More Travel

Holiday 1960 

For our holiday in 1960, we decided to see Kashmir. After flying to Calcutta, we boarded the third-class air-conditioned express for Delhi. We had Judy with us at six months old. The trip took 24 hours, and we had to spend the day at the retiring-room at the main railway station in a temperature of 112 Fahrenheit, drinking lots of water and trying to keep cool until our next train left in the evening. 

In  the evening we left Delhi on the Pathankot Mail for the north-west. Overnight we travelled towards the mountains and the Pakistan border so that by morning we reached the railhead at Pathankot, right where the plains meet the steep ascent to the Himalayas. 

Dal Lake in Srinagar

We transferred to a bus and started our journey by road.  The bus followed the bottom of the hills to the north-west again for three hours until we reached the city of Jammu. For this time we had had the mountains to our right and the Pakistan border on our left. We occasionally saw camels, but most of the country was dry and dusty, with almost no sign of people. 

At Jammu we entered the walled city and drove through the winding, steep, narrow streets of the town. The road continued uphill for hours and then descended into a huge river valley. It clung to the side of the mountains, with gangs of workers repairing and upgrading the road all the way. Every so far there were slips and washouts. 

Before long we turned north and began to climb again, until by evening we reached the town of Banihal, where we stopped at the Dak bungalow for the night. 

In the morning we climbed for a few minutes more and then entered the Banihal tunnel. On the northern side we came out into bright sunlight, blue sky, and a 360 degree panorama of snow-covered mountains. Enclosed by the mountains was a huge valley of green grass, poplar trees and wild flowers: Kashmir. 

For the rest of the day we trundled downhill and across the floor of the valley to the capital city of Srinagar. There we took a taxi to the ghat on the edge of the Dal Lake, and then a shikar (gondola) to a houseboat across the lake for our first week’s holiday. 

The houseboat was like a motel on a boat, permanently moored with other houseboats, where we lived for the four or five days we stayed in Srinagar, exploring the city.

 

Probably the highlight was our visit to a carpet factory, where we saw three workers sitting on a bench with a vertical frame in front of them, weaving the carpet pattern and singing all the time the pattern they had memorised. 

After our week in Srinagar, we climbed aboard a bus for the trip up country to Pahalgam, where we lived in a tent in a camping-ground for the next three weeks. Each day we would explore some of the little town and the surrounding country.  The highlight was our trek up the valley as far as the snowline, where there was an ice bridge and the beginning of the trail up to the popular Hindu pilgrimage destination of Amarnath. 

We could have travelled more widely in Kashmir, but having a six-month old baby with us restricted us. 

The journey home was uneventful; we spent one whole day in the bus driving down to Pathankot, where we slept on the station platform with hundreds of others waiting for the Delhi Mail first thing in the morning. This time there was no long wait in Delhi and soon we were on the air-conditioned third class express speeding to Calcutta and the plane home.

My Waitangi Day part 8

I have explained that there were two men who I very much admired, who I regarded as my personal kaumatua, during my time of working with Maatua Whaangai: Jim Henare and John Rangihau.

Neither of them was from Taranaki but my third mentor definitely was. Sonny Waru, who was later often on the media at the time of the Te Maori Exhibition in the US, was a descendant of another great warrior, Titokowaru.

We decided after a few months that we should do something to help the Maori young people of Maori descent who were at a loose end on the streets of Auckland and Wellington.

For a few weeks before the actual programme started, we were able to employ a co-ordinator:  Albie Martin was a young man with plenty of mana and connections throughout Taranaki, and he helped us plan and begin the programme.

But the leader of the whole project was Sonny, ably assisted by Te Ru Wharehoka.

They recruited a group of youngsters from the streets of Auckland and Wellington and put them together on a series of maraes around Taranaki: beginning with Kairau and finishing with Parihaka, with two South Taranaki sites in between. The local folk hosted us all.

Sonny and his helpers gave them an introduction to Maori history, and their whakapapa, and especially the traditional standards of the community, which for many of them was new territory.

 

All three of these stalwarts have left us now, but their legacy is strong in the efforts of a host of Maori organisations and current leaders to continue their work.

Family History 1.731

(Shipboard diary of my great-grandfather, Charles Gaze, aged 27; in the Southern Ocean, now approaching Australia)

 

 

25th February 1860

Fine, Cold and Strong N.W. wind, sea not so rough but the ship rolls much still.

A pig killed.

A wave came over the poop this afternoon and drenched 3 ladies and 1 gent.

26th Sunday

Fine, warmer and fair winds.

S. Lat. 45=30 E. Long. 128=15.

3 p.m. Bible Class.    

Half past 7 p.m. Dissenters service and address from Rev. 2 Ch. 7v.

27th

We are all well.

Fine, much warmer and very calm sea.

A young man lost a good japaned footbath overboard off the forecastle, he had been washing some clothes in it. It was seen to float for a long distance. Several jocular remarks about it, persons calling out a vessel in sight, others said he might have as well sent some letters by it.

S.W. breeze spring up at 10 a.m. and continues to increase.

28th

Fine and Strong S.E. wind ahead of us

driven Northwards consequently and the ship had to be put about at 3 p.m. and then we began to go S.

3 Molamhawks caught. The doctor and his brother very busy about them to preserve their feathers, etc. One of them measurered 8ft across the wings.

29th

Fine, calm and very light N.W. winds but favourable.

5 p.m. wind much stronger, double reefed topsails, etc. Quite a bustle on deck after being so calm all day.

Travel in India

A few days after arriving in Agartala at the beginning of 1958 we left by the DC3 again for Gauhati on our way to Darjeeling. Gauhati was a mission station of the Aussie missionaries, so we stayed with them, and then caught the express train from the northern bank of the Brahmaputra River and travelled west overnight around the northern border of East Pakistan to the junction at Siliguri.  From there the narrow-gauge railway ran and still runs up the Himalayan foothills to Darjeeling, which is at 6000 feet. 

Later we would travel by the train, but this time we got tickets on a jeep (World War  II surplus) and arrived only a couple of days late for the beginning of the Bengali Language School run by the Bengal Christian Council. 

We returned to the Language School again the next year, and during the mid-term break six students joined a trek up to a point on the border of India and Nepal at 12,000 feet, where you could sometimes see Mt Everest. 



Sketch map of the region

We tramped through the villages of the south-eastern corner of what was then the independent state of Sikkim. We had porters to carry our heavy luggage, so it was not too strenuous. Accommodation was in what are known as “dak” bungalows, which are government operated hostels for civil servants on work journeys. 

Our route followed a river, along the hillside for a couple of days, until it was time to change direction and start uphill. We started very early and climbed through terraced paddy-fields on the hillside which were watered by irrigation systems made of half bamboos. 

Slowly we reached rain forest. After lunch we climbed through rhododendron forests in flower; red and orange, making the hillside a mist of colour. After the rhododendron we came to pine forests, and by late afternoon we were walking through tussock country. Eventually we walked through the dark along tracks in rocky ground with no large plants at all. This day we climbed 8000 feet in around 18 hours. 



Rough sketch map of the district around Darjeeling

Because of the heavy climbing day, the next day was a rest day.  We woke early and covered the few steps to the border post in a few minutes. But the sky was foggy and there was no hope of seeing the mountains. 

Sunrise on Everest

The following morning the sky was clear, and as the sun rose we saw it hit the distant (120k) peaks of Everest and its neighbours. Much more spectacular however was the huge bulk of Kanchenjunga which was much closer to us, and every detail crystal clear. After an hour of photo-taking, the mists rose from the valleys and blotted out our views.

 

We reluctantly went back to the bungalow for breakfast and packed up our belongings to begin the trek home again. 

At the end of the Language School, we went for a fortnight’s holiday to Kalimpong, the nearest town in Sikkim to the Indian border. At that time, Sikkim was a separate country; now it is a state of India.  Kalimpong is about 1000 feet lower than Darjeeling, so there are green fields around it. We enjoyed wandering around the town and especially the market.

Shape up, you guys!

New Cardinals

 

I see the Pope has appointed 19 new cardinals.

 

In any normal community organisation, something like 10 of these would be women.

 

Surely it is time the Vatican moved into the twentieth century!

 

There are two things I find puzzling:

 

1. How can the European Union let a large, influential body inside its borders thumb its nose at practising the most basic level of equality?

 

2. How can ordinary members of the church allow its leaders to set such abysmally low ethical standards? Ethics should be a high priority, shouldn't it?

 

The church's failure in this area reflects poorly on all of us in our efforts to make the world a better place.

 

130 years ago New Zealand gave women the vote. If the catholic world really want to work with the rest of us, it needs to pull up its socks and lift its game!

Sketching week 7

More work this week on human bodies and portraits of faces, but also this scene to combine several figures.

This is the flower market in the Town Hall Square in Aix-en-Provence, from a photo taken from a tourist bus when we were there in 2008.

And this house just down the road from here, with its huge cabbage tree in front.

Family History 1.730

(Shipboard diary written by my great-grandfather, Charles Gaze, aged 27)

22nd February 1860

Fine, cold and calm.

 

A Mollimawk caught by the stern cabin Passenger by a line from his window, brought on the main deck and killed. It measured 7ft 1 in. from tip to tip of each wing. Dark brown wings, white underneath and the body white. Quite an excitement to see it walk the deck, it was hung up to the main stay after it was killed.

 

S. Lat. 44=26 E. Long 113=28.

 

Feet and wings and feathers distributed.

23rd

Very fine, cold and very strong E winds reefed topsails etc, wind increased to a Gale ahead of us.

 

5 p.m. Thunderstorm and Rain, all sails tight reefed except Gib and the Foretops and Main top and they are double reefed. Ship rolls and tosses much. Very few persons on deck several sea sick, we and our children well.

 

8 p.m. hove to till half past 1.

24th

Set sail again, the sea very rough and the ship tossing about.

 

One of the ladders at main hatch fell over causing with other things rolling about a great noise. Very little sleep for anybody.

 

Weather fine and strong N wind all day.

 

Lat. 46=37, Long 119.

 

Sea rough and washing over the deck continu­ally.

Mary Beard on the public place of women

Mary Beard has written a very interesting article in the London Review of Books on the millennia-old tradition of rubbishing women when they attempt to speak in public, or take leadership roles.

Look it up at lrb.co.uk.

Life as a family in Agartala

When Judy was born, I despatched telegrams to our families in New Zealand with the good news, took photos of the baby and mother, and entertained visiting well-wishers. Two days later I went to Calcutta to sit the exams, again passing OK, although I remember my thoughts were never far from the baby and Mum back in Agartala.

 

A few days after I got back home, Audrey and Judy moved to our house, and we started to learn the job of parenthood.

 

In January, my Aunt, Doris, paid a visit to us. She had for many years worked as Treasurer of the Baptist Womens Missionary Union, and was a very significant person in my early life.  She stayed with us for three weeks in Agartala, and obviously enjoyed getting to know Judy, and spending time with us as a young family. Sadly she died of a heart attack a few weeks after returning to Auckland. She was only 63.

 

Judy was a good baby; we had a reasonably straightforward learning curve as parents. When she was around twelve months, however, and learning to walk, she caused us to scratch our heads.

 

As we were sitting reading in the evening by the light of the pressure lamp, a little figure appeared in the doorway (there were no internal doors in our house) and started to look around and talk to us. As it was well past her bedtime, and we had thought she was sound asleep as usual, we picked her up and bundled her back into bed.

 

The next evening this treatment didn’t work; Judy appeared a second time soon after we had put her back to bed.

 

After a few nights of this game, we hit on a solution. We decided that we would just carry on as if she wasn’t there; in other words, we would not reward her behaviour with any attention. So when the little figure appeared in the doorway and started to carry on her usual lively social interaction, we just continued reading and passing the odd conversational remark to each other, completely as though she wasn’t there. Of course we were splitting our sides with laughter inside, but we managed to hold our breath long enough to convince Judy we weren’t seeing or hearing her. She came up to each chair in turn and peered into our faces, and that was the most difficult time for suppression of giggles! Eventually she got her pillow (she always carried a “Nai-nai” to hold while she sucked her thumb) and lay down by the doorway, and after a few minutes, went off to sleep on the floor. We picked her up and put her back in bed, and she never tried that game again.

 

More good news

 

She was nearly eighteen months by the time Audrey had to go up to Shillong, to the Welsh Mission Hospital for Terry’s arrival, and Judy and I went with her and stayed in a rented Australian mission house while the other two were in hospital. We had great fun together, walking around the pleasant Shillong suburbs (5000 feet, cool in Summer, it was April).  After Terry’s birth, there was a terrible cyclone in that part of the sub-continent, with thousands killed or made homeless in East Pakistan, and heavy rain and winds in Shillong.  Judy and I battened down in our house (the others were still in hospital). Other days we visited the hospital and did our baby-worship. And sent the mandatory telegrams back home.

 

During those days I counted the number of words Judy knew, and came up with over 100, including one or two two- or three-word phrases.

 

Once back in Agartala, we began another learning curve: getting accustomed to being a family of four rather than three. 

 

Living on the extreme eastern side of India, which used a common time-zone across the whole country, everything happened very early by the clock. My day at school started with prayers for the hostel children at 6 am, which meant I had to get up around 5 45, or earlier if I could drag myself out of bed. The advantage of this was that we had a good early start.

 

I would come back for breakfast around 6 30, and by the time classes started, around 10, I had got through a lot of work in the office: jobs like paying bills (in cash), keeping the accounts, discussions with the staff, and  preparing my lessons (in Bengali, often, and so needing careful work at that stage of my language learning).

 

Meantime the schoolchildren had a snack, did their PE, and then went on to craft classes until around 9, when they broke to get bathed and dressed for their first main meal before classes  proper. It took me quite a while to adjust to this odd routine, in fact I don’t think I ever did find it comfortable!

 

Siesta

 

In the middle of the day, we would have a siesta. In those days we were getting two weekly newspapers (gifts from family): the Times Weekly Airmail edition from London, and TIME magazine, which my father and I had read together some years before when I was at university. We would read these during our siesta, and then have a shower and afternoon tea before I went back to work. It was from the Times crosswords that I first learned how to solve cryptic clues, although I never solved more than about one third of each puzzle from the Times.

 

I did notice that the Times was a week ahead of TIME in its news coverage. The record was one week when we were in Darjeeling; the UK Budget was announced on the Wednesday and by the Saturday we had received our copy of the Times with the report. We could never get TIME to agree to swap addresses in that way; any change in the delivery system took a long time to come through.

 

After school classes finished, Audrey and the children and I would walk around the mission compound, sometimes joining the school children at their games, sometimes visiting friends. I remember it as a relaxing time, although there were regular business committee meetings after 4 pm, some of which went long into the evening, delaying dinner very frustratingly!

Education and my job in Agartala

We learned that the mission employed quite a number of Indian staff to assist the New Zealanders. A doctor, pharmacist, lab technician and numbers of nurses besides cleaning staff and clerks to operate the hospital and other health services. A dozen teachers in the school on the mission compound, and up to a hundred more to run village schools in the countryside. 

Over the years we explored a bit more of the State of Tripura. One trip to a Church Conference in the south-east involved driving to a village about an hour south of Agartala, and then walking along jungle tracks for an hour to a village where we stayed overnight.  The next day we trekked around 20 miles (32km) to the Conference venue. 

Terry, 9 months , at the Hachupara house

Many years later Audrey and the children and I spent a few days in the first village (Hachupara) where the mission had a bamboo house for us to use. It had posts built of rough-dressed tree-trunks, walls and floors and inside framing of bamboo, roof of thatching-grass (like raupo), and was tied together with coconut fibre string, rather than nails.  This was similar to all village houses in those days. 

When another conference was held at the same village as previously five years later,  we could bus the whole way, as a modern road had been built in the meantime. 

In five years while we lived in Tripura, the Government built miles of roads and bridges, put in 1000 village primary schools, established 33 high schools, built a 300-bed base hospital and six cottage hospitals, six agricultural research stations, and installed an electric-power plant – a massive development effort, all funded by the Government of India. 

My job was to take over management of St Paul’s mission school from the beginning of 1960. This involved the professional leadership of the teaching staff, the financial and physical management, and managing the hostels, which accommodated about 120 of the pupils. 

The intention was that before long we would start extending the school, which then taught pupils up to year 6, up to year 8. For higher classes the students then joined the local government high school, Bardwali, which taught up to the qualifications for tertiary college entry. 

The management side involved preparing and administering the school and hostel budgets, paying the salaries (in cash) and all other bills, and keeping the accounts, and in particular supervising the building and maintenance of the school plant. 

Needless to say, I rapidly became familiar with currency, weights and measures, building terminology, and so on. Fortunately I had several very experienced colleagues who were able to advise me on such matters, and experienced Indian teachers on the staff who handled all the everyday teaching side. I taught a few periods a week of English and later on a couple of other subjects once my Bengali was good enough. I particularly remember teaching a year seven class the Pythagoras Theorem in Bengali, and having to learn the Bengali for hypotenuse in the process. 

In addition, I had to carry my share of other general mission tasks, including membership of a couple of specialist committees, one to supervise the economic development programme, and an ad hoc committee charged with setting Cost of Living allowances for all mission staff during periods of inflation. 

I soon got involved in curriculum development. Unesco had issued a report in 1951 which recommended that children ahould all be taught in their mother-tongue until at least the third year. Most of our pupils were having their education in a foreign language, ie Bengali, whereas their original languages were Tibeto-Burman group tongues and dialects, similar to Sherpa or Bhutanese. Very few of these non-Bengali languages had been written and nothing was published in them. 

All we were able to do was to start weekly classes in about four of the main tribal languages, and students attended classes in the one of those four that was closest to their own. 

The Indian Education system in those days was pushing what they called Basic Education, founded on the teachings and ideas of Mahatma Gandhi. This meant that schools taught children to work at the skills their parents used in their occupations in the village situation, and through this work managed to teach language and maths and science and social studies.  

We worked hard at trying to develop our existing loin-loom (girls) and agriculture (boys) classes to cover spinning, dyeing, handloom, and to introduce other practical skills. Ultimately all this good theory fell on deaf ears, because the students and especially their families believed that the path to improvement led through higher education and a government job. 

We managed to achieve the upgrade to year 8 level, but once I left with my odd European ideas the school was converted to English-medium, and an emphasis on traditional book-learning in preparation for University studies and those cushy, well-paid jobs.

My Waitangi Day Part 7

Another person who had a great influence on my understanding and attitude to Waitangi and its place in our nation was John Rangihau.

John was one of the leaders of the Maatua Whaangai programme, and of the thinking that produced the reforms incorporated in the Children's and Young Persons legislation in the 1980s.

This incorporated ideas we would recognise as associated with Restorative Justice, and an emphasis on rehabilitating wayward youth within the family, rather than by separation from the family in a state institution.

I remember specially an occasion when my colleague and I visited a small marae on the Taranaki coast to look at and encourage the Kohanga Reo workers. While we were visiting, they got word that John Rangihau was on his way to visit as well. I was the only man there; their kawa was for men to welcome manuhiri, so I was gently challenged to perform the task, with my colleague prompting me. I stumbled through my few words of Maori mihi and John was very gracious in reply. 

He later asked me to consider applying for a job as national co-ordinator for Maatua Whaangai; I was not ready to move to Wellington so that did not happen, but I appreciated the honour of the invitation.

I still believe the job would be better done by a Maori person, especially a fluent speaker of the language. As far as Taranaki was concerned, that was what happened: I moved back to social work generally, and volunteer Maatua Whangai enthusiast Bill Kaitoa took over my role.

Britain AD by Francis Pryor

An interesting book

I have been reading this rather learned paperback, published ten years ago, about the archaeology of Britain. It covers the period after the end of the Roman Empire (usually taken to be 410AD) and up to the historical account of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of the seventh and eighth centuries. What we were taught at school were the "Dark Ages".

Archaeology was never part of my studies, but the history of the English Language was right in the centre of my university work.

The hot academic news in the early fifties, in my area of study, was the first report of the archaeologists who discovered the Anglo-Saxon graves at Sutton Hoo, in eastern England. The discovery was made in 1939, but the work was put on hold during the war, and the first analysis came out during my last year.

Among the items shown in the report was this gold clasp, labelled by the experts as a "purse lid" though there was considerable doubt as to what it really was.

The main idea of the book is that the old story of waves of raids followed by an invasion by Angles and Saxons was wrong; what really happened was that the inhabitants of Post-Roman Britain, who had always had regular contacts with the continent, dating back many centuries, adopted Anglo-Saxon culture, language and customs of their own volition, probably because they regarded them as highly prestigious. There may have been a small class of warrior-chiefs who arrived and took over the leadership, but there was in fact very little one-way migration.

The evidence for this is just that the archaeological record does not indicate much disruption; and most of the change involved a return to Pre-Roman customs, rather than something new. There is also lots of evidence of comings and goings all over the North Sea and the surrounding countries over several millennia.

 

Pryor puts it this way in the last paragraph of his book:

 

"....the fifth and sixth centuries were never truly Dark. There was no population collapse, the countryside never reverted to woodland, field systems continued in use, towns quite rapidly appeared and then stayed for good. Yes, there were major social and political changes, and yes, we can see the effects of real raiding in the Viking depredations of the mid-ninth century that were followed by the collapse of long-distance trade. But where is the evidence for such happenings in the 'Dark Ages', when communication with mainland Europe and the Mediterranean was a regular occurrence, both by land and sea? If we are looking for English origins, we should forget the 'Anglo-Saxons' and turn instead to the resident population, who had been there, in their millions and their various cultures and communities, all the time. I refer, of course, to the real heroes of this book: that diverse group of people -- the British."

 

Now I haver to accept his expertise in the archaeology, but he does not discuss the language in the body of his argument, claiming that to be outside his area. He then seems to me to make a large question-begging leap by later claiming the language evidence supports his claim that the archaeological evidence trumps everything else.

 

Anglo-Saxon, Old English language has not a shred of residue of Celtic (British) vocabulary or structure, which one would expect if Pryor's thesis is correct. What he proposes as the summary of the 'Dark Ages' actually happened at the Norman Conquest: the Norman French language left marks in English everywhere, but not in the basic everyday vocabulary or the basic structures.

 

So until the archaeologists come up with a theory that reconciles their findings with the language evidence I remain unconvinced.

 

 

Visit of a Leader

David Cunliffe

Monday night in our household, especially the third Monday of the month, is the night for political meetings.

This week it was the visit of David Cunliffe, the leader of the Labour Party.

 

He spoke to an audience of about 70 people, which is pretty good for this stage in the electoral cycle. Several were not Labour supporters, but had come just to check out the new Labour leader.

 

We were impressed with his oratory for a start. He grew up in the home of an Anglican vicar of a Christian Socialist leaning, and it showed: we were treated to a good, old-fashioned political speech.

His sermon had three clear points: the need to reverse New Zealand's slide into inequality, especially for children, the need to improve incomes, especially for the lower paid workers, and the need to restore our faith and hopes for New Zealand and our pride in our environment.

 

One of the questions he was asked was unusual: who are your heroes? The answer was straight and clear: Micky Savage and Nelson Mandela. Savage for the way he rebuilt New Zealand after the great depression of the thirties, and Mandela for the way he steered South Africa through the post-Apartheid era without a civil war, by emphasising forgiveness and reconciliation.

His personality impressed us too: he chatted easily over supper with supporters and others. He was consistently positive, with none of the negativity sometimes associated with politicians.

We came away with very positive conclusions about the new leader.

Family History 1.729

(shipboard diary of my great-grandfather, Charles Gaze, aged 27)

19th February 1860

Sunday

Raining all day. Fair wind S.W.

Church Prayers omitted.

3 p.m. Bible Class as before

Half past 7. Dissenters' Service as before and address from Matthew 7 Ch. 12+13 verses.

20th

Very fine and warmer but very light winds.

All pretty well today. Doctor gave us some Sago.

The last sheep killed, they all look'd in very poor condition, especially this one.

E. Long 105 Lat. 43=40.

Mend our pail.

February 21st

Very fine and cold, a fair wind N.W.

The longboat cleaned out as the sheep are all used. There are 2 white cats belonging to the butcher remaining in amongst the hay for the cows.

S. Lat. 44=5, E. Long 110

Aurora Borealis or Southern Lights very grand tonight.

My Waitangi Day Part 6

I learned a lot more about the Treaty later when I worked with the Maatua Whaangai programme. I was the social worker from the Department of Social Welfare, as it was called then, and I worked closely with the community worker from the Maori Affairs (=Te Puni Kokiri) Department.

We did a lot of work ensuring that Kohanga Reo centres were up and running effectively. Both Kohanga and Maatua Whaangai movements had been supported, encouraged, even spearheaded by an old acquaintance, Sir James Henare.

Sir James had been a member of the Bay of Islands County Council when I was attending its meetings as Chair of the Paihia Community Council; he was the Chair of the county Planning Committee. I had had the chance to get to know him a little over lunches on the council meeting days.

He had an illustrious record as a leader of the Maori Battalion during the Second World War, and continued to be one of the national leaders of maoridom.

In the eighties when I was working with the Maatua Whaangai programme, James's son, Erima, was Director for Maori Affairs in Taranaki, and his twin sons were pupils at the Kohanga Reo in New Plymouth.

Margaret and I decided to enrol our two pre-schoolers in the Kohanga, and so we got to know the next generation of Henares a little.

 

I continued to learn when I was Equal Employment Opportunities officer for the Health Board, running Treaty workshops for our staff, and taking part in management training sessions on Treaty issues with such experts as Moana Jackson and Erihapeti Ramsden.

My Waitangi Day Part 5

What Maori leaders understood has been the subject of discussion ever since. Certainly there was dispute at the time.

William Colenso

The Pakeha who expressed reservations about this at the time was Colenso, the printer for the mission in the Bay of Islands. He took notes of the speeches and published them later, so that is how we know the details of the discussions.

Colenso got the impression none of the Maori leaders really understood what the implications of the proposal were; at one stage he said so publicly, and was replied to by Henry Williams, the senior missionary, and the official translator between English and Maori. Hobson dismissed the objections rather promptly.

Another who was unhappy was Hone Heke. Then there was Bishop Pompallier, the Catholic missionary leader from across at Kororareka, who didn't like the cosy relationship between the Anglican missionaries and Hobson and his staff. He got a promise that all the churches would be treated equally.

 

When I first read Colenso's account while preparing the script for our re-enactment in 1975, the thing that struck me was the great variety of points of view at the time; there are as many different positions as people on the Treaty House lawn.

 

We had thought there were but two angles on the Treaty: Maori and Pakeha.  But in reality there were differences between the Anglican missionaries as the exchanges between Colenso and Williams make clear. Then on the Maori side there were differences between Hone Heke and Tamati Waka Nene to start with. And among the spectators there were another variety of angles: traders, landowners, and sailors, for instance, all had different ideas.

 

Even from the first day of talks, the Treaty was a complex and complicated issue, and it certainly hasn't been made simpler by the history since then.