Heather’s Homestead/Marotahei: The Invasion of the Waikato and Ways of Knowing Our Past in Aotearoa New Zealand

Abstract

The British invasion of the Māori region of the Waikato in 1863 was one of the most pivotal moments in the colonisation of Aotearoa New Zealand. It has been the subject of multiple authoritative histories and sits at the centre of historical discussions of sovereignty, colonial politics and the dire consequences of colonisation. This article approaches this complex historical moment through the personal histories of a Māori/Pākehā homestead located at the political and geographic epicentre of the invasion. This mixed whanau/family provides the opportunity to explore a more kinship-based ontology of the invisible lines of influence that influenced particular actions before and during the invasion. It does so by mobilising two genealogical approaches, one by author Hugh Campbell which explores the British/Pākehā individuals involved in this family and uses formal documentation and wider historical writing to explain key dynamics—but also to expose a particular limitation of reliance on Western ontologies and formal documentation alone to explain histories of colonisation. In parallel to this approach, the other author—William Kainana Cuthers—uses both formal/Western and a Māori/Pasifika relational ontology of enquiry, and in doing so, allows both authors to open up a set of key insights into this pivotal moment in the history of Aotearoa New Zealand and into the micro-dynamics of colonisation.

Not-Talking/Not-Knowing: Autoethnography and Settler Family Histories in Aotearoa New Zealand

“…A number of papers attest to the productiveness of the critical family history approach for thinking about the workings of settler colonization in Aotearoa New Zealand (e.g., Bell 2017Bell , 2020Campbell and Cuthers 2021;Hancock 2020;Fitzpatrick 2018;Shaw 2021a). Shaw's work is particularly relevant for my thinking, as the farms of his forebears were located only a few miles north of the farm I lived on, close to where my mother grew up.…”