“This is an appeal to you”: land and identity at the Taieri Native Reserve

In December 1892, thirteen residents of the Taieri Native Reserve in Otago signed and sent a letter, comprised of just a few lines, to the Native Minister, Alfred Jerome Cadman. Sadly, the original letter in te reo Māori has been lost, with only the English translation now held at Wellington’s Archives New Zealand office. &nbsp

Introduction

This collection of essays has its genesis in the conference 'Interracial Intimacies: New Zealand Histories' held at the University of Otago in 2009. The conference brought together New Zealand and Australian scholars to reflect upon the 'affective turn' in the fields of colonial and imperial history, and to elaborate new ideas and approaches to histories of colonialism in New Zealand by focusing particularly upon the intersection between race and intimacy

Pacific Brides: US Forces and Interracial Marriage during the Pacific War

Between 1942 and 1945, over two million servicemen occupied the southern Pacific theatre, the majority of them Americans in service with the Marines, Army, Navy and Air Force. When the United States entered World War II in December 1941, they 'swept in a mighty deluge' doubling, sometimes tripling the populations of the Pacific Islands. Their short but intense period of occupation in the South Pacific had far reaching consequences. Not only did they dramatically alter the economies and environments of the islands, they also brought with them a set of ideas about race and intimacy encapsulated in legal codes, as well as social practices, which were applied to the organization of their own forces, and to the local populations. American racial ideology also informed military regulations governing overseas marriages involving US forces, most notably inhibiting African American men's marital opportunities in the European theatre

Māori women in Southern New Zealand’s shore-whaling world

Kate Stevens and Angela Wanhalla explore the role of Māori women in Southern New Zealand’s nineteenth-century shore-whaling world. Rarely noted in accounts of the industry, Māori women were adept at sea travel and maintained knowledge and beliefs that informed practices of the whaling communities located on Kāi Tahu tribal territory. Highlighting their role as intermediaries between humans and the marine world, Wanhalla and Stevens bring forth several historical accounts of Māori women involved in the shore-whaling industry

The 'bickerings' of the 'Mangungu Brethren': Talk, Tales and Rumour in Early New Zealand

The 'bickerings' of the 'Mangungu Brethren': Talk, Tales and Rumour in Early New Zealan

Tears of Rangi: Experiments Across Worlds

Tears of Rangi is, says Anne Salmond, an exploration of ontology, defined as “the study of the nature of reality, along with the basic categories of being and their relations” (18). For Salmond, relationality structures te ao Māori, as expressed in whakapapa, but also the hau (the wind of life). Practices, such as giftgiving, bore hau and when exchanged entangled people in relationships, creating obligations and responsibilitie

Pacific Brides: US Forces and Interracial Marriage during the Pacific War

Between 1942 and 1945, over two million servicemen occupied the southern Pacific theatre, the majority of them Americans in service with the Marines, Army, Navy and Air Force. When the United States entered World War II in December 1941, they 'swept in a mighty deluge' doubling, sometimes tripling the populations of the Pacific Islands. Their short but intense period of occupation in the South Pacific had far reaching consequences. Not only did they dramatically alter the economies and environments of the islands, they also brought with them a set of ideas about race and intimacy encapsulated in legal codes, as well as social practices, which were applied to the organization of their own forces, and to the local populations. American racial ideology also informed military regulations governing overseas marriages involving US forces, most notably inhibiting African American men's marital opportunities in the European theatre

A Land of Plenty? Colonial Diet in Rural New Zealand

Colonial New Zealand was built on the ideal of creating better lives for settlers. Emigrants came looking to escape the shackles of the class-system and poor conditions in Industrial Revolution period Britain. Colonial propaganda claimed that most emigrants achieved their aims, but the lives the colonists actually experienced upon reaching New Zealand remain relatively unexplored from a biosocial perspective. In this paper we present a pilot study of stable isotope results of bone collagen from seven adults interred in the St. John’s Cemetery (SJM), Milton, New Zealand (ca. AD 1860–1900). We interpret the diet at Milton and broadly compare our isotopic results with contemporaneous samples from Britain. We show that, like contemporary Britain, the diet of our studied individuals was focused on C3 crops and terrestrial meat sources. Despite higher ????15N values in contemporary UK populations (which can simplistically be interpreted as indicative of higher meat intake), consideration of different local baselines makes it likely that this New Zealand population had relatively similar levels of meat intake. Interestingly marine resources did not form an important part of the Milton diet, despite the site's proximity to the ocean, hinting at the possible stigmatisation of local resources and the development of a European New Zealand (pākehā) food identity