The Waitangi Tribunal recently released the first volume of its report covering the huge Central North Island (CNI) claim area. More than 120 claims from the Taupo, Kaingaroa and Rotorua inquiry districts were considered by the Tribunal, and the first part of its report, intended to be released progressively over the coming months, examines a grievance common to many of these: the Crown’s failure to respect and protect te tino rangatiratanga of the CNI hapu and iwi.

In the Tribunal’s view, the loss of authority which followed resulted in the social and economic marginalisation of Maori for generations to come. HistoryWorks Directors Bruce Stirling, David Armstrong and Dr Vincent O’Malley all presented multiple submissions to the CNI Tribunal on behalf of claimants. The report is available from the Waitangi Tribunal website. (See our links page). [Added 17 July 2007]

HistoryWorks recently marked its second anniversary. Formed in June 2004, the company has since completed over 80 separate projects for a wide range of clients, ranging from iwi and hapū organisations, Treaty sector agencies, heritage organisations, the tertiary sector, government departments, publishers, museums and others.

In this time HistoryWorks has engaged the services of more than 20 separate contractors, quickly establishing itself as the largest private sector provider of historical research expertise in Aotearoa/New Zealand and a premier deliverer of culturally-grounded mapping services to Māori and others.

Offering integrated historical research and mapping services, HistoryWorks has been able to offer comprehensive solutions to our clients. We look forward to another productive and challenging year or two ahead. [Added 11 July 2006]

Lengthy Waitangi Tribunal hearings into the Northern South Island claims concluded in early 2004. The claims involved eight separate iwi and covered a vast area north of the Buller River on the West Coast and the Clarence River on the east coast. Each iwi was afforded the opportunity to present its claims in a series of intensive week-long hearings in Nelson, Blenheim, Motueka, and Takaka.

The claims focused on the nature and extent of overlapping customary rights, New Zealand Company claims, Crown purchases and the actions of the Native Land Court in the nineteenth century.

A Tribunal report on the claims is expected in 2006. Ngai Tahu claims were reported on by the Tribunal in 1991, and the conclusion of this inquiry thus marks the end of Waitangi Tribunal hearings in the South Island, at least as far as historical claims are concerned.

HistoryWorks director David Armstrong was fully involved in this hearing process, and presented extensive evidence on behalf of two Northern South Island iwi  – Ngati Apa and Rangitane.
[Added 12 October 2005]

In the past the involvement of historians working for claimant groups tended to cease when the Waitangi Tribunal inquiry ended. Although Crown historians have always been fully involved in the negotiation process, claimants and their lawyers generally entered into negotiations with the Crown armed with either a Tribunal report, or evidence prepared for them as part of the hearing process.

That trend is now being reversed, and claimants are increasingly seeking the assistance of historians in the negotiation process, especially in developing agreed statements of historical facts, composing recitals (the Crown apology), and in the identification and mapping of particular wahi tapu (sacred places) and other sites of significance which require protection or recognition.

HistoryWorks directors Dr Vincent O’Malley, David Armstrong and Moka Apiti have all recently been involved in assisting claimants in various aspects of the negotiation process, and have developed particular expertise in the mapping and identification of wahi tapu sites of significance. [Added 12 October 2005]

A new book published this month by the University of Hawai’i Press considers the foundational texts in Pacific Islands history. Texts and Contexts: Reflections in Pacific Islands Historiography, edited by Doug Munro and Brij V. Lal, focuses on 35 pioneering historical works published between 1938 and 1992.

HistoryWorks director Dr Vincent O’Malley contributed a chapter on two seminal works of New Zealand race relations history. Keith Sinclair’s, The Origins of the Maori Wars, first published in 1957, constituted a major breakthrough in the writing of New Zealand history, while Alan Ward’s, A Show of Justice (1974), remains the standard reference work on nineteenth-century ‘native’  policy.

According to O’Malley, both works rank among a handful of the most important histories published in New Zealand – and both made significant contributions to the process of revisiting and exposing some of the more uncomfortable truths of the nation’s past. Texts and Contexts provides a timely reminder of previous paths travelled in writing the region’s past and a guide to those ahead. This is a book which is likely to become recognised as itself a foundational text in the historiography of the Pacific. [Added 12 October 2005]

The Indigenous Knowledges Conference held at Victoria University in June 2005 proved a hugely successful gathering. Directors of HistoryWorks Ltd were in attendance throughout the four-day gathering in their capacity as sponsors of the conference.

Moka Apiti, Mapping Director and member of the conference organising committee, also accompanied about 20 conference delegates who began the conference with a hikoi from Auckland down to Wellington, including a two-day noho marae at Ngati Whare’s Murumurunga marae at Te Whaiti, on the fringes of the Urewera National Park. The hikoi, intended to provide an insight into the day-to-day issues confronting local Maori communities, proved hugely popular with international and some local delegates.

Among their number was Erykah Kyle, who as a keynote speaker at the conference proper, provided a riveting and impassioned insight into the problems confronting her own Aboriginal community on Palm Island. In 1974 Amnesty International described conditions on Palm Island as akin to those of a concentration camp. Her sobering message to the conference was that little appeared to have changed in the past thirty years and that little would change until Aboriginal people were properly empowered and resourced to manage their own affairs. [Added 12 October 2005]