Outcasts Of The Gods The Struggle Over Slavery In Maori New Zealand

Us Maoris used to practise slavery just like them poor Negroes had to endure in America...' says Beth Heke in Once Were Warriors. 'Oh those evil colonials who destroyed Maori culture by ending slavery and cannibalism while increasing the life expectancy,' wrote a sarcastic blogger recently. So was Maori slavery 'just like' the experience of Africans in the Americas and were British missionaries or colonial administrators responsible for ending the practice? What was the nature of freedom and unfreedom in Maori society and how did that intersect with British colonists and the anti-slavery movement? This book is the first history of Maori war captives. Drawing on Maori oral sources as well the records of colonists, Petrie analyses freedom and unfreedom in traditional Maori society; the role of economics and mana in shaping captivity; and how the arrival of colonists, trade and war transformed Maori society and the place of captives.

The treatment of cultural colonial objects is one of the most debated questions of our time. Calls for a new international cultural order go back to decolonization. However, for decades, the issue has been treated as a matter of comity or been reduced to a Shakespearean dilemma: to return or not to return. Confronting Colonial Objects seeks to go beyond these classic dichotomies and argues that contemporary practices are at a tipping point. The book shows that cultural takings were material to the colonial project throughout different periods and went far beyond looting. It presents micro histories and object biographies to trace recurring justifications and contestations of takings and returns while outlining the complicity of anthropology, racial science, and professional networks that enabled colonial collecting. The book demonstrates the dual role of law and cultural heritage regulation in facilitating colonial injustices and mobilizing resistance thereto. Drawing on the interplay between justice, ethics, and human rights, Stahn develops principles of relational cultural justice. He challenges the argument that takings were acceptable according to the standards of the time and outlines how future engagement requires a re-invention of knowledge systems and relations towards objects, including new forms of consent, provenance research, and partnership, and a re-thinking of the role of museums themselves. Following the life story and transformation of cultural objects, this book provides a fresh perspective on international law and colonial history that appeals to audiences across a variety of disciplines. This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read on the Oxford Academic platform and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.

Ka rite te kopara e ko nei i te ata. It is like a bellbird singing at dawn. Like the clear morning song of te koparapara, the bellbird, this book aims to allow the Maori world to speak for itself through an accessible introduction to Maori culture, history and society from an indigenous perspective. In twenty-one illustrated chapters, leading scholars introduce Maori culture (including tikanga on and off the marae and key rituals like powhiri and tangihanga), Maori history (from the beginning of the world and the waka migration through to Maori protest and urbanisation in the twentieth century), and Maori society today (including twenty-first century issues like education, health, political economy and identity). Each chapter provides a descriptive narrative covering the major themes, written in accessible formal English, including appropriate references to te reo Maori and to the wider Pacific. Chapters are illustrated with a mixture of images, maps and diagrams as well as relevant songs and sayings. Te Koparapara is an authoritative and accessible introduction to the past, present and future of the Maori world for students and general readers. Ko te manu kai i te miro nona te ngahere, ko te manu kai i te matauranga nona te ao. The bird that feasts on miro tree berries belongs to the bush, the bird that feasts on knowledge belongs to the world.

This book offers a unique insight into the key legal and social issues at play in New Zealand today. Tackling the most pressing issues, it tracks the evolution of these societal problems from 1840 to the present day. Issues explored include: illegal drugs; racism; the position of women; the position of Maori and free speech and censorship. Through these issues, the authors track New Zealand's evolution to one of the most famously liberal and tolerant societies in the world.

When James Boswell famously lamented the irrationality of war in 1777, he noted the universality of conflict across history and across space – even reaching what he described as the gentle and benign southern ocean nations. This volume discusses archaeological evidence of conflict from those southern oceans, from Palau and Guam, to Australia, Vanuatu and Tonga, the Marquesas, Easter Island and New Zealand. The evidence for conflict and warfare encompasses defensive earthworks on Palau, fortifications on Tonga, and intricate pa sites in New Zealand. It reports evidence of reciprocal sacrifice to appease deities in several island nations, and skirmishes and smaller scale conflicts, including in Easter Island. This volume traces aspects of colonial-era conflict in Australia and frontier battles in Vanuatu, and discusses depictions of World War II materiel in the rock art of Arnhem Land. Among the causes and motives discussed in these papers are pressure on resources, the ebb and flow of significant climate events, and the significant association of conflict with culture contact. The volume, necessarily selective, eclectic and wide-ranging, includes an incisive introduction that situates the evidence persuasively in the broader scholarship addressing the history of human warfare.

Pākehā Settlements in a Māori World offers a vivid account of early European experience in these islands, through material evidence offered by the archaeological record. As European exploration in the 1770s gave way to sealing, whaling and timber-felling, Pākehā visitors first became sojourners in small, remote camps, then settlers scattered around the coast. Over time, mission stations were established, alongside farms, businesses and industries, and eventually towns and government centres. Through these decades a small but growing Pākehā population lived within and alongside a Māori world, often interacting closely. This phase drew to a close in the 1850s, as the numbers of Pākehā began to exceed the Māori population, and the wars of the 1860s brought brutal transformation to the emerging society and its economy. Archaeologist Ian Smith tells the story of adaptation, change and continuity as two vastly different cultures learned to inhabit the same country. From the scant physical signs of first contact to the wealth of detail about daily life in established settlements, archaeological evidence amplifies the historical narrative. Glimpses of a world in the midst of turbulent change abound in this richly illustrated book. As the visual narrative makes clear, archaeology brings history into the present, making the past visible in the landscape around us and enabling an understanding of complex histories in the places we inhabit.

This Element shows that existing models of global slavery derived from sociology and modelled closely on antebellum American slavery being normative should be replaced a global slavery that is less American and more global. It argues that we can understand the global history of slavery if we connect it more closely to another important world institution - empires in ways that historicise the study of history as an institution with a history that changes over time and space. Moreover, we can learn from scholars of modern slavery and use more than we do the enormous proliferation of usable sources about the lives, experiences and thoughts of the enslaved, from ancient to modern times, to make these voices of the enslaved crucial drivers of how we conceptualise and describe the varied kinds of global slavery in world history. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Maori oral tradition is the rich, poetic record of the past handed down by voice over generations through whakapapa, whakatauki, korero and waiata. In genealogies and sayings, histories, stories and songs, Maori tell of ‘te ao tawhito' or the old world: the gods, the migration of the Polynesian ancestors from Hawaiki and life here in Aotearoa. A voice from the past, today this remarkable record underpins the speeches, songs and prayers performed on marae and the teaching of tribal genealogies and histories. Indeed, the oral tradition underpins Maori culture itself. This book introduces readers to the distinctive oral style and language of the traditional compositions, acknowledges the skills of the composers of old and explores the meaning of their striking imagery and figurative language. And it shows how nga korero tuku iho – the inherited words – can be a deep well of knowledge about the way of life, wisdom and thinking of the Maori ancestors.