4 minute read
Our heritage
DELIVERING DEEPER
Historian and academic Damon Salesa explains to Caitlin Sykes why critical and ethical thinking is crucial to ensuring Aotearoa New Zealand preserves an inclusive heritage
IMAGE: MARCEL TROMP
There’s a wonderful geographer, Doreen Massey, who describes ‘places’ as ‘where stories come together’, and the heritage places that I particularly value cluster in places of significance for me – Auckland, Northland and, of course, the Pacific, especially Samoa.
In Auckland, I think the places that tell the most about our heritage are our maunga. The nature of heritage preservation is to gravitate towards the built environment, particularly sites built for those with privilege, but when I think of the really powerful things that make us distinctive as a city, a large part of that is invested in those maunga.
In New Zealand, the most special place for me is Waitangi. Few places have such a sense of grandeur about where a nation begins, and when we celebrate on 6 February it’s New Zealand at its best. It’s a festival of bicultural New Zealand, and part of that has to be about contestation – this is a really healthy thing to have.
Also incredibly spectacular and significant is Te Rerenga Wairua/Cape Reinga. Across the Pacific there are many places like this, where spirits depart to ancestral homelands. The place in Samoa where this happens is called Falealupo. Falealupo is a special place in Samoa to me because it’s where my father is from, and because it’s a place that connects Samoa to the rest of its deeper history.
The ancestors in their wisdom knew that places like these are all we have, essentially – and not just for a little while. That understanding of kaitiakitanga is connected to a sense of place and also to an understanding that our children will be here, and our grandchildren, and our great-grandchildren and so on.
kaitiakitanga:
guardianship
maunga:
mountains
In terms of how we preserve these places, I think of heritage sites like an archive, but an archive of places – and like an archive, admission into the archive is controlled by certain interests. And what we have within an archive is what we inherited from people whose values and priorities are different from our own.
The danger is that those places left outside of heritage archives are incredibly vulnerable – and I know that some of those within them are also vulnerable; so many of them have disappeared. And ultimately that means that the people connected to those places have not had their histories and places preserved.
I think we should be completely rethinking the way we’ve archived, which means not only including a bit of diversity but also understanding and being quite critical about the terms of our inclusion.
Compulsory teaching of New Zealand history [from 2022] is opening the door to the deeper and better knowledge needed to help make that happen, but we also need the resourcing to deliver that better and deeper knowledge.
What we need now are quality histories that encourage critical thinking and awareness, as well as the knowledge that will make our young people powerful and ethical citizens.
Toeolesulusulu Damon Salesa is Associate Professor of Pacific Studies and Pro Vice-Chancellor (Pacific) at the University of Auckland. RETURN TO CONTENTS
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