What A Nation Chooses To Remember And Forget

“Early in 2014 a group of school students from a small town in rural New Zealand took a trip to some nearby historical sites. Guided by local Māori elders, the students from Otorohanga College encountered a history that was all but unknown to them,” writes Vincent O’Malley in an opinion piece for the Guardian.

The school party visited Ōrākau and Rangiaowhia, which “saw two of the bloodiest confrontations of the Waikato war,” according to O’Malley.

“It’s shocking to hear that there were massacres half an hour from where you live, not that long along,” said one of the students later.

The “conflict between British imperial troops and the local Tainui tribes that had been fought exactly 150 years earlier (1863-64) was the largest and most significant in a wider series of clashes that took place in New Zealand between 1845 and 1872 as Māori communities resisted colonial conquest and expansion,” as reported in the article.

That part of New Zealand history “was barely acknowledged beyond the descendants of those on the receiving end of British bullets,” writes O’Malley.

“For many Pākehā (non-Māori) New Zealanders the wars were part of a troubled past they preferred to forget,” O’Malley writes, whereas Anzac Day “provides a ready opportunity to rally around the flag, patriotically remembering those who died at Gallipoli or on the Western Front.”

But things are beginning to change. After their school trip some of the students “launched a petition calling for a national day of commemoration for all those who fell in the New Zealand wars and for the history of these conflicts to be taught in all schools.”

The petition attracted over 12,000 signatures and was presented at Parliament in December 2015, according to the article. In August this year, “the government announced that there would be a national day of memorial (though no public holiday).”

The Ministry of Education “argued against making teaching the history of the New Zealand wars compulsory, insisting that this would undermine the autonomy of individual schools,” as reported in The Guardian.

“What a nation chooses to remember and forget speaks to its priorities. The students of Otorohanga College have helped promote a conversation about national identity that is long overdue,” writes O’Malley.

“Is New Zealand mature enough as a nation to own its history, embracing the difficult aspects of the past as a way of moving forward?”

Article Source: The Guardian, Vincent O’Malley, October 18, 2016
Image Source: Twitter – Ngā Taonga