with both other Polynesians to the west, and South Americans to the east. As well as the wide spread of complex marae, another consequence of this was the adoption of the sweet potato, a continental American crop, as a staple food across the Pacific. On Easter Island the changes ultimately led to the carving of enormous statues in human form. This probably began as a common Polynesian practice of shaping figures from tree trunks, which was later transferred to stone: at one place on the island is a great outcrop of volcanic tuff, unusually soft and easy to shape, and now a hollowed-out mass of statue quarries. Like the marae, the idea for these statues was then carried to the west, but only to the nearest islands, such as the Marquesas, and on a much-reduced scale. I'm familiar with Polynesian archaeology, and much of this argument feels realistic. There is recent evidence from human DNA to support the idea that Easter Islanders had contact with peoples both to west and east. However, that does not mean, it seems to me, that South Americans ever managed to reach Easter Island, as some researchers claim. The DNA links could easily have come from Polynesians travelling to South America and back. And there is otherwise no evidence of early Americans reaching the wider Pacific. Nonetheless, the reminder that Easter Island and its people were part of a wider whole is timely. In late June this year, the Hōkūle'a, a modern replica of an ancient ocean-going canoe, reached Tahiti from Hawai'i. After circling the entire Pacific, it hopes to arrive in Rapa Nui in 2028. The modern journey is remarkable. Centuries ago, such voyaging was even more so.
Newsroom
02-07-2025
- General
- Newsroom
Book of the Week: History without the prejudice
Erik Olssen's new study The Origins of an Experimental Society, New Zealand, 1769-1860 is the first leg of a long haul flight through New Zealand's history, volume one of a planned three. Its title signals it will not be a history viewed through a chosen lens, whether of post-colonialism, decolonisation or post-modernism, those deconstructive narratives of the past 50 years. It urges readers to engage in an exploration of the nation's origins with, at the very least, open curiosity at what historian Erik Olssen is up to. The book's opening sentence indicates that his will be an even-handed account: 'The islands of New Zealand were colonised by two seafaring peoples, the Polynesians from around 1350 and the Europeans from the early 1800s.' Olssen soon makes clear that he 'looks in depth and detail at the particular intellectual and belief systems of the Europeans at that historical moment' of engagement, and 'at the ways the Pacific in turn influenced their ideas about human nature and human history; and how those ideas shaped the interconnected history of these two peoples.' It is about how 'tangata Pākehā' were 'changed by their encounters with 'tangata Māori' and their land, just as they too were changed'. He writes, 'The idea of New Zealand as an experiment arrived with the colonists of the 1840s' through the aims of 'two religious organisations and a private company … The Church Missionary Society, strongly supported by the Wesleyan Missionary Society, took on the task of ensuring the survival, salvation and civilisation of Māori, and the New Zealand Company assumed that of building a 'Better Britain', although it subscribed to the evangelical-humanitarian campaign to 'preserve and civilise' Māori before incorporating them into the new society.' For some revisionist historians, bureaucrats and politicians, this may well read as reactionary to their views of colonial settlement being essentially bad for the indigenes, and that its inheritors are perpetuating cultural and social damage without end. But Olssen makes it clear that his 'purpose has been to attempt to understand people who lived in a different world which, while continuous with mine, was very different. I may be critical of certain features of their world – particularly those that I reject in my world – but as a historian my primary obligation is to understand and represent, rather than condemn or judge.' This brings some cool air conditioning to the overheated rooms of bias and sectional self-interest that permeate much of our academic and political discourse. The book demands attention and close reading to fully appreciate its value. Sizeable at 400 pages main text, and 120 pages with 2640 endnotes (yes, you read that right) which double as a bibliography, it reflects the years of Olssen's research and wide reading through many of which he was Professor of History at the University of Otago. A current Otago professor, Tony Ballantyne, notes Olssen as a 'scholar of immense learning' with the foundation of the book being his 'omnivorous reading' across many subjects and disciplines. Professor Atholl Anderson (Ngāi Tahu) finds the book 'remarkably lucid and insightful' and a 'quite astonishing intellectual achievement'. This quality is endorsed by Buddy Mikaere (Ngāti Pūkenga, Ngāti Ranginui, Ngāti Pikiao,Tūhoe) who also observes that it is 'not an easy book but steady application to its contents leads to immeasurable rewards.' The main narrative is broken into six chapters although, given the length of each, they are better described as parts because each is broken into separate sections, sometimes with their own sub-titles. (A note here that I am not a fan of the book's design with its oversized fonts for the start of each chapter, tight margins, idiosyncratic page numbering and no numbering at all for the end-notes pages.) * Chapter 1, 'Meeting, 1769-1814', covers the period from James Cook's first voyage, to Samuel Marsden's establishment of the first mission in the Bay of Islands. Cook and his companions sailed out from the new world of the Scottish Enlightenment where the word 'civilisation' was just coming into use, bound on voyages driven by new sciences and technologies. One clear image the book throws up is of Cook's ships being floating laboratories with the very latest gear such as microscopes and advanced chronometers; and crewed with the men capable of using these to expand understanding of the natural world. Sydney Parkinson, 'View of Arched Rock, on the Coast of New Zealand; with an Hippa, or Place of Retreat, on the Top of it', 1769–1784. Alexander Turnbull Library, PUBL-0037-24. The captain joined them as 'three years of subtle intellectual osmosis imbued Cook with many of the values of the Enlightenment and helped transform a very capable mariner into [a capable ethnographer and] the greatest of explorers'. After crossing the Antarctic Circle in Resolution, the first to do so, Cook wrote in his journal, 'I whose ambition leads me not only farther than any other man has been before me, but as far as I think it possible for man to go.' This conjures up a link, 200 years later, to Neil Armstrong's words on being first man on the Moon. Enlightenment philosophies are often given a bad rap for generating social and political conditions focused on individualism and market-driven capitalism, and that explorers such as Cook opened up the world for its economic exploitation. But this view overlooks that the rights of man were an equally essential part of the formula, that all people should be equal and not subject to the tyrannies of feudalism and aristocratic hierarchies. This underpinned, along with the developing sciences of ethnology and ethnography, not only a new approach to political economy, but also humanitarianism. Enlightenment philosophers such as Voltaire and Diderot were actively against colonialism and its clear danger to indigenous peoples – as well as their own lives and reputations. By the time Cook set out, it was with the clear instruction to do no harm to native peoples. Cook and his colleagues encountered all of the Polynesians scattered across the Pacific, noted their physical and linguistic similarities but remained puzzled at the variety of social and cultural differences. Yet there seemed to have been no deep enquiry into Polynesian voyaging or evidence that this was occurring in the late 18th century. Later, Māori were to let go their seagoing waka in favour of European craft which were manifestly more robust and seaworthy. Cook and other European voyagers upended the Polynesian world, not least in debauching island morals and introducing deadly diseases. Most of the Pacific islanders had proved generous and hospitable, and were often happier than Europeans. By the time of his third voyage, Cook had begun to realise that he was not only bringing the fruits of 'civilisation' to Polynesia but also all its evils and he became increasingly frustrated at the contradictions of his mission. 'Apart from their superior firepower and access to iron, he had seen little evidence of European superiority.' 'Although conscious of his contradictory role, Cook was anxious to ensure his future reputation.' In planning his third voyage, he 'cast himself as the benevolent and philanthropic commander who incarnated the values of the Enlightenment, bringing commerce, knowledge and peace'. But this fostered hubris and an increasing tendency to punish those who broke the rules, thieving indigenes and ship's crew alike; and contributed to his death in Hawaii 10 years after his sequence of great voyages began. Books about the voyages, including Cook's own and Georg Forster's best-selling Voyage Round the World, had an immense effect on European thinking about the natural sciences and ethnological theory. Olssen believes that Cook 'foreshadowed the possibility of a bi-racial society by producing an ethnographic account of the several indigenous peoples which emphasised above all their common humanity, their resourceful ingenuity and their capacity.' The knowledge acquired by Cook's voyages, their experimental nature, was intrinsic to the philosophical shaping of how the colonisation of New Zealand occurred. Of all the Polynesian peoples, Māori came to be seen as the most robust and intelligent and capable of being 'civilised', the mission underpinning the projects of all the coming European interlopers, whether missionary or settler. Olssen considers in Chapter 2, 'Entangling, 1814-30', that this period has been something of an orphan in past histories, except for examination of the musket wars. Yet it was a time when the interlocking of races began in earnest and Māori ventured further and further afield, not just to Australia, where they became dominant in ships' crews, but as far as Britain and France. The polyglot nature of whaling and sealing ship crews introduced Māori to the varied character of Europeans and, around the mid-1820s, began using the terms Pākehā and Māori in relation to each other. Olssen has followed this when naming the two great 'tribes' of New Zealand Ngāti Māori and Ngāti Pākehā between whom intermarriage became increasingly common. In the south, sealers and whalers were the chief Pākehā influencers but in the north, missionaries from, principally, the Church Missionary Society and Wesleyan Missionary Society brought the new civilising values to the powerful Ngāpuhi nation. Following Samuel Marsden's establishment of the first mission in 1814, the evangelising power of the missions wrought the most change to Māori society before the 1840s. Bringing Christianity to Māori was a fourth impacting force on indigenes that should be added to Jared Diamond's trilogy of 'Guns, Germs and Steel'. It changed their world forever and was arguably the most powerful. Donald McLean, Governor George Grey's Chief Land Purchase Commissioner from 1853, noted in his journal that Christianity was 'one of the principal causes of our easy conquest and retention of the New Zealand islands'. Although this was before the wars. Strengthening humanitarian beliefs in Britain had 'roots in Christian benevolence' and were 'first articulated to help Polynesians achieve the same level of wealth and prosperity as the British.' The British governing elites increasingly considered 'two obligations: first, to afford protection to the 'natives'; and, second, to police the behaviour of British subjects'. In this period, the philosophical pathways that led to the Treaty of Waitangi were already marked out. * Chapter 3: 'Amalgamating, 1830-1840' covers the decade run-up to the signing of the Treaty with the growing influence of the missionaries, the increasing attention of the British government to what was happening in New Zealand after the infamous collaboration of Captain John Stewart in transporting Ngāti Toa warriors in his ship Elizabeth to massacre Ngāi Tahu people at Akaroa. William Fox, 'In the Aglionby or Matukituki Valley, looking into the Otapawa. 20th Feb.', 1864, watercolour, 204 × 257 mm. Alexander Turnbull Library, B-113-008. It portrays a Māori man – possibly Ngāi Tahu Poutini, but probably Kehu – making traditional use of resources by catching a weka. The mana of northern chiefs was undermined by the growing literacy of freed slaves and children in mission schools, key to understanding the Christian Bible and the domestic and agricultural skills and structures of Pākehā life. But literacy did not alter 'older skills of memorialisation, improvisation and oratory' and in the Māori world 'pervaded by sacred meaning' they 'continued to believe in collective rather than individual redemption. The synthesis remains vibrant to this day.' Literacy was becoming important also for dealing with trade practices as the number of whalers and traders increased in the Bay of Islands and elsewhere. The lawless conduct of Pākehā transients began to influence British policies needed to address the belief, exemplified by missionary Samuel Marsden, who declared that 'immoral British subjects threatened the very existence of this most capable and attractive people'. There was some exaggeration in this, given that there were only 2-3000 Pākehā in the country by 1840 and, according to Ernst Dieffenbach's estimations, almost 120,000 Māori. But missionaries feared secular undermining of their Christian authority and their pleas for action dovetailed with the humanitarian agenda of the Aborigines Protection Society and Colonial Office Undersecretary James Stephen, a member of the 'Clapham Sect', a group of Christian social reformers. The appointment of James Busby as British Resident to bring some law and order, but without money or staff, did little to ameliorate the situation but Ngāpuhi grasped the opportunity to declare an independent nation with its own flag. Then, later in the decade, British officials began to notice the increasing interest of the French in colonising New Zealand. Finally, the land-buying intentions of the New Zealand Company, guided by Edward Gibbon Wakefield's vision of building a 'Better Britain', was the culminating pressure that forced the British government into the 'fatal necessity' of taking on another colony. A midshipman on William Hobson's ship the Herald wrote in his journal that by agreeing to the Treaty of Waitangi the 'chiefs acknowledged the Queen as 'their liege sovereign' and she promised 'to protect and aid the New Zealanders [Māori] and if they were willing to (cede sovereignty) grant them all the privileges of British subjects'.' But from the moment of signing to the moment this review is published, the meaning of the Treaty has undergone continuous reinterpretation. Olssen observes that in 'offering Māori both the Queen's protection and all the rights enjoyed by the Queen's British subjects, the Treaty/Te Tiriti provided the foundation for a bicultural nation … even if we accept that there was nothing unusual let alone unique about Te Tiriti o Waitangi – and I do not accept that – it remains' as one American historian has commented, that 'where Americans made many Indian treaties and forgot them, New Zealanders made one treaty and remembered it'.' Although Olssen lands on the side of those who believe the Treaty is unique, he canvasses all points of view, and his phrasing suggests openness to these, reflecting his intention to avoid judgment. The country's fate had now been 'irrevocably altered by Britain's decision to annex it and the New Zealand Company's decision to colonise it. But the fact that the first decision was made as a result of the growing political and cultural influence of evangelical-humanitarianism … set New Zealand's history on a quite distinct trajectory from earlier British colonies of settlement'. And, as the Colonial Office's Treaty instructions to William Hobson showed, 'Māori were expected to help shape the future course of events.' The bulk of Chapter 4, 'Planning and Dreaming', is given over to the theories of Edward Gibbon Wakefield (EGW) and their practice through the settlements of the New Zealand Company. Olssen shows the influences on EGW of Enlightenment philosophies and the reform activities of his Quaker family. The Company's 'adoption of the evangelical humanitarian agenda for Māori' and EGW's vision for the 'amalgamation of two races by marriage' meant that his theory of systematic colonisation, an 'experiment' to create a 'Better Britain', was in alignment with the 'experiment' of the missionaries and Christian reform beliefs aimed at civilising Māori. The missionaries and their Westminster supporters were openly sceptical that EGW and the NZ Company were sincere, and were simply bent on making money by buying land cheap and selling dear. EGW's chequered past, which involved abduction and fraud, would always stain his vision. But Olssen avoids mistaking the man for his vision of a 'scientific approach to the creation of new societies which also shaped New Zealand's history in a unique way'. William Strutt, 'A group I once saw in Maori Land, New Plymouth', 1856, pencil and wash, 185 × 275 mm. Alexander Turnbull Library, E 453-f-005. Two Māori men and a woman canter on horseback, the woman wearing a top hat and riding side-saddle, the men in peaked caps and upright in their saddles. The painting illustrates the speed with which Māori had adopted the horse and European conventions as to how men and women ought to ride. This approach was to plan settlements made up of a cross-section of British society so that they would quickly develop into functioning economic units, with both town and country sections. Emigrants had to demonstrate good health and character and some kind of skill. Māori were to be included in the plan by 'pepper potting' sections for them among the new arrivals and, in the case of Wellington and Nelson, setting aside every tenth section – 'The Tenths' – for Māori rangatira. This demonstrated the belief that Māori were not only the most admirable amongst Polynesians but also that EGW and the Company were not racists. It should be emphasised again that, whether missionary, NZ Company man or government official, the medium to long-term plan of all of them was to 'civilise' Māori to the British Christian ideal. The reality was that the dubious 'purchase' of land by the NZ Company, especially in the Cook Strait region, and failure to survey the land and its utility and resources beforehand led to hardship, chaos and conflict with local iwi. Despite all this, most settlers made a go of it and the immigrant cross-section of society was soon setting up clubs and societies and voluntary organisations that continue to distinguish the character of New Zealand today. The new settlements were also highly democratic. One settler considered local chiefs 'superior to the dissolute sons of the English upper classes who 'walk the beach and smoke their cigars'' and the wife of another 'thought Māori ranked higher in the scale of civilisation than many Pākehā'. Although conflict was to come, some Māori 'subscribed to the Wakefieldian vision; others amongst the rangatira capitalised by selling land and developing their own farms; and in one way or another many Māori became involved in defining how both experiments turned out. This was quite unlike what had happened in South Dakota, South Australia or South Africa.' * Olssen develops these themes in Chapter 5, 'Settling, 1840-1853', and the resultant arm-wresting between Pākehā and Māori over land, law and rights. After the bloody disaster at the Wairau in 1843, settlers realised they could not take the law into their own hands, and the 1845 war in the north gave Māori confidence in their own ability to resist. Governor George Grey realised he would need Māori allies if he wished to succeed in any future military confrontation. But by the end of the 1840s, 'most of the Company's settlers believed that the two experiments were back on track'. Grey believed 'amalgamation' had been achieved. A majority of Māori were now Christian and were deeply engaged with Pākehā ways of life. There was a spirit of egalitarianism among the settlers, including among women who were 'essential to systematic colonisation and enjoyed most of the rights that men did'. There was a bonding stimulated by rejection of Old Country ways, although this was bolstered by 'a degree of cultural homogeneity' brought about by the mixing of men from all over Britain that had occurred during the mobilisation against Napoleon. Unknown artist, 'The Missionary Settlement Rangihoua on the North Side of the Bay of Islands', c.1832, oil on wood panel, 223 × 305 mm. National Library of Australia, Rex Nan Kivell collection, 312052. In 1815 John Nicholas noted that Rangihoua was surrounded by 'several plantations of potatoes, coomeras, and other vegetables, and the cultivation had such an appearance of neatness and regularity, that a person not acquainted with the … natives could never suppose it was the work of uncivilized barbarians' There was more tolerance among the different religious sects. Once in New Zealand, immigrants became united in response to the NZ Company's failures and perceived 'tyranny' of the Crown's behaviour towards the new settlements. 'More importantly, of course, all Britons living in New Zealand, even those in Auckland, placed more importance on the ways in which their new colonies differed from the penal colonies of Australia.' Hobson's early plan to 'introduce convict labour from New South Wales to undertake public works had aroused an overwhelmingly hostile reaction from one end of the colony to the other'. The reverberations of this are still felt today. Chapter 6, 'Expanding, 1848-1860' begins, 'With the return of peace and the achievement of stability, the colonists celebrated the start of the 1850s with optimism and hope.' Sheep farming in the new South Island settlements of Canterbury and Otago expanded rapidly and agriculture 'for a brief period provided half of all exports. Both Māori and Pākehā farmers prospered.' There were gold rushes in Australia and California to take the produce and there were rumours of gold in both islands. But the new Eden began to show blights. Māori population began to decline, largely from the impact of European diseases and the drugs of alcohol and tobacco. Māori became more and more resistant to part with their land as pressure to sell increased with a settler population that became the majority by the end of the decade. 'Many Māori became increasingly demoralised and anxious. A people who had eagerly engaged with the new world now began withdrawing.' The 1837-1844 sweet spot of Māori-Pākehā relations, when humanitarianism ruled at the Colonial Office had gone with James Stephen's retirement. His successor supported those who believed that 'Māori had no title to land they did not use, and became more pessimistic about amalgamation.' More and more immigrants were ignorant of 'the founders' radical humanitarian ideals and cared even less'. They also brought with them new racist thinking. The new immigrants, 'and most of them settled in Auckland in these years', knew that those ideals 'had become contentious in England,' even mocked. 'Reports of such events as the 'Wairau Massacre', especially Te Rangihaeata's execution of the men who had surrendered, contributed to the new mood by suggesting that the 'savage' could never be 'civilised'.' The signal event of the 1850s was the establishment of self-government with a national House of Representatives first meeting in Auckland in 1854. There was provincial government, too, of provinces disconnected from each other except by sea and which lasted until 1876. Most Māori lived outside or at the fringes of the growing Pākehā urban centres, and the establishment of the Kingitanga reflected their exclusion from the new form of national governance. By 1860, the Pākehā population had reached 78,000 and the Māori had declined to no more than 55,000. The imbalance, and urban-country separation would increase rapidly, putting increasing pressure by Pākehā on Māori for more land for agriculture, setting the scene for the physical conflicts to come. 'The implementation of self-government coincided with a 'hardening' of racist attitudes among the European settlers, less because of events here than because of developments in Europe and the United States' in attitudes towards indigenous peoples. 'Yet most settlers still paid lip service to 'amalgamation' even if they had become impatient with or hostile to Māori.' The education of settlers was assisted by the work of ethnographers who 'Despite their belief in the superiority of their own culture, confirmed in their eyes by their technological superiority, made remarkable progress in understanding Māori on their own terms.' Olssen notes that 'Words such as 'improve', 'educate', 'amalgamate', 'ingraft' and 'civilise' – nouns as well as verbs – joined 'fairness' and 'justice' as staples of political discourse.' Humanitarianism, by no means the least important legacy of the Enlightenment, had been hardwired into the new nation's identity.' The Epilogue examines Scot Arthur Thomson's 1859 history, The Story of New Zealand. Thomson was optimistic about the country's future and predicted the 'ultimate union of Māori and Pākehā'. Olssen concludes that although Thomson 'did not foresee that his optimism might prove to be a liar, his faith in what I have framed as two experiments – that a better world could be created in which Māori as well as Pākehā could thrive – would continue to shape public policy and excite future generations with the vision that their country could become a model for humanity.' This review is but a brief sketch of a volume fashioned from a wide-ranging and deep dive into all the historical literature that has come before it. Free of presentism and bias, it blows a fresh wind through the clichés of our history that bedevil current discourse. It is a must-read for anyone who truly seeks to understand our history, of the complexities involved in the foundation years of who we were to become. It moderates views of our early history that have become more and more polarised, as those holding and those seeking power project exaggerated and uninformed narratives. It may well offend those reluctant to engage with propositions that challenge their own prejudices and biases. The Origins of an Experimental Society, New Zealand, 1769-1860 by Erik Olssen (Auckland University Press, $65) is available in bookstores nationwide.
