E oho! Ruth Ross, history, law and te Tiriti o Waitangi

Speakers

Bain Attwood, Tanja Schubert-McArthur

Mihi and acknowledgment

Bain Attwood: Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa. I'd like to begin by acknowledging the customary owners of the land on which we meet today. I'd also like to express my thanks to the wonderful librarians at the National Library, and especially the Turnbull, for all the help they provided to my brother in the researching of my new book. And I'd also like to pay my respects to members of Ruth Ross' whānau, several of whom have been able to join us this afternoon.

‘A bloody difficult subject’

My new book, the cover of which you can see here, is about three very difficult subjects. First, the historian Ruth Ross; second, the historic agreement of 1840 that is now widely known as te Tiriti o Waitangi or the Treaty of Waitangi; and third, the making of history. And by the making of history, I mean the way we make history by telling stories about the past, rather than the way that others make history by doing something.

In case you're wondering, the title of my new book, A Bloody Difficult Subject, comes from a letter that Ruth Ross wrote to Keith Sinclair, the doyenne of New Zealand's post World War II historians just over 50 years ago. At that time, she was in the middle of writing an article for the New Zealand Journal of History, of which Keith Sinclair was the editor, an article that you can see on this PowerPoint, an article that it would eventually become one of the most influential pieces of work any New Zealand historian has ever written.

Ruth Ross remarked in this letter to Keith Sinclair, I hope I'm not being difficult. The Treaty's a bloody difficult subject. Sometimes I wish I had never strayed into it. As that letter suggests, the Tiriti is a difficult subject. Ruth Ross, herself, could be a difficult subject and so is history. And it's the interconnections between these three difficult or bloody difficult subjects that the story I tell in my book revolves.

This means that my book is a kind of history about history, a history about how history is made, not just in the universities by historians, but more especially by a wide range of figures in the broader public world as they tell stories about the past. More particularly, my book is a history of how the history that has been made about te Tiriti or the Treaty has changed in the course of the last 50 or more years. This means, I think, that my book is rather different from any other history book about the Treaty.

The typical book about the Treaty, for example, the one by Ned Fletcher who spoke in the series of talks a few months ago, the typical book on the Treaty seeks to advance a particular interpretation about the Treaty or te Tiriti. My book does not try to do this. Instead, it talks about how and why a range of people, especially, but not only Ruth Ross, have in the last 50 or more years told particular kinds of stories about the Treaty. And in my book, I seek to reveal the particular nature of those stories, and I try to weigh up the various advantages and disadvantages of those stories for New Zealand public life.

In doing these things, I seek to explain the significance of-- that the Treaty has come to have over the last 50 years. And in using the word significance here, what I have in mind is not only the importance of the Treaty but the meanings that have been attributed to it. In other words, I try to make sense of how and why te Tiriti or the Treaty have come to be interpreted and understood in particular ways in the last five decades and how and why it has become central to New Zealand law, politics, culture, and history.

Works of history should surprise

The task I've set myself in this book, A Bloody Difficult Subject, is by no means a simple or straightforward one. In part, this is because what happened in regard to the Treaty in the last 50 years amounts to a story that is full of unforeseen circumstances, unexpected twists, and unanticipated outcomes. This means I expect that the story I have to tell about te Tiriti or the Treaty in New Zealand will surprise, even astound, many readers. I certainly hope this is the case.

I say this because, in my view, this is what any work of history should do. It should surprise or even astound its audience. Indeed, I might go so far to say that if the exercise of writing history has any intellectual justification, it lies in demonstrating to its audience that the horizon of the present is not the only horizon in the world. That, in other words, that our way today of looking at things is not the only way of perceiving the world around us.

In my opinion, a good history book about the Treaty will reveal that once upon a time, it was perceived very differently to the way that most of us understand it today. To put this another way, I believe that one of the main tasks of the historian is that of a remembrancer, someone who, in this case, remembers, calls back to life the various ways in which the Treaty or te Tiriti was once understood in the past.

Ruth Ross

At the heart of the story, I tell about why te Tiriti or the Treaty has come to have the significance that now has a New Zealand are three things, in particular, Ruth Ross the historian, the law, and history. And consequently, each of these subjects, in turn, in my book is given centre stage, as we move through the three parts of the book. Here, I'm just trying to give you in this lecture a taste of what I do in the book.

To begin with Ruth Ross, who we might say is the hero, or rather the unlikely hero in the story that I tell in good part in my book. Ross, in my work, will be well known to some of you here today, but her name is hardly a household name in Australia. This is the case even though in her relatively brief life, born in Whanganui 1920, she died in Auckland in 1982.

During her life, she was on first-name terms with numerous well-known figures in this country's post-world War II cultural history. Those figures include the historians JC Beaglehole and Keith Sinclair, the writers Roderick Finlayson and Frank Sargeson, the poets James K. Baxter and Alistair Campbell, the artists Ralph Hotere, and the literary editor Charles Brasch. All men, you will have noted. Indeed, the story I tell in my book about Ruth Ross, which is, in many cases, a sobering and sad story, is something of a history about the workings of gender and the times in which she lived and her struggle to overcome them.

The first part of my book might make some of you cry, as well as laugh.

Ruth Ross’s article and its impact

Ross takes centre stage in the history I tell about the changing significance of the Treaty in New Zealand life. Because in 1972, she published the academic journal article that I mentioned earlier. This article helped to transform the ways in which not only Pākehā but Māori as well understood te Tiriti or the Treaty in the decades that followed 1972.

Hardly any academic journal articles ever have this kind of influence. In fact, as many of us will know, very few academic journal articles are ever read beyond what we might call the academic cloister. Ross’s was. Moreover, this was true from the moment it was published. It came, you might say, to have a rich public life, as I demonstrate in the second part of my book.

For a long time now, as a result of Ross' 1972 journal article or at least the way it came to be read or interpreted, as a result of this, we've taken for granted in this country that te Tiriti and the Treaty comprises two language texts, one in English and one in te reo Māori, that there were major differences between those two texts or versions of the historical agreement of 1840, and that the Māori text or version is the more important one. So much is this take on the Treaty or the way of understanding the Treaty become commonplace, many New Zealanders, I think, are surprised to know that this was not once how the Treaty was seen or understood.

Similarly, I expect many New Zealanders, both Māori and Pākehā, will be surprised to know that the way most people in this country understand te Tiriti or the Treaty today is the result of this article of Ruth Ross's. It's another surprise, I think, in the story. The main point that Ruth Ross was trying to make about te Tiriti or the Treaty in this journal article of hers was not that the Treaty comprises two language texts, that they differ considerably from one another, and that the Māori text is more important.

In fact, she could never have imagined that her journal article be read or understood in this way and that would-- and that that would be fundamental to the enormous impact it has had. This way of reading or interpreting or understanding her article would have dumbfounded her. Because what she most wanted to say or was conscious of saying was very different.

Ruth Ross’s main argument

The main argument she made in her 1972 article went like this. The Treaty was hastily and inexpertly drafted in English in February 1840. That draft or text was then poorly translated into te reo Māori. As a result of that, the terms of the Treaty were ambiguous and contradictory. That that meant, in turn, that the two parties to the agreement, the British Crown and Māori rangatira, were uncertain about its meanings and implications.

Finally, because there was no common understanding among the signatories about what the Treaty meant and what its implications were, it could not possibly provide the basis of any moral covenant or legal contract for New Zealand today. So it was that Ross declared near the end of her article that the Treaty had come to mean whatever anyone in New Zealand wanted it to mean. In her words, as you can see here, "To each one of us, the politician in Parliament, the Kaumatua on the marae, Nga Tamatoa in the city, the teacher in the classroom, the preacher in the pulpit, the Treaty of Waitangi says whatever we want it to say."

Ruth Ross’s other argument

Yet, as I've already said, her article came to be read or received in a very different way to this, a way that was contrary to her intentions or purpose in writing it, contrary to the way it was read in terms of an argument that the Treaty was an agreement in two language texts, that there were significant differences between them, and that those differences was not-- were not a problem. As one of those texts, the Māori text, was the authoritative one. That's the way her article came to be read. This is what I thought she was saying.

The fact that Ross' article was read in ways that she cannot have expected or anticipated and which were actually contrary to her intentions is, I think, a fascinating occurrence. But it's not just fascinating. It's also important. If her article had not been read in a way that was contrary to her conscious purposes, it would have never come to have the influence it had. And it's unlikely that we would now understand te Tiriti or the Treaty in the way we do.

Reception of Ruth Ross’s article

So how did Ruth Ross' article come to be read in a way that no one could have anticipated when she published it in 1972, in which, as I've said, was contrary to her intentions? To answer that question, I think two general matters need to be considered. One concerns authorship, and one concerns reception. And as I say here on the PowerPoint, by reception, I'm meaning the way in which a piece of work is read or understood or interpreted, rather than whether it got a good reception or a bad reception.

In terms of authorship, I seek to provide in my book something of a history of how Ruth Ross came to write her 1972 article. This story is also one of surprises, like many I expect until quite recently, until I read the work of another historian, Rachael Bell. The title of the article I'm referring to here is on the PowerPoint [“Texts and translations”: Ruth Ross and the Treaty of Waitangi. New Zealand Journal of History vol 43, no 1, 2009, pp. 39-58].

I'd always assumed that Ruth Ross had formulated her argument in this famous 1972 article of hers at much the same time as it had been published, that is in the early 1970s. This seemed to make sense. The early 1970s, as many of you in the audience will remember, was the moment when the Treaty and the rights of Māori as the tāngata whenua were beginning to become very prominent in public discussion and debate in New Zealand. Ross' focus and her article on the Māori text of the Treaty seemed to be in keeping with the times in the early 1970s.

But as Ruth Ross' voluminous personal papers make clear, she had actually begun work on the Treaty at least 20 years earlier. And all the main points she made in her famous article of 1972, she had already made 20 years ago, 20 years before that, when she first started writing about the Treaty, in other words, in the early to mid-1950s.

Ruth Ross’s life

The story I tell in my book about the genesis of Ross' article is a complex one, too complex to tell in any detail here. But the gist of it takes us on a journey from her days as a student at Victoria University and as an apprentice historian in the historical branch of the Department of Internal Affairs here in Wellington in the early 1940s. And you can see her working in the historical branch in this photo, which was taken in about 1944.

I moved from that moment through her time in Auckland, some of which are spent writing stories for the school publication's branch of the Department of Education in the early 1950s with famous New Zealand poet, James K. Baxter was one of her editors. And eventually, in 1955 to a small and remote Māori community in New Zealand's far north. And much of this time, she was juggling her work as a historian with her responsibilities to her family, both young and old.

Here in this photo on the left, you can see Ruth and her schoolteacher husband, Ian, and their two young boys, Duncan and Malcolm. And Duncan is the one that's in the audience today. Here's this picture of 1951 and then a photo of Ruth Ross sitting in the midst of Ngapuhi women outside the schoolhouse in the Hokianga in about 1956.

And I'm just going to digress from what I originally prepared here to say something about the importance of this moment when Ruth Ross and her husband and their two young boys leave Auckland in 1955 and moved to the Hokianga, where her work on the Treaty, I think it's fair to say, was transformed. I argue in the opening chapter of my book that this move of the family, which I think was initiated by Ruth rather than her husband, arose out of a clash she had with her teacher, mentor, and patron, JC Beaglehole.

He had given a lecture, a lecture that came to be entitled The New Zealand Scholar, where he talked about what he saw as the lack of a New Zealand tradition. On reading this lecture, Ross was very surprised by what Beaglehole was saying. And she sat down and over the course of three days typed out a 10-page letter, part of which I want to read to you now.

"I see people go off on the Great Trek, and I see them return and I stay put. I'm quite content to stay put. To be a New Zealander is good. I'm content to be just that. Life is enriching and rewarding still and will continue to be so.

Minor riches and small rewards perhaps, but I find them worthwhile and satisfying. If a few thousand pounds dropped into my lap tomorrow, I would not buy a ticket for London, for concerts and plays and galleries and lectures. I'm damn sure I'd never want to set foot in the USA.

I'd go north again and look at the bear brown hills of the Bay of Islands and watch from Opononi the sand hills turn golden with the rain to come. I'd go to Kaeo and Whanganui and right up to Cape Reinga. They say there's nothing to see there, but I'd like to see what nothing is like.

I'd like to leave Opotiki for all points east. I shall always wonder what the aurora is like. I feel incomplete because I've never seen Cape Foulwind nor Granity nor Karamea."

And she goes on addressing Beaglehole, "What is all this about making explicit the unconscious New Zealand tradition? We are New Zealanders, and we've always been fully aware of it." And she goes on in this vein for quite some time. And then near the end of this letter where she's challenging the way Beaglehole was talking about the lack of a conscious New Zealand tradition, where she is clearly arguing against that.

She says, "As I sat on the steps in the sun opening the mail, the seven-year-old, Duncan, peered over my shoulder. What, he asked, is a scholar? I told him, oh, he said, the New Zealand scholar, that's me. I'm a New Zealand scholar and sauntered off to dig in his garden." And as you probably gathered from this extract of Ruth Ross's latest voluminous letters, part of her personal papers.

An enormously important window to understanding her work, but also a good deal of what is going on around her. She has a wide range of correspondence. And her letters, as you probably gathered from that one, are very, very vivid and unusual for a middle-class woman of her generation in New Zealand. As you've already gathered, she swore a lot in her letters.

Two different strands in Ross’ article

Now to help make sense of the fact that her article of 1972 was read, was picked up in a way that she could never have expected, it helps, I think, if we accept that her article is like many other texts or pieces of writing, including the Treaty itself. It's neither a coherent nor a unitary whole. Instead, it is shot through with ambiguities and tensions. At the very least, it has two very different strands to it. And I don't think she was ever able to resolve what we might call the tension between those two strands.

The first strand is what I described earlier as her main argument in this 1972 article, that the provisions of the Treaty were ambiguous and contradictory. And so, the signatories were uncertain about its meanings and implications and so on because of what she saw as the problematic translation of the English text or what she insisted on calling the English draft into Māori. In short, as she once said to Keith Sinclair, she thought the Treaty was a shambles.

The second strand in her argument, which is essentially an argument, is essentially an argument about the Māori text,and therefore, we might say about Māori understandings of the Treaty. I suggested in my book what I've just called Ruth Ross' main argument. As she says, it might make sense to refer to that as the text of her article and that other argument the subtext if we keep in mind particular meanings of text and subtext.

Here, I'm using the word text to refer to what is conscious and dominant in Ross' mind, and I'm using the word subtext to refer to something that is either subconscious or unconscious or subordinate in her mind. What I'm trying to get at here is that I think Ruth Ross' main argument-- and remember she formulated this first in the mid-1950s. It was shaped by the dominant academic and public forces of the day, which were essentially but not only aligned with Pākehā ways of seeing the world and which led her to attack what she saw as the myth of the Treaty of Waitangi as New Zealand's magna carta.

Her other argument, we might call it her minor argument. But her other argument was shaped, I think, by what we might call a subordinate or subterranean Māori world, which she encountered, as I've already said, in New Zealand's far north in the mid to late 1950s and which led her to think hard about Māori ways of being in the world and their understanding of the Treaty. Because what really happens is when they go to the Hokianga, her husband Ian is responsible for teaching a school in this remote community, which is essentially a Māori community.

And she—Ruth Ross, didn't speak Māori, but she's hearing Māori all around her. She teaches in the school for a while. She's responsible for teaching the beginning students. She has half a dozen Māori students. Their language, their first language is Māori.

And she encounters, if you like, the problems of translation. And she realises, or she comes to believe that very few of those involved in making the Treaty in 1840 could have had a clue about what was going on because they didn't understand Māori. And so, it's this really important moment in her life, in her work on the Treaty, where she's in this Māori community.

She's interested in the Treaty. One day she brings out one of the sheets of the Treaty, a sheet that had been signed by Māori at Mangungu, just up the road from where they were living. And she has this very important conversation, I believe, with two Māori men who she calls rangatira. And they talk about their understandings about the Treaty.

Reception theory and examples of different readings

As I suggested before, the other way of understanding the widely divergent ways in which Ruth Ross' article was later read or interpreted, the other way of understanding, this is not just to focus on her authorship and think about the ambiguities and the tensions in her article, but also to think about the readers of her article and, therefore, the reception of it. Many people tend to assume that readers will read or understand a text or piece of work in accordance with an author's intentions. And when that doesn't occur, it's commonly believed that this amounts to a misunderstanding and, thus, a distortion of the text or piece of work in question.

And yet, in most societies, the way a text or piece of work is read or understood is seldom in keeping with an author's intention. Because as I was saying a moment ago, most texts,are shot-through with ambiguity and intentions. And so, they are open to being read or understood in a multiple number of ways. How a text is read or received depends a good deal on who is reading it. That is the nature of those who are reading it.

In the case of Ruth Ross' article, most, but by no means all of those who read it in the first decade after it was published in 1972, were students of history or others similarly familiar with the discipline of history. And so, I think they read it largely speaking in terms of Ruth Ross' main argument. This is evident in Tony Simpson's 1979 book, Te Riri Pākehā, and an essay by John Owens in the 1981 Oxford History of New Zealand.

Most importantly, this is also the way that Ruth Ross' article was read outside of academic circles or outside historical circles. This is evident in a cartoon of Bob Brockie's that appeared in the National Business Review in 1982.

In the top right-hand corner, Bob Brockie quoted some of the concluding words of Ruth Ross' 1972 journal article. "OK. It's hastily and inexpertly drawn up, ambiguous and contradictory in content and chaotic in execution." Those are some of the concluding words in her article. Bob Brockie is reproducing them in this cartoon.

How a text is really received also, of course, depends a good deal on the political context in which the piece of work is read. In the first decade after Ross' article was published, the Treaty was frequently attacked by Māori and Pākehā radicals as a sham and a fraud, as you can see from this badge produced by the Waitangi Action Day Committee in 1979, The Treaty is a Fraud.

The reading of Ruth Ross’ article changes radically

But very suddenly, in the course of the year, we might say, the way in which Ross' article was read or received changed radically. It came to be read in terms of what I called earlier, its other argument or its second thread. In other words, she was read as saying that the Māori text was the most important and the most authoritative. And that's the way her article, by and large, came to be read after 1983. Her main argument about the ambiguities and the contradictory nature of the Treaty was close to being lost from sight.

There was, if you like, an extraordinary change in the way in which Ruth Ross' article is now being used publicly. And as this occurred, the fortunes of the Treaty itself in New Zealand public life began to undergo a dramatic change.

So how can we explain both these developments, the change in the way Ruth Ross' article was read and the changing fortunes of the Treaty, which happens alongside of it? Arguably, they occurred because there was a huge change in the context in which Ruth Ross' article and the Treaty itself were being read, as well as the nature of the readers of both of those texts.

Crisis

By the 1980s, it can be said that a crisis had emerged in the way that New Zealanders, especially Pākehā, understood themselves in their nation's history. And several factors are clearly at work here. New Zealanders had long regarded themselves as people who belong to the British Commonwealth, formerly the British Empire. But in the wake of decolonisation in Africa and Asia and Britain's decision to enter the European Community and loosen many of its ties to its former settler colonies, this no longer made as much sense.

New Zealand's relationship to the Asia-Pacific region was also changing as that region became a source of increasing trade ties and a growing number of immigrants. Still, other changes were taking place. Pākehā New Zealanders have been taught to regard their nations as an exemplary laboratory for social democracy, but its economy was now believed by many to require radical reform. And this threatened to put an end to the extensive provision of social welfare that New Zealanders had enjoyed for some time.

Similarly, New Zealanders have been taught that their nation had the best race relations in the world. But this boast was increasingly seen to be threadbare, as Māori drew attention to a history of past wrongs, claimed Indigenous rights, raised the question of sovereignty, and demanded a reconfiguration of the relationship between themselves and the New Zealand state. Most of the changes I've just mentioned brought into the question the very sovereignty of the New Zealand nation-state and provided, I think, a crisis of legitimacy for many Pākehā New Zealanders.

Did we rightly belong here, Pākehā like Michael King asked, in his 1985 book Being Pākehā. As a result, major changes took place in the ways that the relationship between race, history, and nationhood. And so the position of Māori was thought about. Te Taha Māori or Māori perspectives having been marginal to New Zealand culture, society, and politics for so long came to be regarded as central to it. For many years, the New Zealand nation had been conceived as one in which Māori was supposed to be treated the same as Pākehā, granted the same rights and assimilated, and expected to allow their ways of doing things to recede into the past.

Now, New Zealand was imagined as one in which Māori were to be treated in many respects as different from Pākehā, granted different kinds of rights, and encouraged to retain their cultural difference and nurture their history. This new relationship or the new relationship that came to be forged between Māori Pākehā and the New Zealand nation-state came to be imagined and conceived largely in terms of the Treaty or rather in terms of te Tiriti. And New Zealanders were encouraged to understand much of the country's past, present, and future, by reference to the Māori text of the Treaty.

A new history required

For this to occur, I argue in my book, a new history of the Treaty and its place in the New Zealand nation was required. Or to be more specific, a new legal and constitutional history or a new legal and constitutional story of the Treaty and its place in the New Zealand nation was needed. The kind of history of the Treaty that several historians such as Ruth Ross and Tony Simpson had provided between the late 1960s to the early 1970s did not fit the bill.

This was so because the story they told about the Treaty was a critical one. As I've said and as you saw in that Brockie cartoon I showed you, Ross had damned the Treaty, as I said before, as hopelessly ambiguous and contradictory in its meaning and dismissed it as a document because she thought it was incapable of being put to any useful legal or political purpose because the signatories to the Treaty in 1840 were uncertain and divided in their understanding of its meanings and implications.

So what in the wake of what I'm calling this crisis and this crisis of legitimacy in New Zealand beginning in the mid-1980s, what the nation now required was I think a new story, a very different story about the Treaty. It had to be a story that would shift the emphasis away from its English text, which had come to be seen as a symbol of colonial wrongs, and on to its Māori text, which came to be seen, if you like, as post-colonial, if not anti-colonial. This new story of the Treaty had to be what we can call a monumental history, the kind of history that can meet a people's need for example and inspiration in action and struggle.

Ruth Ross' article provided a fair part of the material that was needed to tell this new story about the Treaty but only once it was read in a way that was contrary to her main argument. That is, only once it was read in terms of her other argument, the subtext as I've called it of her article, and the logic that seemed to-- in here in her discussion of the Māori text. And this is what happened. Indeed, to such a degree as I said before that Ruth Ross' main argument about the Treaty increasingly receded from public view.

Crucial to this change was, as I said before, not only a change in the context in which Ruth Ross' article was read but also the nature of those who were reading her article. To put this simply, reception of Ruth Ross' article and the Treaty itself shifted, I think, from the domain of the discipline or discourse of history to that of the discourse of the law in its various guises. Law, not history, became the dominant way of interpreting both her article and the Treaty itself.

Seeing Treaty through legal lens

What happened in simple terms was this, that in the context of the work undertaken by the Waitangi Tribunal under Eddie Durie's brilliant leadership, lawyers, legal scholars, and Māori legal claimants, in effect, removed the Treaty from the historical context or circumstances in which it had been made in 1840 and inserted the Treaty in a legal framework that they made in the contemporary moment and then proceeded to interpret accordingly. This meant, at the very least, that the making of the Treaty in 1840 was transformed into an act or an event that was understood essentially as a legal act or legal event, rather than being understood primarily as a diplomatic or political event, which is how an earlier generation of historians like Peter Adams had previously understood the making of the Treaty in his 1977 book, Fatal Necessity.

What I've just described is what you might expect lawyers, legislators, and legal scholars to do, in other words, to privilege the law to emphasize its importance interpreting the meaning of the Treaty, but what I think is remarkable is that historians in this country have followed suit, by and large. They also came to interpret the making and the meaning of the Treaty largely through a legal lens.

Historians followed suit

What happened, simply put, is that as the law became the dominant idiom in interpreting the Treaty, New Zealand's historians followed suit, or at least a particular group of historians did, a group we could loosely call public historians, that is historians who’ve been trained in the discipline of history but who work outside the academy of the universities and who constituted the majority of New Zealand's historians. In other words, the historical accounts that historians now provide of the Treaty were profoundly influenced by contemporary legal discourse.

In my book, I suggest that the most influential example of this phenomenon that I've just mentioned was Claudia Orange's 1987 book, The Treaty of Waitangi, and its later iterations. Claudia Orange distinguished her work from that of early historians in the Treaty in several ways. But the most important, I believe, was in accordance with her belief that they had neglected to give serious consideration to the role that the law had played in the making of the Treaty in 1840. She claimed that those early historians had neglected the law and that this had led to serious weaknesses in their understanding of the meaning and the implications of their Treaty.

Her point of departure in this regard was the relatively recent change in heart amongst New Zealand lawyers. They were arguing contrary to their earlier position that the Treaty was a legally valid and binding agreement in domestic and international law before that argued the opposite. This contention influenced many of Claudia Orange's arguments. She not only pointed out that the making of treaties with indigenous peoples around the world was by no means unusual.

She suggested that the British government believed that the making of the Treaty with Māori was something that it was legally required to do by international conventions, legal conventions. And she implied that the British government took the position that the Crown had acquired sovereignty by the dint of the Treaty. All of these arguments are, in my view, at the very least controversial but in my view, tendentious.

Furthermore, Claudia Orange presented the Treaty as a quintessentially legal agreement that had sovereignty and rights at its heart, reflecting the contemporary talk of the time. Consequently, other ways of characterising and interpreting the Treaty receded. As I said before, an earlier generation of historians had largely interpreted the making of the Treaty as a political or a diplomatic measure and talked about it in terms of being a moral compact or a sacred covenant, not in terms of being a legal contract, which is the way it came to be interpreted in the wake of the rise of the law as the dominant idiom in interpreting the Treaty.

A new constitutional history

Most importantly, perhaps, Claudia Orange's book had an overarching storyline that amounted to a new constitutional history of the New Zealand nation-state. This new history that Claudia wrote went like this. The nation states foundations lie in the Treaty of Waitangi. It was an agreement made in good faith by both parties, and it was a binding legal contract whereby Māori agreed to cede sovereignty to the Crown, and the Crown agreed to protect the tino rangatiratanga or the full exercise of Māori chieftains over the lands and other property.

Yes, the Crown repeatedly breached the Treaty and committed many wrongs, but Māori had repeatedly asserted their rights under it and sought to remind the New Zealand state of those rights. Now, really, the moment that Claudia Orange writes this book in 1987, the Crown realised that it had acted unjustly and that it could recognise the rights of Māori that were guaranteed to them by the Treaty and make reparation for their neglect, thereby putting an end to racial conflict and Māori disadvantage and redeeming the New Zealand nation state in the process.

As I hope I've already made clear, Claudia Orange was by no means alone in telling this kind of story about the Treaty. Other New Zealand-- notable New Zealand Australians, such as Keith Sorrenson followed suit. In doing so, I want to suggest to you, these historians lent a degree of historical legitimacy to the story that the law was telling about the Treaty that it would not otherwise have had.

What would Ruth Ross respond?

If Ruth Ross had lived longer than she did, as I indicated she passed away in 1982, just aged 62, what, I asked in my book, would she have made of these dramatic changes in the interpretation of the Treaty and the extraordinary rise in its legal and constitutional status which owed, as I've said, a good deal to a particular way of reading her 1972 journal article? What would she have seen, I asked? What would she have made? What would she have seen as the advantages and disadvantages of the changes that have taken place since she passed away in 1982?

This is necessarily a matter of speculation. But I think nonetheless, we can make some intelligent guesses about Ruth Ross, what she might have thought and felt about these changes. First of all, I think she would have been amazed by the influence that her work has come to have. She was a modest woman, torn I think between wanting recognition for her highly original scholarship and being embarrassed by any recognition that she ever received in her lifetime.

The Brockie cartoon that I showed you before appeared shortly before she died. So she was aware that her article was starting to be picked up and her work was being recognised, and being recognised in the way that she would have expected to be recognised in terms of this attack on the myth of the Treaty of Waitangi as New Zealand's magna carta.

Given that Ruth Ross' sympathies lay with Māori as the dispossessed and the downtrodden, she would undoubtedly, I think, have welcomed the way in which their rights to lands and fisheries have been recognised, some reparations made for their loss of those resources, and their culture and language treated with greater respect. She would have been surprised, I think, by the remarkable shift in the nature of what I call rights talk, the way in which we talk about rights, the way in which we talk about rights in different ways to those that were dominant when she was alive. She would have been surprised by the remarkable shift in the way that Māori have predominantly come to make claims to rights.

Perhaps, she might have wondered whether there was not a sound basis for the much-needed redistribution of goods from Māori to Pākehā in New Zealand society, surprised by the fact that it now rests on a claim that depends on an argument about historical precedents. She would have probably preferred that redistribution take place on the basis of Māori contemporary needs, rather than emphasising historical precedents in the form of the Treaty. Ross would undoubtedly have been surprised by the radical change in the way that lawyers have interpreted the Treaty and the degree to which their interpretation underpins the story about the Treaty that has been dominant in New Zealand for the last 40 years. She would probably have been amazed to see the resultant rise or return of a myth about the Treaty as New Zealand's magna carta, this time as a legal contract rather than a moral agreement or sacred compact, which is how it was understood in her day.

And I think Ruth Ross would likely have been both intrigued and troubled by the role that professional historians have played in the making of a new story about the Treaty that resembles, as I've said, the story told by the law. Intrigued, because as far as she was concerned, historians and lawyers or the disciplines of history and law speak very different languages, had very different ways of interpreting the Treaty. Troubled, because she would have had misgivings about historians becoming handmaidens of political actors such as the New Zealand state and being complicit in the formulation of what she would have seen as a new myth about the Treaty.

To be blunt, and Ruth Ross could be very blunt, she might have wondered whether the historical accounts of the Treaty told by some of New Zealand historians deserve to be called history. She would probably call the myth.

Democratisation of history

I also wonder what Ruth Ross would have made of a more general phenomenon, what we can call or what I would call the democratization of history, which as I've said here on the PowerPoint, I define it as a broadening in who gets to tell stories about the past, the forms and the ways in which they do so. The democratisation of history has grown apace in the decades since Ruth Ross passed away in the early 1980s. In her lifetime, academic historians and those trained in the discipline of history as she has dominated the way in which New Zealand's history had been told. But in recent decades, the nation's history has come to be told by many others and in forms that differ from those used by the academic discipline of history, the rise of ways, such as oral tradition in mātauranga Māori, thereby making clear that academic history is just one way of knowing or understanding the past and its relationship to the present.

Ross would probably have been ambivalent about some of the changes I'm talking about here. She would have welcomed the fact that the voices of Māori, which had previously been neglected or overlooked or even rejected by the discipline of history, were now being heard. I think this is the case because she was one of the first Pākehā historians in New Zealand to do all history among Māori. She's doing it before the likes of Michael King and Judith Binney.

But she might have been puzzled by the claim. In fact, I believe she would have been puzzled by the claim that there were radical differences between the way the discipline of history knows or tries to make sense of the past and Māori ways of knowing the past, such as oral tradition and mātauranga Māori.

Pressures on the discipline of history

In the closing part of my book, I can only sketch this here, I discuss what I call the pressures that the discipline of history in which Ruth Ross was trained has come under, as other ways of knowing the past, such as mātauranga Māori, have gained or regained power and influence in New Zealand. Let me emphasise here that I think this is a matter that not only concerns the history profession or how stories are told about the past.

I think the matter I'm raising here about different ways of knowing the world and, in my case, what I'm interested in obviously is different ways in which we know the past. This is not just a matter that concerns the history profession. It is the matter that goes to the heart, I think, of democracy and to the present and future of New Zealand as a nation-state.

The pressures or at least the discipline of history have come under, but I think other disciplines as well have brought into question some of the basics of the discipline of history basics, such as what counts as a historical source, what counts as research, what counts as a fact, even what counts as truth. Now, I realise that what I'm saying here is somewhat abstract, and it might be difficult to understand. So let me give you an example of what I'm talking about. It's provided by one of New Zealand's finest historians who passed away three years ago, Alan Ward.

Example from Alan Ward regarding Bishop Manu Bennett and Ngai Tahu oral tradition

Some time ago, Alan Ward recalled on more than one occasion something that had happened during one of the hearings of the Waitangi Tribunal. During the formal presentation of historical evidence that Alan Ward had been commissioned to compile for the Tribunal, one of the tribunal's members, Bishop Manu Bennett, tried to put on the historical record a story that came from Māori oral tradition. But Alan Ward objected on the grounds that the written historical record had revealed that this oral tradition that Bishop Bennett wanted to put on the record was wrong.

According to an oral tradition of Ngai Tahu, in the 1830s, the British Navy, the British Navy had enabled the Ngāti Toa chief, Te Rauparaha, and his men to launch a devastating attack on the ancestors of Ngai Tahu. But according to Alan Ward, what had happened was something rather different. It wasn't the British Navy. It was a commercial vessel that had brought Te Rauparaha down to make this attack. And the British Crown, in Ward's view, far from being complicit in Te Rauparaha's attack on Ngai Tahu had, after learning of the murder and mayhem that had taken place, tried to prosecute the captain of the ship as an accomplice to the killings.

Alan Ward remarked, this is an argument in which the documentary evidence, which he was invoking as an academic historian, was important and outweighed the cultural memory of Māori sincerely held that was.

So what I think is describing here and why I'm using this example is that he was talking about what we can call two different ways of establishing the truth about what happened in the past.

Histories and sovereignty

Now, as many of you would know, Māori have not only been drawing on these other ways of knowing the world and knowing the past and the stories they've told. They've also been entertaining the prospect of a future New Zealand that is radically different from the way that the practitioners of the discipline of history have long imagined. They've been imagining a New Zealand and enacting, if you like, a New Zealand where there's obviously more than one source of sovereign power and authority, not just the New Zealand state but Māori as well.

By contrast, academic historians have long assumed that their task or our tasks is one of accommodating stories that have been told from particular and conflicting perspectives and integrating those different perspectives into a commonly held story of New Zealand that they believe was a public good, in large part because it holds the promise of transcending differences and conflict. Indeed, most historians in New Zealand, Pākehā historians, have long assumed that it's their task to produce such a history, a history that will be accepted as true by all New Zealand citizens. This is a project that I think we can call the project of a shared history. In other words, the project of a shared history, as I'm calling it, is one of persuading everyone to have to share the same understanding of New Zealand's past to overcome differences in the way they interpret it and understand it.

Now, academic historians have long assumed that they have a part to play not only in telling true stories about the nation that they hope will be shared by all New Zealanders. They also believe that they have a role in adjudicating or mediating in public disputes about the past, rather like Alan Ward was doing at the Waitangi Tribunal and that brief episode I described before. Academic historians have long believed that by practising history and keeping with its basics, what we understand is facts, sources, research, evidence, and truth, they believe that they will be able to settle disputes between conflicting or warring parties about what happened in the past and what it means.

But there are now good reasons to question this assumption on the part of academic historians. Many are, at least some Māori, have been unwilling to subject the stories that have been telling to the historians' methods of verifying what happened in the past. Or they've rejected any need to seek validation from the discipline of history for the kind of stories they've been telling. Moreover, in Māori refusing to accept the authority that the discipline of history claims for its accounts of the past and in challenging the ideal of a nation as an integrated whole, they've demanded their ways of knowing the past be adopted by Pākehā and thereby become what I call a shared history.

Challenges of truth-telling

Recently, Māori have had some success in persuading New Zealand universities to conduct their work in these terms, even though it runs the risk of fatally compromising the autonomy of universities and the independence or freedom of academics to do their work, a matter that I regard with grave concern. Not surprisingly, perhaps, some historians have been wondering for some time now how the New Zealand state or government will adjudicate or decide between conflict-- what amounts to competing trains to truth or more especially competing claims about how one establishes what is truthful. In other words, there have been historians who have been worrying about what will happen in the absence of some kind of minimal agreement about what constitutes a fact and what constitutes evidence. To be more specific, some historians have been worrying whether that absence will fragment the body politic and thereby impair the capacity of the democratic nation to function. And they have been insisting that their understanding of what constitutes a historical fact and historical evidence must be maintained.

But there are other historians who have asked whether it's appropriate to insist that Māori have to present historical accounts that meet, if you like, the protocols of the discipline of history, protocols about knowledge that have been established by Pākehā or the colonisers. Indigenous people such as Māori, some historians say, are history poor in the sense that they never created or were unable to preserve historical sources of the kind that are privileged by the discipline of history, namely the written record. And they've been saying it's unfair even racist to question the veracity of the stories Māori tell by using very different kinds of sources, largely the oral.

Still other historians have held that the universities and executive government, the bureaucracy and the judiciary still respect the need to test whether some claim about the past or the present is true or not.

Michael P. Lynch

And yet, given the increasing challenges that have been made to truth claims around the world, one might doubt that any kind of confidence or the kind I've just described is soundly based. As an American philosopher, Michael Lynch, has pointed out, a good deal of public life in any democracy rests on truth. And that democracy faces an uncertain future in today's world, as we are no longer able to agree about how to establish what is true because many people have become blind to proof.

Michael Lynch has written, as you can see here on the PowerPoint:

Without a common background of standards against which we can measure what counts as a reliable source of information or a reliable method of inquiry and what doesn't, we won't be able to agree on the facts, let alone values. And when you can't agree on your principles of evidence and rationality, you can't agree on the facts. And if you can't agree on the facts, you can hardly agree what to do in the face of the facts.

Now, I expect many New Zealanders might be inclined to say, well, Lynch is an American and he's talking about the United States or Trumpland. New Zealand's not like that. But I think it would be naive and foolish to deny the similarities between the United States of America and New Zealand in terms of what's happening in democracy and these doubts now about how are we going to agree, on what basis are we going to agree how we might establish what is true and what is not.

It seems to me that a good number of New Zealanders are now apprehensive about differences over what constitutes knowledge, historical or otherwise. I'm concerned about the conflicts that these differences can cause or are causing and are worried about how these differences might be negotiated or whether they can be negotiated at all. Given these developments, in my book, I've made one suggestion about how we might proceed in this situation, at least as far as the telling of stories about the past is concerned.

The flawed project of ‘shared history’

I suggest that the project of what I mentioned before of shared history is a badly flawed project, irrespective of whether it privileges stories told in the tradition of the discipline of history or stories told in the tradition of mātauranga Māori. And I've suggested that this project of assuming that everybody's going to come and share the same story, the same history, same historical understanding of New Zealand's past, I suggest that that project should be abandoned. This is so, I argue because apart from anything else, this project is Utopian.

It's Utopian because it assumes that Māori and Pākehā can transcend the pull of their respective identities. So they can agree about the truth, the country's history of relations between Māori and Pākehā. This, I think, is unrealistic.

In any country with a difficult past like New Zealand's, different stories about the past will be told and upheld and treasured because they are tied to what and who people identify with. What people believe to be true is closely connected to what and whom they identify with.

A new project: ‘sharing histories’

I suggest in my book that the project of shared history should probably be replaced by a project that I've called sharing histories, in other words, sharing stories about the past. This is a project that rests, as I've said here, on a number of assumptions that assumes that the stories about the past will be told by people who like Māori and Pākehā are differently situated or positioned to New Zealand society and who subsequently have different kinds of knowledge about the past. It assumes that the conjunction between past and present is the fundamental ground upon which all storytelling about the past occurs. It encourages people to reflect on the nature of the relationship they have to the story they are telling, hearing, reading, or seeing, thereby enabling them, I hope, to grasp that all historical knowledge is, to some considerable degree, a matter of perspective and interpretation and that no one has a monopoly on historical truth.

This assumption might suggest that this project holds that all historical accounts are equal or that anything goes. It doesn't assume that. It simply recognises the most significant parts of any story are always partial, and so the knowledge they produce is a limited good.

In sharing stories about the past, it is assumed that all storytellers will assert vigorously the value of their accounts or their interpretation of the past. But it also assumes that most other interpretations have value as well and that will be recognised. In this way, I suggest sharing histories or stories about the past can involve an exchange between differently situated peoples, as they both tell their histories and listen, hear, read, and see those of others. It can be a place of robust but, one hopes, courteous discussion, dialogue, and debate.

This is a project that also assumes that New Zealand will continue to be peopled by groups with diverse histories and identities. It recognises that ongoing conflict cannot be avoided but assumes that that conflict can be limited, and it recommends that the situation of conflict be accepted, however unsettling it might be. In other words, it assumes that national communities do not require that all conflicts be resolved or consensus reached on all matters and that it is better to admit the ongoing presence of different stories about the past and the present and seek to accommodate them through a practical and ethical commitment to democratic principles that include respect for civil, economic, and social rights of all citizens.

It also assumes that all parties have to be confident enough about their ways of doing history or telling about the stories, telling stories about the past, confident enough to be able to engage in a thoroughgoing and critical fashion with other ways of doing it. And I have some reason to doubt that all Pākehā historians have that kind of confidence or the courage to assert their ways of doing history, listen to others but assert the value of theirs in discussions and debate and dialogue with Māori, whoever or otherwise of doing this.

Finally, in keeping with the assumptions I outlined, the project I'm calling sharing histories assumes that a common understanding about the meaning and implications of the Treaty is not required for it to be a document of legal and constitutional significance. It assumes that both language texts should be taken into consideration equally, although I think it's evident that this is not happening now. It assumes that the debate over its interpretation can never be resolved. It assumes that the interpretation of the Treaty will change over time, and it will be an argument without end.

Sharing histories is difficult work now make no mistake. The project of sharing history, as I've outlined, it is a difficult one to execute. As the famous post-colonial historian, Dipesh Chakrabarty, once remarked, it's damn difficult to share histories in ways that also allow us to negotiate differences. And we should not make a difficult thing seem easy. Ruth Ross would no doubt have called the task of sharing histories bloody difficult work, but she probably would have also said that it's vital that this work be done if New Zealand is to survive as a functioning democracy. Thank you.

Tanja Schubert-McArthur: Ka nui te mihi ki a koe, Bain. So I was intrigued by the second part of your presentation about sharing histories, and it's a very topical theme for us here at He Tohu with our exhibition currently being under construction. But in New Zealand, you've probably followed. We have the new Aotearoa's history curriculum in place now. So do you have a solution for how we can overcome those very complex issues of sharing history?

Solution for sharing complex history?

Bain Attwood: I'm not sure if I'm-- I'm not sure if I'd say I have a solution. But clearly, I'm recommending a particular kind of process to facilitate this. And as I trust I made clear in-- near the end of my lecture, I'm saying that I think various criteria, so to speak, are required.

And I think part of it, and you mentioned this in your opening remarks, is that we would be open to really robust argument. I have a sense that, at the risk of generalisation, that many Pākehā New Zealanders are, perhaps for understandable reasons, are very anxious and nervous about conflict in the public life. In fact, I think this has informed some of the major works on the Treaty. Claudia Orange is one example.

And Ned Fletcher's most recent book, at least the way it's been presented by the publisher, is also underpinned by this assumption that we can only accommodate so much conflict, that this conflict has to be settled down, please settle it down. Can we somehow move beyond this? I believe that the nature of a settler society is that these conflicts will never truly be at an end, that the legacy of colonisation is an ongoing legacy.

They won't-- it's hard to imagine that there's going to be one moment where somehow all, if you like, the wrongs of the past and more importantly, in my view, the impact that they've had in their present-- in the present, that they will somehow be resolved.

And so, as I said at the end, I think it's really important that we accept that this is very difficult work and that we be extraordinarily patient that we don't call for this to be settled. I mean, I think settler societies are very interested in settling things down. And I think there has to be a willingness to have these debates, discussion for controversy.

And I have the sense that from the discussions I have on the times I come back to New Zealand and as I follow what's happening in New Zealand from across the Tasman that some Pākehā-- and I would-- let me be frank here. I'll describe them as those who-- liberals in the small L sense, and on the left who seem to be reluctant to realise that this is difficult work that you are not going to solve the problem by identifying yourself with Māori as the dispossessed and the downtrodden.

For goodness sakes, all Pākehā in this country have a connection to the-- well, I have a connection to the Pākehā, to the colonised, although the beneficiaries of this colonisation. And it's also important, I think, very important that we recognize that Pākehā have traditions that are valuable and are important to the workings of New Zealand, which include, most importantly, from my point of view, because I'm in academic the intellectual freedom to think in the way one wants to think, to think seriously and critically.

And I'd go so far as to say that I assume that the kind of book I've written where I'm raising these questions would be much more difficult for any New Zealand academic historian working in a New Zealand university today that I believed that it was easier for me to write this book because I do not work in a New Zealand university, and I have not studied or worked here for something like 40 years.

Tanja Schubert-McArthur: Which gives you the liberty of seeing it from a slightly outside perspective. I wonder if we have any questions in the room and know that some of those public historians that Bain mentioned are in the room. So if you have a question, please raise your hand and wait for the microphone to come to you. So that people online can also hear you. [PAUSE]

Lots of hands. I'll get to you soon.

Brigitte

How is not sharing history endangering democracy?

Audience member: Thank you. Thank you, Bain. It was absolutely fascinating. I think as most of us, I was sometimes nearly trembling. My question is really about the point you made in the last part of your lecture about the way of seeing history like this and not being prepared to share history and making-- doing the difficult work and how it this is endangering democracy. Could you say a little bit more about that?

Bain Attwood: Thank you. So thanks for the question. My point is really following this American philosopher, Michael Lynch, where he's pointing out that-- and this is, of course, happening in democracies all around the world. And you know, I suppose Trump, for better or worse, is a good example of this, where there's this querying that there are any such things as facts. And now, clearly, I mean, this has been happening right across the political spectrum in many places around the world, where we no longer seem to agree on what constitutes proof, what constitutes evidence, whether there's such a thing as a fact, whether there's anything called truth.

And because some people would describe this as the moment of postmodernism. What I'm saying is that goes beyond any sort of particular theoretical moment like postmodernism that this is happening in a lot of democracies. And that the problem it throws up at least for the historian is that if you accept, as I think now many historians and many in the humanities in the social sciences and elsewhere accept, that we have-- there's a range of different ways of looking at the world.

And when we tell stories about the past, that the discipline of history has particular protocols, particular disciplines. That historians believe very much in something we call historical fact. We think that that's kind of natural or common sense. But anybody who knows anything about the medieval world knows that facts would-- were not regarded as being very important, even in courts of law.

But nonetheless, for many, many years, centuries now, historians have believed that at the heart of ways of knowing is something called a fact, that there are particular ways you establish what is historical fact, that the way historians do this is that they place an enormous emphasis on the historical sources that are created at the time of the event.

So it's now very, very clear in societies like settler societies, like Australia and New Zealand, that what's important for indigenous people and has long been important is other ways of claiming truth about the past and that this relies on the oral tradition. And this presents problems for the historian. Is it true for Alan Ward?

Because historians believe very strongly that the historical record, because it's written, does not change. And so in any moment of time, you can go back to that historical record and historians believe have a good chance of establishing how an event such as the Treaty of Waitangi and what its meanings and implications were at the time that the Treaty was made. Whereas academic historians at least used to argue, that's probably less of a consensus now, but they used to argue that the oral tradition is like memory, that it is very vulnerable to change over time that as things change, the way people tell stories about the past change.

And so, what's clearly been happening in Australia and New Zealand and elsewhere is that as there's been, if you like, in New Zealand whether we call it the Māori Renaissance or something else, that there's been a rise of-- Māori insist their ways of knowing the world which, in many ways, have been continuous but Pākehā didn't seem to be aware of them. And we could talk about the reasons for that.

They weren't like Ruth Ross. They didn't listen. It would be one short answer to what was going on. That they-- as claims are now more important. They're obviously much more important than the political and the legal realm.

And so the question arises, what are you going to do in that situation, which was the situation that Alan Ward is describing, where Bishop Manu Bennett insists that the Ngai Tahu oral tradition be read on the record? And Alan Watt is troubled by that because he thinks there are important evidentiary problems from his point of view. Because it's an oral tradition, that as I said, they are remembering that the British Navy took Te Rauparaha.

It's the British Navy, who've been obviously an official instrument of the British state, takes Te Rauparaha to make this attack on Ngai Tahu. And he wants to say, well, the historical record tells us something very different. It's not a navy ship. It's a commercial vessel. In other words, you can't pin this on the British Crown.

And then, as I said, Alan Ward goes on to point out that the British Crown after this incident occurred tries to prosecute the captain of the ship for taking Te Rauparaha on this what turned out to be a rampage. And so, this is sort of the moment where there are these differences.

And so the question is, how do you negotiate? How do you adjudicate between these two ways of knowing the past? And we're not just talking about the past. And so, the debates that many of you would be much more familiar than I am in terms of school curriculum. How are you going to include different ways of knowing the world, what we might loosely call European or Pākehā ones on the one hand and mātauranga Māori on the other?

What happens when those stories are very, very different and the truth claims that they're making? And I think for a democracy, that is very problematic because I think the democracy-- in a democracy, unlike a totalitarian, authoritarian state depends on being able to have debate and try and reach some findings that a large number of people will accept. But I think that work has now become much, much more difficult than it once was.

Now, of course, that has its upsides. It means that in a country like New Zealand, Pākehā are now much more aware that there's different stories. Although I would argue that the stories that Māori have told about the past, in the last four or five decades, are not really substantially different from the stories that Pākehā historians like Keith Sinclair and Keith Sorrenson were telling in the 1950s and then other historians like Michael King and Judith Binney were telling. I don't actually believe the story they tell is substantially different.

But clearly, the way in which they make truth claims, claims to the truth can at least, in many instances, be very different. And then the question is, well, how can a democracy accommodate those different ways of doing things? And what I was saying is that I think that, as I said, it's Utopian. It's a fantasy to assume that everybody will come to accept the same story about the past.

And I think there's been, to be honest, a sort of demand by part of the Pākehā community, which I would describe as being liberal on the left that all Pākehā stop identifying with the stories that they connect very closely with, the ancestors that they identify with, and give up that understanding. And I think that's an unrealistic ask. And I think it gets even more unrealistic if the Pākehā who have been called upon to do that are those who feel that they've been very badly disenfranchised as a result of what we will call the rise of neoliberalism and economic policies in countries like New Zealand in the last 40 years.

And that-- these points of view have to be treated with respect. You can argue against them and try and show that you don't agree with them and you think that they're fundamentally mistaken and so forth. But I think in the end, you have to accept that there are going to be different ways of understanding that, rather than try and resolve and say, well, you all have to agree to the same story.

As I said, I think that's really difficult work. But I think it's actually fundamental in any democracy that a range of points of view be respected. At the same time, as I said, you might-- the views that other people will express might anger and dismay you. But nonetheless, I think it's important that they be heard and one recognises why some people are telling stories that you do not agree with and might find abhorrent.

It's really important to understand where they're coming from, what is their moment in the present, and why are they telling those stories. I think that's-- and you know, it's just like-- again, I'm going to give the American example because I suppose America is now, in some sense, the world we know so much about it. There are many of us, I assume, who loathe Donald Trump and what he stands for. And we might equally loathe those who clearly were instrumental in him winning the American presidency and might be instrumental in him winning again.

And you might want to, and for good reason, call many of Trump's supporters racist. And I would agree with that. But those who are voting for Trump, ones voted for Labour and ones voted for the Democrats, and they feel that they've been deserted by the Democrats and by Labour parties. And they have good reason to feel that they've been deserted by the party with whom they wanted to be identified. And where does it get you by attacking Trump and his supporters and just saying, oh you're a bunch of racists, or as Hillary Clinton made the mistake calling them deplorables, which probably in my view lost the election with Trump.

Tanja Schubert-McArthur: Thank you. And so thinking of one way that New Zealand often deals with those difficult parallel histories is to present them side by side in exhibitions or have multiple voices expressed. So you get away with different views of history perhaps. I had a hand up over there.

Only a few Rangatira signed the English version of the Treaty

Audience member: Kia ora. My name's Ross Davis. I'm for a Pākehā youth work organisation that's been in Wellington 140 years, and we have a good relationship with mana whenua here. One of them actually said to me, Aroha Puketapu and Huia, her sister, there's my truth, your truth, and the truth, which I think helps summarise a little bit of what you've been saying.

But my question was really about one of the last things you said about the equality of the English text and the Māori text. And actually, our organisation upstairs, we had our first Māori chairperson in the 140 years. He had his first meeting just outside the He Tohu exhibition with some elderly Pākehā have been on the board for more than 40 years and didn't know a lot about the Treaty and/or te Tiriti.

And as we walked into the exhibition, one of them said where's the English version? And the Pākehā He Tohu guide said-- answered and said it's over there. It's only got about 23 signatures on it. And before it was signed, it was read out in Māori. And we could see the other nine versions. And so, that to me was a very stark-- very clear where they're all sitting there right in front of you why we've ever been debating the difference.

Bain Attwood: Thank you. Thank you. So could I say that-- and I set this out in the book-- is that one of the crucial reasons why Ruth Ross' article or her work generally on the Treaty became so important was that she insisted that the English text was only a draft. And she called the Māori text the Treaty. She emphasised the Treaty.

And the reason she did is the reason you've just remarked upon, is that she said, well, you look at who signed? So you look at which language text most of the rangatira signed in 1840. And as she said, of the 540, as far as we know, who signed, only 40 put their signatures on a text that was in English. And this was the basis for her arguing.

But you've also made another point, which I think sort of tugs in another direction, and that is that, as you said, at Waitangi and then the Treaty meetings around New Zealand that follow, Māori do not read any text. The text is read to them. So it's what Donald McKenzie, the brilliant scholar when the book he published in—the small book published in 1983 emphasised that it was both an oral and an oral occasion for him. And because this was an enormous challenge for historians because he's saying you focus so much on the written word. I mean, what does the written word tell you?

In a moment in New Zealand in 1840, we're sure some Māori were literate. But as I said, they're not given the text to read. It's-- the occasion of the Treaty meetings is oral and oral. And so, there's lots of talk.

Now, that presents to me a problem for the historian because even though I know New Zealand historians say we actually have quite a good historical record of what happened at Waitangi, the fact is we have very poor record of what happened at practically every other Treaty meeting in New Zealand. And I actually don't believe we have that-- we have some sense of what went on it at Waitangi.

And so, the question becomes, well-- and this is where I think Ruth Ross' emphasis on the texts and particularly the Māori texts was a really important moment and brilliant scholarly work. But I don't actually-- I don't agree with her argument. Because as I've just said, following Donald McKenzie. Is it Donald or David? Sorry.

He-- I don't think it makes sense to focus-- to argue that the way Māori understood the meaning of the Treaty and the implications of the Treaty came from the written text. I still think that it's legitimate to argue that the way the British Crown-- it's clear that the way they understood it, its meanings, its implications, it rested on the English text unquestionably. I also think that, as I say in the book-- for a long time, we've now lived in a world where we've just taken for granted that the differences in meaning between the two texts is the correct way of interpreting the Treaty.

And I want to suggest to you that-- how can I put this to remember how I formulated in the book? Whether one wants to emphasise the differences in the world or the similarities in the world, it's not something that's determined on the basis of empirical research or in some, if you like, rational basis. We decide whether we want to emphasise the similarities or the differences because of other reasons, which are political, cultural. They're not a matter of what the thing is itself.

In other words, you can't look at the treaties and say, well, clearly unquestionably, the differences in the text are more important than the similarities. For a long time, before Ruth Ross, so to speak, it was generally believed that the similarities between the two texts are more important. And so, there's a choice that's been made whether you emphasise similarities or whether you emphasise differences.

And, of course, the particular political moments, that will change. And so, Ned Fletcher recently has wanted to argue that the two texts reconcile. I mean, what it really means is that the English text reconciles with the Māori text. And the Māori text is still the most important.

And my argument is there's no way you can determine that on an empirical grounds. You can mount plausible arguments. I mean, arguments are almost inherently plausible. And you can tell stories, and stories are inherently plausible. But that doesn't mean to say that they are right in any sense.

So what we decide is right is not dependent on these intellectual grounds. You have a choice whether you're going to say, well, I think it's more important to talk about the similarities or talk about the differences. And I would say that there will be a moment again in New Zealand - -

It's hard to imagine now in the present circumstances. I'm not saying this is a good thing or a bad thing. I'm just saying that in New Zealand's future, I assume that the third article of the Treaty, which most people don't talk about any longer, but which was once thought to be the fundamental part of the Treaty, which no one now talks about because we all kind of will say, it's either unimportant or we all agree about that we want to talk about the differences and the other two articles.

But there will be a moment, I think, when-- I mean, as far is what I'm saying here, there'll be a moment where it's thought that the Treaty is better. The part of the Treaty that is best to emphasise is the part which talks about the rights and privileges of Māori as British subjects. In other words, it's a way of reading the Treaty, which doesn't talk about rights of indigenous people as different from the rights that other people claims. It talks about everybody having the same kinds of rights in New Zealand.

And I say this because-- I mean, clearly, what's happening in New Zealand, as the census shows, is that now there's a large number of New Zealanders-- is it 35%-- that do not identify as either Māori or Pākehā. And if-- now I know it's larger. If New Zealand decides to change its immigration policy so it resembles Australia-- OK I'm not advocating this-- but if it were to happen, clearly a growing percentage of New Zealanders will not identify as Māori or Pākehā. They won't see themselves as having any relationship to the dispossession and devastation and decimation and displacement and discrimination against Māori.

How are they going to interpret the Treaty? How are they interpreting now? Because, of course, perhaps it goes without saying that the kinds of conversations that occur in New Zealand and also occur in Australia are conversations which take place, it seems to me, predominantly between the anglophone, English-speaking community, those who trace their descent to the British. The conversations take place between Māori and the descendants of British settlers.

And in Australia, even though Australia, of course, is much more multicultural, the conversations about the past all revolve around these two groups of people. What about everybody else, which is a huge part of the Australian population but is also, as I'm implying or stating, is a significant part of the New Zealand population who are not part of that conversation. At what point is that what I suppose Marx would have called that contradiction, going to make itself felt?

Now, I suppose some of you would tell me, well, it's already been felt in interesting ways. But I think that's just going to continue. And so, the implication is, well, in 50 years, what will a Treaty exhibition look like and what will the arguments be? And, of course, they'll change. I mean, that's life. Yeah.

Tanja Schubert-McArthur: And that's one of the challenges we face at the He Tohu exhibition is the interpretation and the education program and how do we reach the tauiwi, as well as tangata whenua and tangata tiriti which includes everybody who has come to these shores.

I think we have time for one more question because we're going a little bit over. Any burning questions?

Maybe the people that need to learn the most about sharing history are those in power?

Audience member: Yeah, I have a question. Kia ora. Thank you very much. I appreciate you taking the time on this topic. I'm very moved to learn about Ruth Ross, and we'll look forward to reading your book.

I just have a question about this idea about sharing histories and the connection that you've suggested to the rise of misinformation. And I just like to--

Bain Attwood: I'm not sure if I agree with the term misinformation.

Audience member: Well, no, I mean, sorry. But I mean just the disagreement about how we establish truth. I'm just wondering about your thoughts on-- with the people that need to do the most sharing of histories are those in power, those who are Pākehā.

Because in my experience of learning a lot about Māori communities and tikanga Māori, there's very, very well-established processes of understanding truth between groups and even within hapū, marae, iwi. And what I observe in my own academic history is that Western ways of thinking are not so used to that, and actually maybe the people that need to learn the most about sharing history are those in power. And I'm just wondering what you have thought about that and whether this is actually more about the field of history in the Western sense reflecting on its own past and what it needs to understand. Kia ora.

Bain Attwood: Thank you, and thanks for clarifying that point. I think this is fundamental is that those who have had power-- it's like a sort of-- I suppose I'm so much familiar with what's going on in Australia. As probably many of you know, what's going on now what's been called for is a process of truth-telling. I don't think it's altogether clear or that many people understand quite what is meant by truth-telling.

It rests on an assumption that we haven't been telling the truth about Australia's Black History, that awful history, just as history here is awful, awful history of the dispossession and destruction and decimation, deprivation of indigenous people. But the assumption is that the story has not been told.

I'm working on a project now which rests on the assumption that this story has been told almost from the beginning. And there's been rises and falls. But certainly, in the last 50 years, any number of historians but also lawyers and many white Australians have been telling the story alongside Aboriginal Australians.

So the problem doesn't lie in the talking. The problem is you're saying, I think, what I hear you saying, what I interpret you to be saying, is the listening. But listening is difficult work. Yeah?

I mean, because at least for those who identify as Pākehā and those who identify with British ancestors in New Zealand, it's difficult work to truly listen because you have to give up or you have to question. The stories that many of us, I grew up with, many of these are deeply shameful stories. And then that's the problem, how do you live with shame?

And I think one response, which I see going on a lot now, which I don't think is really very satisfactory, we say, oh God, our ancestors are-- God, weren't they horrible? I would never be like that. I did-- nothing to do with me, sweetheart.

There they are. They are racist. They're genocidal. If I was living then, I would rise above that. I would-- I'm inherently much more moral and ethical than they.

I mean that's, in my view, a real problem. I mean-- so it's-- again, I go back to this point about difficulty. But I think it's-- yeah, it makes sense that listening, it's not easy work.

And as Dipesh Chakrabarty says, we shouldn't assume that any of this is easy. But I do think it's vital. But part of what I said in the lecture but only briefly and probably far too obliquely in which I-- not altogether sure I articulate clearly in the book, which goes along with this, is that I think it is-- the project of what we could call the politics of recognition, in other words, that majority people in New Zealand, the Pākehā recognised the loss and pain and suffering of Māori.

I think the work of recognition is crucial because-- I'm not a universalist on many things, but I believe that all human beings need the truth of their people's history to be recognised.

Politics of recognition vs politics of redistribution

But I think now there's such a preoccupation with that work of recognition, is that what many of us, and I'm talking about Pākehā really in New Zealand and white Australians if you like, what we've lost sight of is that task of recognition was once part of another kind of politics, which I and others would call the politics of redistribution. And I think that if those true politics gets severed as I think they are now being severed, I think that is a real problem.

I think the point at the end of recognising historical loss is for us to-- and everybody to commit ourselves to the ongoing project of overcoming the legacies of that past, not to just go around saying, oh isn't this terrible? We recognise your pain. We recognise your suffering. We call upon you to engage in trauma talk.

As I'm saying, I think that is important. But if it ends there, what has changed? And I assume that the position of most Māori, as indeed the position of most Aboriginal people in Australia, in terms of the major socioeconomic indicators has not seriously moved in 40 years. And that, I thought, we would all agree is a real problem.

And I think the politics of recognition was once a part of a broader politics called the politics of distribution, which I clearly think is of fundamental importance. And I think this is largely happening among those who are a majority and who have the most power. And so, in Australia, we're going to have this constitutional referendum where part of it is to recognize Aboriginal people. Well, good. That's important.

But I don't want people thinking that that's where the project begins and ends. And yet, there's so much attention now to how we talk carefully and appropriately about the past. Yes, that's important because it's painful to hear other people talk rudely, at least-- at the very least about your people's past.

But in the end, what are we trying to do? And it's surely to change the present for the sake of the future. And that politics, what I'm calling the politics of redistribution, has I think lost its vital connections with-- politics of recognition have lost the link-- the connection with the politics of redistribution and it's vital.

Tanja Schubert-McArthur: So we might have another topic there for another E oho!

Audience member: Kia ora. Thank you

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