Words By Madison Brokenshire
I have a confession to make: growing up, I thought New Zealand history was boring. I am not proud of this fact. And, unfortunately, I know exactly where a great deal of the blame lies: my highschool.
The majority of all I learnt about Aotearoa’s history was shallow at best; scraping basic myths about a singular event at worst. Every year around Waitangi Day, teachers would pull out the same lesson which approximately said, “There was a treaty and it was called Waitangi. There were translation issues and it still causes problems today. The End,” and then never bring it up again. Instead, we spent vague spans of time learning that apartheid happened in South Africa (but God forbid we ever let slip that Māori segregation was very real in Aotearoa, or really even bring up the 1981 Springbok Tour protests), and that blood diamonds are mined in Africa (but let’s not learn anything about workers’ rights in Aotearoa). All around me, I watched people complain that they didn’t want to learn about New Zealand because it was boring and nothing happened here. I watched students spout regressive, mildly anti-Māori sentiments to illustrate their complaint. And I watched the teachers agree with us when we said it.
Looking back, the fact that this occurred so constantly throughout my schooling that it was normalised to me is absolutely insane. Whether we like it or not, what schools tell us is formative. We absorb and develop unconscious assumptions to fill the gaps of what we aren’t told: New Zealand history was “boring,” “eventless” and “not worth our time” because people omitted it. What I hate more than anything is that I honestly began to believe it. I bought it, I bled it, I denounced my own history because I felt that it had no impact on my life.
As if I wasn’t living in history every single day, walking on another iwi’s whenua, driving over a highway that crossed an urupā and pā where bones from massacres lay, as if the muddy ‘drain’ where I played as a child wasn’t the channelised remains a mighty crystal-clear stream that once flowed from the hills to the ocean.
It's not just about history, or History as a subject, either. Aotearoa-based material was MIA in pretty much every class I ever took—scarcer than water in a desert. In English, for example, the vast majority of films, books and case studies I recall examining were international (Western international, of course). Socially, the pop culture my peers and I consumed and discussed was exclusively international too. After all, what did New Zealand have to offer? Hunt for the Wilderpeople, Lorde, and… not much else. Despite being born, raised and educated entirely within this country, when it came down to it I couldn’t have told you much detail about its cultural or historical landscape. I had very little to do with my own whakapapa.
It took a big shift in my personal interests for that to change.
Embarrassingly enough, the catalyst came when I read a piece of (European) historical fiction that I unexpectedly loved, and it spurred me to start writing in the historical genre. Before I knew it I’d written an entire novel set in London, and when it was done I had to sit back and think, “Hold on, what the fuck? I’ve never even stepped foot in Europe in my entire life.” I decided I needed to write something set in New Zealand, because you’re supposed to write what you know, right? I chose my parent’s hometown as the setting. Suddenly I was curiously looking into my family history and whakapapa in the location, just for inspiration.
It all spiralled from there, and the whole thing was like a dam breaking. I was learning—really learning—huge things about Aotearoa that my school had never mentioned to me. More than anything, though, I was discovering who I was. I was unearthing my identity from a sieve, watching all these things fall into place that I had never quite understood about my place here. And, at the same time, I was uncovering a connection to my Māori whakapapa that I’d buried a long time ago—because as someone who doesn’t “look Māori,” it had always been a lot easier to ignore that part of myself if my knowledge of it was limited.
But maybe that’s what they want, right?
After all, I couldn’t talk about the erasure of Aotearoa’s history from schools without talking about what the fuck is going on with the Nactfirst coalition’s proposed reform of the History curriculum. In case you’re not up with the details, the rundown is this: at the start of 2023, a new compulsory history curriculum was introduced to primary and secondary schools under the then-Labour government. It asked schools to teach pupils about things like Māori history, colonisation, Pacific navigation, the challenges faced by early non-Pākehā migrants, the role of power in New Zealand’s history, and much else.
It was a really good idea. RNZ reported that ninety percent of teachers and the majority of students were enjoying the Aotearoa Histories curriculum. Predictably, though, David Seymour and the ACT party do not share my view. They campaigned on removing it, with Seymour writing in a Facebook post (ah, the joys of politics), that the new curriculum “threatens to indoctrinate students in left-wing ideas about colonialism, the welfare state, gender identity, and ‘cultural appropriation’.” He also claimed teaching about Māori history and colonisation was “dismal, depressing, and incorrect.” In late 2023, National signed into a coalition agreement with ACT—a document which included National agreeing to “restore balance” to the History curriculum. Following this, National Party education spokesperson Paul Goldsmith recommended that he wanted to see a move back towards teaching other countries’ history.
Can’t have the kids learning all that “divisive” knowledge about where we came from, right? If they know about the past, they might start getting a little too left-wing, and we can’t be having that.
Aroha Harris writes, “At the base of our histories are ourselves.” For all of those with whakapapa in this land, that couldn’t be more true. At the end of the day, it’s not just about identity and belonging for those of us with history here, even though that’s undoubtedly an imperative aspect of ensuring local histories are taught. It’s also about having an informed body of residents who hold a clear understanding of what has shaped the society they currently live in. One can’t just learn about the social contexts of other Western countries and dump that onto Aotearoa with the assumption that it applies—these islands are unique, dynamic, and nuanced in so many ways.
Of course, struggles for liberation are connected all over the globe, and we in Aotearoa are certainly influenced by all sorts of push-and-pull global factors. Those things are all still crucial, and I’m not suggesting that isn’t the case—we can’t afford to be insular. Think of Springbok tour protesters in 1981, dedicated to fighting against apartheid in South Africa whilst refusing to acknowledge the bitter never-ending struggle of Māori—conveniently overlooking the dirt beneath their feet. It’s an attitude of selective blindness that lives on (thrives) today. I see it all around me: I see it in former friends, I see it in the classroom, I see it in the house of power. We’re a small island, but as a nation we seem to suffer from a whole lot of identity-lessness. I can’t help but feel we spend a great deal of time looking outwards, when at least some of that time should be spent looking in.
The fact of the matter is, without compulsory Aotearoa history guidelines, there exist schools where our history simply isn’t being taught. That was me. That was my experience. There is so much beauty and value to be explored here—and so much pain and mamae too—but the only way to heal these generational wounds is to unearth them—so that we can nurture regrowth, reconnection and reparations.
I’m incredibly grateful that I’ve finally been able to start digging my way through that process, and finding myself beneath the rubble. I write about Aotearoa’s history to heal the girl inside of me who was taught that her country and whakapapa had no history worth learning.