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This year marks the bicentenary of the first Pakeha settlers arriving in New Zealand, so Auckland University is putting together the Maori side of the story.
Professor Alison Jones from the education faculty’s Te Puna Wananga School of Maori Education says she and co-writer Kuni Jenkins were concerned that while a huge amount of effort is going into marking the centenary of World War One, the critical first encounters between Maori and Pakeha were being overlooked.
They lead off a series of six free winter lectures next Tuesday with some of the ideas from their book He Korero: Words Between Us – First Maori-Pakeha Conversations on Paper, which came out of research into the first school.
Professor Jones says people act as if New Zealand history starts at 1840 with the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi.
"I don’t think a lot of people realise the intense and fascinating interaction that went on for a solid 50 years before that, with Maori particularly from the north traveling over to Australia and staying in Sydney and really checking out Pakeha society and making relationships with people over there, so there was a lot of toing and froing and learning the language, getting the language written down. That all led up eventually to the treaty," she says.
Other speakers in the Settling the Settlers lectures include Manuka Henare, Dame Anne Salmond, Alex Calder, Patu Hohepa and Andrew Sharp.
FOR THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH PROFESSOR ALISON JONES CLICK ON THE LINK
https://secure.zeald.com/uma/play_podcast?podlink=MjAxNzE=
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