ETHICAL REMEMBERING - KNOW THE STORY

TUIA250 is the government-funded programme marking 250 years since Captain James Cook of the British navy first visited Aotearoa.

At the beginning of last week, I began to serialise an explanation of why the three mana whenua hapū over Mangōnui opposed the commemoration flotilla landing there,  and why the overwhelming majority of hapū around Tokerau (Doubtless Bay) opposed it coming into the bay at all. 

Then, at the end of last week we received this message from the programme organisers:  “… the National Coordinating Committee for Tuia 250 agreed when they met on Monday this week that neither the Tuia flotilla nor our land based community programme will be visiting Doubtless Bay in November as we had planned. We will update our collateral and communications in the near future.”

Ka pai tēnā (that’s fine).  Now, I’ll leave off explaining why we oppose that form of commemoration and turn instead to why we support ethical remembering.

We should remember and commemorate our history.  But, how do we as parents and teachers help our tamariki mokopuna engage in ethical remembering?  And how do we teach the truth in age appropriate ways? 

Largely distilled from discussions she held with rangatahi over the past few years as this anniversary approached, Tina Ngata has prepared ten guidelines to help us. 

KNOW THE STORY is the first guideline.  It is important to know the full truth ourselves and to decolonise our understanding of New Zealand history and Cook.

To summarise; the voyages of Cook were not bloodless, and nor was Cook a renaissance man on a science mission. Cook was a naval officer on a naval vessel with orders from the British military to claim land and establish colonial outposts for the Crown. It was an exercise of Imperial expansion and this, like all expansions of Empire, was led by a military vanguard.

In achieving these ends, Cook carried out multiple murders, abductions, infected whole communities, carried out brutal tortures and shot at and wounded countless Indigenous peoples.

Importantly, this is not at all out of step with Imperial expansion in general, and in fact the premise behind Cook’s orders rests within a larger story that it’s also imperative to school ourselves in – the story of the Doctrine of Discovery.

A series of papal laws were issued in the 15th and 16th centuries which endorsed Imperial expansion and enslavement or eradication of non-Christian, non-white natives of the lands that were ‘discovered’. These laws not only legally endorsed invasion, land-theft and slavery, but also fostered a societally ingrained psyche of Imperial entitlement over all who were not white and Christian, and over all that they owned.

In this way the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, as well as the colonially named ‘Age of Discovery’ was initiated; an era which saw Columbus, Cabot, Cortés and Cook all venturing out on behalf of their monarchs.

Next week I will cover the second guideline which is to UNDERSTAND AND ANALYSE LANGUAGING.