What's the legacy of Te Rauparaha and Tamihana? What is left behind both in the landscape and in people's understandings of these leaders? How have the peace marriages Tamihana began been felt across the motu and how do the uri of Te Rauparaha and his old enemies feel today?By Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture and Heritage

The world of Ngāti Toa is rapidly changing with Pākehā settlers claiming land and resources for themselves. Ngāti Toa are becoming divided over the ways in which they challenge other iwi and Pākehā encroaching on their whenua and their mana. Tamihana Te Rauparaha, the writer of our manuscript, grows up and starts to challenge his father’s way of do…

The new book Secret History: State Surveillance in New Zealand, 1900-1956 by Richard S Hill and Steven Loveridge (Auckland University Press, 2023) opens up the ‘secret world’ of security intelligence during a period in which counter-espionage and counter-subversion duties were primarily handled by the New Zealand Police Force. This is the first of …

Te Rauparaha’s success leads to a series of threats from Rangatira of Te Wai Pounamu. Responding to these, Te Rauparaha and his warriors set off on a series of South Island raids which will lead to the death of some of Ngāti Toa’s great leaders and a war that lasts a decade.By Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture and Heritage

Kapiti Island is a strategic stronghold, but there are enemies on the mainland waiting for their chance to attack Ngāti Toa. The Ariki Te Pēhi makes a great voyage to England to acquire muskets and meet King George, but while he’s away, Te Rauparaha and the rest of the iwi fight a battle at Waiorua against great odds.…

When Te Rauparaha, and his hapū leave the overpopulated Kawhia harbour for Te Upoko o te Ika, the head of the fish, there are challenges in making the journey to new lands. It isn’t just his warriors, but women, children and elders who are travelling in the heke. Te Rauparaha and his people make alliances along the way, but also mortal enemies, whi…

A prophecy is delivered: from the union of Parekōhatu (Ngāti Raukawa) and Werawera (Ngāti Toa) will come forth ‘He taniwha’ - “Someone extraordinary. A great leader, someone with vision, strategy, communication, and oral ability”. ; The Kawhia iwi Ngāti Toa will need him - after the huge battle at Hingakākā their position on the west coast of Waika…

In the early 1990s, a young student Ross Calman finds himself in the University of Canterbury library, where he discovers writings by Tamihana Te Rauparaha from the 1860s. Ross decides he will learn te reo Māori, so that one day he will be able to read the words of his ancestor himself. Thirty years later, he did just that. We get an understanding …

Forced labour haunts the streets we walk today and the spaces we take for granted. From 1814 onwards, the unfree work of prisoners was used to forge roads, ports, buildings, harbour defences and other public works across New Zealand and its Pacific empire. Prisoners planted forests, cleared land and laboured on dairy farms. Their work was crucial t…

A new podcast series in five episodes (plus a prologue and epilogue), tells the story of the life and times of Ngāti Toa leader Te Rauparaha, a compelling figure in the history of Aotearoa New Zealand. Hosted by Ross Calman, produced by Popsock Media. New episodes available weekly, with the final available on 27 November 2023. Find out more about t…

In this month's Public History Talk, the authors of two recently published books discussed the profound impact of closed stranger adoption in New Zealand and the drive for change. Closed stranger adoption under the 1955 Adoption Act, still in force today, has deeply affected thousands of New Zealanders. In their recent book Adopted: Loss, love, fam…

Paul Diamond's book, Downfall: The destruction of Charles Mackay, examines the startling ‘Whanganui Affair’ of 1920, when the mayor Charles Mackay, shot a young gay man, D'Arcy Cresswell. The affair and subsequent events reveal the perilous existence of homosexual men at that time and how society conspired to control and punish them. In 1920 New Ze…

For more than 150 years, five carved panels that once formed the back wall of a pātaka, slept in a small swamp just north of Waitara. The carvings, which uri of Taranaki now call the Motunui Epa, emerged from their long sleep in 1971 setting off an extraordinary chain of events that would take them around the world and back again. In this talk, Dr …

In seeking to understand the terrorist attacks of March 2019, several commentators observed the similarities with the murder of an elderly Chinese man named Joe Kum Yung by Lionel Terry in 1905. It is tempting to draw a direct causal line between the two attacks, both as a concise way of framing an uncomfortable subject and as an emotional salve ag…

In this podcast, Dr Lucy Mackintosh discusses aspects of her recently published book, Shifting Grounds: Deep Histories of Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland (Bridget Williams Books, 2021), which explores the layered histories embedded in three landscapes in the city. Starting with rocks, lava flows, a grassy paddock, the remains of a garden, the site of a co…

Katherine Mansfield was a New Zealand author of international renown. Her short stories and poetry have been translated into more than 25 languages and her work continues to have an impact one hundred years after her death in France in 1923. Mansfield spent most of her adult life in Europe, working as a writer, editor, and critic, and living in var…

What can popular music tell us about a country and its culture? As the 2023 Lilburn Research Fellow, Nick Bollinger is looking at ways in which pop music in Aotearoa New Zealand has reflected, contradicted, and contributed to our national stories. In this talk he will offer a progress report on a few of his discoveries. These monthly Public History…

Cybèle Locke’s recently published biography of Bill Andersen, Comrade, examines labour activism, communism and social change, from the 1930s until the turn of the twenty-first century. This talk offers possibilities for how Bill Andersen’s Communist, working-class life might speak to us in the current moment. These monthly Public History Talks are …

Brilliant, hardworking and creative, women architects have made many significant contributions to the built environment, creativity and community of Aotearoa New Zealand. A ground-breaking new book, Making Space, tells the story of women making space for themselves in a male-dominated profession while designing architectural, landscape and urban sp…

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFAT) is a remarkable organisation that has represented New Zealand for more than 75 years. A new book, New Zealand’s Foreign Service: A History examines how MFAT (and its predecessors) responded to ever-evolving political and military allegiances, trade globalisation, economic threats, natural disasters and militar…

This talk sketches Lake Tūtira’s history from formation to today. Historian Jonathan West will follow in the traces of Herbert Guthrie Smith, whose obsessive records of the changes witnessed while farming by the lake made him the founder of environmental history here. He will take his cue from Guthrie Smith’s first book’s opening lines: ‘The lake o…

It's over 40 years since the Working Women's Charter was adopted as policy by the New Zealand Federation of Labour. The 16-clause Charter demanded rights for women in all aspects of life and work, including equal pay; ending discrimination; education and health rights; improved working conditions; quality child care; family and parental leave, and …

Māni Dunlop (Ngāpuhi) and Jamie Tahana (Ngāti Pikiao, Ngāti Makino, Te Arawa) are journalists and national broadcasters who actively champion te reo Māori me nga tikanga Māori through their work. Māni was the first Māori journalist at RNZ to host a weekday show, while Jamie is one of RNZ’s youngest Māori News Directors. They began their careers as …

Liana MacDonald (Ngāti Kuia, Rangitāne o Wairau, Ngāti Koata) is a lecturer in the Faculty of Education, Victoria University of Wellington. She is interested in how racism, whiteness, and settler colonialism manifest in national institutions. In this talk, Liana focusses on two significant conflicts between mana whenua and British and settler milit…

In the 1940s radio played a central role in the life of the New Zealand household as a source of news and entertainment. Sound historian Sarah Johnston is researching radio during this era, particularly the role of our first radio war correspondents, who travelled with the New Zealand forces in North Africa, the Middle East, Italy and in the Pacifi…

In September 2019, Hon Chris Hipkins announced Aotearoa New Zealand's histories would be taught in all schools and kura from 2022 (later extended to 2023). In this talk Dr Genaro Oliveira shared findings from a comprehensive survey of primary school teachers across the Manawatū region about history teaching at Years 1 to 6. Answers from the ten loc…

Please note: This talk contains material that may be distressing to some listeners, including the discussions of war crimes. If you wish to skip this discussion, it runs from 9:19 through to 16:36. Please take care of yourself, and if you don't think this talk is for you, no worries, and we hope you'll listen again soon. In this talk, military hist…

In this talk, Melani Anae, Associate Professor in Pacific Studies at the University of Auckland discusses aspects of her recent book, The Platform: the radical legacy of the Polynesian Panthers. In the book she writes, ‘Fifty years ago the Polynesian Panther Party began to shine a light on racism and oppressive systems, and we made small changes. B…

In this talk author Brent Coutts discusses his recently published book, Crossing the Lines, a history of New Zealand homosexual soldiers in the Second World War. While he uncovered fifty homosexual men who served in the military during the war, his research focused on Ralph Dyer, Douglas Morison, and Harold Robinson, three men who were female imper…