How many of us have felt berated at by those espousing a particular point of historical view about NZ’s so-called colonial past? I am sure you can all relate to those moments whereby you think---‘here we go again. Can’t the past be left just there---in the past?’ Well no, we can’t because we are the accumulation of what has happened and the promise of what is to come. The attitudes we express now are primarily fed by what we have experienced and learned from the past, some of it, badly informed. New Zealand’s history is not one in which everything was ‘nice’ and well-ordered or one that is based on fairness. If you need proof just go to the article in the NZ Herald of today where there is a blog written at the time about the first 50 years of the NZ Herald—it is a section of an editorial about the struggle to make Auckland a viable city. There was a time when many people felt that Auckland was just not worth putting the effort into re making it a prosperous city with a future. Read the article and feel the views of some people at the time. It looks and feels like there was only one possible future for the make-up of Auckland. There was a strongly held view that Auckland and New Zealand in general was meant to be a country that should only be settled by ‘white people.’ There was some doubt that this ‘ideal’ could be achieved and that maybe ‘it could be left to the radicals and discontents’ and to concentrate on areas south of Auckland. In some ways things have not changed but in other respects we see a very different picture. History has much to teach and inform if we want to understand where we are ‘going.’
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