Settler memory and Indigenous counter-memories: narrative struggles over the history of colonialism in Aotearoa New Zealand

ABSTRACT

As with other settler colonies, Aotearoa New Zealand has seen a long-running conflict between a Euro-centric ‘master narrative’ of the historical past and Indigenous counter-narratives. Previous research on these narrative struggles adopts the ‘top-down’ perspective on collective remembering, focusing primarily on how memory entrepreneurs deploy cultural texts and practices to construct particular representations of history. To broaden the methodological scope, the analysis developed in this paper follows the ‘bottom-up’ approach, which makes it possible to map the distribution of collective memories across individuals and investigate their attitudinal effects. By means of a rigorous survey study (N = 1,066), the paper reveals three key findings about collective remembering in Aotearoa New Zealand. First, individuals in the ‘critical years’ of adolescence are more open to weaving Indigenous Māori perspectives into their understandings of history than older generations. Second, when compared to the monocultural master narrative, historical reconstructions that reflect Māori experiences promote a more inclusive understanding of national identity and generate public support for redressing historical injustices against Māori. Third, the empirical analysis finds no evidence for claims made by conservative political actors that creating space for the articulation of Māori histories perpetuates social division and weakens popular identification with the nation.

KEYWORDS:

• Collective memory
• national identity
• interethnic relations
• historical injustice
• colonialism
• Aotearoa New Zealand

1. Introduction

In settler colonies – such as the United States, Canada, Australia, and Aotearoa New Zealand – collective remembering has long been dominated by singular Euro-centric narratives of the historical past that seek to erase the voices and histories of Indigenous peoples. The function of these narratives is twofold: legitimising the project of colonisation and constructing a national identity that represents the White settler population (Lowman and Barker 2015: ch. 2; Veracini 2007). However, despite the settler state’s disproportionate control over cultural resources that can be leveraged to form and stabilise collective memories, monopolistic storytelling has met with growing resistance from Indigenous activists. Not least since the end of the Cold War – when the ‘grand narratives’ of political belonging collapsed, and nations turned inwards to deal with their domestic divisions and sought to answer the questions of ‘who owns the past and how it ought to be represented’ (Blight 2009, 246) – Indigenous counter-narratives that challenge colonialist representations of history have been gaining ground in the public sphere. For Indigenous peoples, mnemonic resistance against narrative erasure is a means to assert their own identity and bring their histories of suffering to light (Carlson and Farrelly 2023; John 2023).

The strongest opposition against this greater pluralism in storytelling typically comes from conservative political actors, claiming that there is no need to dwell on darker episodes of history, as subsequent – more positive – episodes have redeemed the nation’s past moral failures (Nash, Crabtree, and Dunn 1998, 15). Moreover, conservatives warn that, if citizens are not socialised into the same historical narrative of how the nation became what it is today, this will breed social division and weaken national identity (Barton and Levstik 2004, 58).

Existing research has improved our understanding of the conflict between colonialist master narratives and Indigenous counter-narratives mainly by analysing the memory texts and practices through which these narratives are communicated, such as museums (e.g. Failler 2018), public heritage sites (e.g. Hellmann 2022b), school curricula and teaching resources (e.g. Fozdar and Martin 2021), protest (e.g. Aikman and Azarmandi 2023), and art (e.g. Mithlo 2022). However, in (implicitly or explicitly) adopting the ‘top-down’ approach to collective remembering, these studies are limited in that they pay very little attention to individuals as the ‘consumers’ of culturally mediated representations of the historical past. Hence, two questions remain unanswered. First, it is not clear to what extent revisionist histories from Indigenous perspectives have reshaped how individuals in settler colonies remember the past. As ‘bottom-up’ survey studies demonstrate, individuals’ understandings of history can be ‘sticky’ and highly resistant to change (e.g. Schuman, Schwartz, and d’Arcy 2005). Second, considering the definition of collective memory as ‘the distribution throughout society of what individuals know, believe, and feel about the past […] and how much they are inspired by it as a model for their conduct and identity’ (Schwartz 2015, 10; emphasis added), it has yet to be investigated whether and in what ways Indigenous counter-storytelling influences individuals’ attitudes towards redress of historical injustices and definitions of national character.

My paper addresses these two questions through an original survey study conducted in Aotearoa New Zealand informed by the bottom-up approach to collective remembering, according to which ‘one must locate collective memories not in the world, but in the minds of individuals’ (Hirst and Manier 2008, 187). To begin with, the data reveals a birth cohort effect, as it is individuals in their formative years of adolescence who are most likely to integrate Indigenous Māori perspectives into their understanding of history. Moreover, it can be inferred from the survey that the concerns voiced by conservative political actors about pluralistic storytelling are unwarranted: narrating Aotearoa New Zealand’s past from Māori viewpoints does not perpetuate social division nor does it weaken individuals’ sense of national identity. Rather, the survey indicates that creating space for Māori histories fosters a more inclusive sense of national identity and elicits support for addressing historical wrongs against Māori. I conclude the paper by reflecting on what these findings mean for current political debates in Aotearoa New Zealand.

2. Narrating Aotearoa New Zealand’s historical past: a top-down perspective

To phrase a set of research questions for the empirical analysis, this first section adopts a top-down lens to summarise how Māori – who are recognised as the Indigenous peoples of Aotearoa New Zealand – have, over the last few decades, challenged the settler state’s quasi-monopoly on historical storytelling and forced official memory to acknowledge a greater diversity of historical experiences. It should be noted that the distinction between the state-sanctioned master narrative and revisionist counter-narratives is, to an extent, a heuristic device. Storytelling about the historical past can be more nuanced than these opposites suggest.

2.1. New Zealand’s monocultural narrative of the historical past

Collective memory in Aotearoa New Zealand has long been dominated by a Euro-centric master narrative that serves to construct the image of ‘a small nation punching above its weight’. The rhetorical emphasis on ‘smallness’ serves to imbue the nation with distinct qualities: not only does New Zealand have moral traits (such as trustworthiness and tolerance) that larger states lack, but – given its proven record of social and economic progress – New Zealand is evidently also more hardworking, resilient, and innovative than larger states (Shore 2017; Sibley, Hoverd, and Liu 2011).

The earliest key event in the monocultural ‘punching above its weight’ narrative is the ‘discovery’ of New Zealand by Captain James Cook in 1769. By casting Cook in a specific role – that of an ‘Enlightenment hero’ who rose from humble origins, had a thirst for scientific knowledge (not conquest), and treated Indigenous people in a humane and respectful manner (Thomas 2006) – the narrative establishes Cook as the ‘prototype’ New Zealander: industrious, forward-thinking, and open-minded. These and similar national attributes recur in subsequent chapters of the ‘punching above its weight’ narrative.

Drawn by Cook’s reports of fertile land and the promise of ‘a latent paradise, waiting to be fulfilled’ (Belich 2007, 300), European settlers started immigrating in large numbers. The master narrative details how the new arrivals successfully converted ‘wild untamed nature’ into ‘richly productive pastoral land’, thus further promoting the idea that New Zealanders are imbued with a spirit of hard work and ingenuity (Hellmann 2022b). The transformation of the landscape, the story continues, laid the foundation for growth and prosperity, which allowed the colony to slowly emancipate itself from British rule. An important milestone of differentiation was the introduction of women’s suffrage in 1893. This reform – a world first – is celebrated as evidence that New Zealanders’ ingenuity also extends to the social and political spheres (Shore 2017, 51–52). However, it was during World War I that the nation truly came of age. In particular, the ‘baptism of fire’ that New Zealand soldiers received in the eight-month long battle of Gallipoli is narrated as the ultimate ‘test of manhood and nationhood’ (Mein Smith 2016, 194).

While these events provide important symbolic resources for the construction of a Euro-centric national identity, what ultimately holds the ‘small nation punching above its weight’ identity project together is the claim ‘that British colonisation was a fairly benign and consensual experience’ (Bell and Russell 2022, 22). The main piece of ‘evidence’ to support this claim is the Treaty of Waitangi. It was through the Treaty – signed by more than 500 Māori tribal leaders on 6 February 1840 – that New Zealand was established as a colony of Britain. Officially sponsored commemorations of the signing were firmly institutionalised after the 1940 centennial – most importantly, by declaring 6 February a ‘national day of thanksgiving’ in 1960 and eventually a public holiday in 1973. By means of repeated celebrations, framings of Waitangi as ‘the cradle of the nation’ and the Treaty as ‘the foundation of nationhood’ came to dominate the popular understanding of New Zealand’s beginnings (Orange 2021, 221). More fundamentally, this specific account of the historical past, which ‘locates the origins of the nation as a negotiated and mutually agreed-upon covenant between two peoples rather than as a result of the invasion and expropriation of Māori land and culture’ (Kidman 2018, 104), not only legitimises European New Zealanders as one of the two ‘founding peoples’ of the nation (Bell 2006, 257), but it also serves to concretise the image of a respectful and tolerant nation.

2.2. Counter-narratives from Māori perspectives

Māori voices challenged the romanticised and state-sponsored commemorations of the Treaty of Waitangi as early as the 1940s (Orange 2021: ch. 5). Criticism became more intense from the 1960s and 1970s onwards, driven by the so-called Māori renaissance. Mainly through protest, Māori activists created powerful counter-narratives that confront the silences on which the Euro-centric interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi rests (Bell and Russell 2022, 29; Celermajer and Kidman 2012, 227). For one, the public voicing of grievances over the historical and continuing loss of ancestral land has brought public attention to significant breaches of the Māori language version of the Treaty of Waitangi (Te Tiriti) by the colonial government – in particular, the guarantee that tribal leaders would retain total chieftainship (tino rangatiratanga) over their lands and all things of value (taonga katoa). Moreover, protestors dragged into the open the violent history of the New Zealand Wars – ‘a series of British attempts to impose substantive, as against nominal, sovereignty’ over the colony (Belich 1986, 78) – and the subsequent large-scale confiscation of Māori land (raupatu). It is important to highlight, though, that Māori are by no means a unified memory entrepreneur. Rather, based on their particular experience of settler colonialism, iwi (tribes) and hapū (sub-tribes) may present different narratives of the historical past (Belgrave 2017).

The loss of land and experiences of historical injustice were not the only drivers for Māori protest mobilisation. Governments’ ‘perennial push for assimilation’ – for example, through education and housing policies – also provided an important ‘catalyst for the rising voice of Māori discontent’ (Harris 2004, 15). In other words, protest was also an effort to reverse decades of cultural marginalisation, and reassert Māori language, culture, and identity (Hill 2012).

It was in the context of mounting Māori activism and protest that the then Labour Party government created the Waitangi Tribunal in 1975 (Orange 2021: ch. 6). While initially the Tribunal’s authority was narrowly confined to investigating iwi and hapū claims about Treaty breaches from 1975 onwards, additional legislation passed in 1985 empowered the Tribunal to also investigate breaches dating back to 1840. It was also in the 1980s that biculturalism was adopted as official policy across a wide range of public organisations and that the Treaty came to be seen as an ‘ongoing social contract’ (Bell 2006, 257). In practice, this meant that government agencies began to recognise Māori culture and traditions – for example, by performing pōwhiri and whakatau (welcome ceremonies) at official functions. In 1987, te reo Māori became an official language under the Māori Language Act.

Around the same time, revisionist views on historical memory began to take hold in mainstream culture. Of particular importance was the 1998 TV documentary series The New Zealand Wars – presented by historian James Belich and screened on Television One, then the country’s main public broadcasting channel. The popularity of the series meant that, for the first time, many European New Zealanders were confronted with the uncomfortable truths of the colonial violence that followed the Treaty of Waitangi (Cooper 2011). Of similar significance was Michael King’s best-selling Penguin History of New Zealand, published in 2004, which also throws a critical light on the military invasion of Māori land in the mid-1800s.

While over the years the work of the Waitangi Tribunal has confirmed that the Treaty was broken repeatedly during the process of colonisation, this has done very little to suppress Māori activism and protest – mainly because expectations are fundamentally at odds: whereas the Crown has used the Tribunal primarily to improve the economic position of iwi and hapū through financial settlements, and considers these settlements ‘full and final’, many Māori see Treaty settlements as only the beginning of a much more substantial process of changing the ways in which political power is shared, which includes demands for constitutional reform, the development of co-governance institutions, and guaranteed Māori representation in local government (Bargh 2012; Mutu 2019).

In particular, Māori protestors have claimed Waitangi Day as ‘a day where the foundational agreement of what would become the New Zealand nation-state is reflected upon, and placed in front of our signatory partner (the government) to remind them of what was promised’ (Ngata 2020). Meanwhile, recurring protest activities on 6 February and the Māori assertion that the public holiday offers nothing to celebrate has led to European New Zealanders increasingly turning their back on the Treaty. Not only do mainstream media now commonly designate Waitangi Day as ‘their’ (i.e. Māori) day (McConville et al. 2014), but there are also ever louder calls from among European segments of society to replace Waitangi Day with ANZAC Day as the national holiday (O’Malley and Kidman 2022, 88).

Driven partly by a global reassessment of European explorers of the ‘age of discovery’ (see Williams 2004), the persona of James Cook, too, has been subject to revisionist attacks in recent years. Whereas the 1969 bicentenary celebrations in Gisborne (Tūranganui-a-Kiwa) – the site of Cook’s first landing – were an undiluted festive affair, by the 1990s Cook was a more contested figure and the statue that had been erected as part of the 200^th anniversary commemorations was subject to frequent acts of politically motivated vandalism (Ballantyne 2021, 4). In the summer of 1995–96, an Australian-built replica of Cook’s Endeavour embarked on an eleven-port tour of New Zealand, drawing loud protests by Māori activists. Similar scenes repeated themselves during the 250^th anniversary in 2019. As the Endeavour replica again made its way around the country, Māori protests attacked the sentimentalised narrative of ‘discovery’ that underpinned the spectacle for softening two historical facts: Polynesian people had – aided by sophisticated navigational systems and double-hulled canoes – settled Aotearoa 500 years before Cook’s arrival; and the first encounter was not a harmonious meeting between two cultures, but ‘an uninvited landing’ and a precursor to colonial violence (Kidman 2022).

2.3. Creating space for pluralistic storytelling in official commemoration

State-led memory production has responded to these different Māori counter-narratives in a number of ways. To begin with, annual Waitangi Day celebrations have, since the 1980s, refrained from pushing the idealised ‘one people’ theme (Orange 2021: ch. 6). Rather, reflecting the Waitangi Tribunal’s recurrent recognition of Treaty breaches suffered by iwi and hapū, the official narrative has been changed to ‘granted, the partnership with Māori has been broken repeatedly during the process of colonisation, but New Zealanders recognise and do their best to repair these wrongs, which affirms their tolerance as a people’ (cf. Bell 2006, 257). Moreover, successive governments have – in particular, from the late 1990s onwards – sunk considerable resources into disseminating this new narrative and educating citizens on the role of the Waitangi Tribunal in redressing historical injustices (Orange 2021: ch. 9). Examples include the permanent ‘Signs of a Nation’ exhibition at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa (opened in 1998), the annual Commemorating Waitangi Day Fund (administered by the Ministry of Culture and Heritage since 2001), the ‘Treaty 2 U’ travelling exhibition (which toured the country from 2006 to 2008), the permanent ‘He Tohu’ exhibition at the National Library (opened in 2017), and the redevelopment of the Waitangi Treaty Grounds for the 175^th anniversary in 2015, which included the construction of a state-of-the-art museum to house the newly designed ‘Ko Waitangi Tēnei: This is Waitangi’ exhibition.

In 2015, Māori activism led to a petition – delivered to Parliament by students from Ōtorohanga College – that called for formal recognition of the difficult history of the New Zealand Wars. While the petition was still being considered by the Māori Affairs Committee, the National Party government led by John Key announced the creation of an annual day of commemoration (Rā Maumahara) to mark the New Zealand Wars, though clarifying that this would not be a public holiday. After the 2017 election gave power to Jacinda Ardern and her Labour Party, the petition then played an important part in informing the content of a new compulsory history curriculum for first and secondary schools. Labelled ‘Aotearoa New Zealand Histories’, the new curriculum ‘points to the incorporation of multiple histories, rather than a singular national narrative to be told’ (Bell and Russell 2022, 30; emphasis added). In other words, the pedagogical re-design – which was rolled out in 2023 – explicitly acknowledges that history can be narrated from a diversity of perspectives, thereby institutionalising the trend towards pluralistic storytelling that has marked collective remembering since the 1970s.

A further example of how the state has been seeking to integrate different voices into official memory was the 250^th Cook anniversary. The Tuia 250 Voyage events, organised by the Ministry for Culture & Heritage, invited iwi to sail alongside the Endeavour replica in traditional double-hulled voyaging canoes (waka hourua), thereby offering iwi a public platform to increase awareness of their histories and connections to the Polynesian world (Meihana 2022: 48). For decades, up until the 1960s and 1970s, hundreds of thousands of New Zealand schoolchildren were taught that Māori had settled Aotearoa with a single ‘great fleet’ of seven canoes – a mythical story developed by Percy Smith, a self-educated ethnologist, that was without verifiable Māori foundations. The story proved popular with European parts of society for a long time, partly because it compressed the complexity of different tribal narratives into a neatly synthesised ‘seafaring adventure’ that bore close similarities to classical Western stories and legends (Howe 2003, 170). Against this background, Tuia 250 gave individual iwi an opportunity to reclaim ownership of their own narratives of first arrival and settlement.

As in other settler colonies, conservative political actors in Aotearoa New Zealand have voiced strong opposition to the idea of narrating the nation’s history from a diversity of perspectives. One frequently reiterated argument is that brooding over unsavoury or even horrific episodes in the historical past can and should be avoided, not only because this will alienate people from their own country, but also because such episodes are merely ‘short pauses or detours’ in the nation’s master narrative (cf. Nash, Crabtree, and Dunn 1998, 15). For example, National Party education spokesperson Paul Goldsmith condemned the Labour government’s new history curriculum as ‘lacking in balance’ and, to instil national identity in children, called for a stronger focus on more positive aspects of New Zealand’s history: ‘How did we make a living as a country? How, in such a short space of time, did we attain one of the highest living standards in the world?’ (Collins 2021). A different, albeit related, concern articulated by conservative politicians is the potential for social conflict that is inherent in amplifying Indigenous counter-narratives that draw attention to the violence of White settler colonialism. For instance, ACT deputy leader Brooke van Velden declared that the Labour Party’s new history curriculum is ‘all about colonisation’ and divides New Zealanders into ‘villains and victims’ (McConnell 2022). ACT Party leader David Seymour took a similar line when commenting on the Waitangi Tribunal reparations process in early 2023: ‘Most treaties, by definition, are devices to bring us together. But now ours is used to divide us by race’ (Scoop 2023).

2.4. Summary and research questions

For several decades, the Māori rights movement has – in an effort to seek redress for historical injustices and resist cultural assimilation – pushed back against the Euro-centric ‘punching above its weight’ narrative of the nation’s past. This counter-memory work not only led to the establishment of the Waitangi Tribunal in 1975 (and the extension of its authority in 1985), but also put pressure on public memory to accommodate Māori representations of the historical past – for example, by rewriting the official narrative of the Treaty of Waitangi and developing a new history curriculum that is inclusive of Māori experiences.

While previous top-down scholarship has significantly advanced our understanding of how this conflict between different memory entrepreneurs has played out at the political level, we know relatively little about whether – and in what ways – the shift towards more pluralistic storytelling has shaped citizens’ beliefs about the historical past. To begin with, the growing prominence of counter-narratives from a Māori perspective throws up the following questions:

R1:

Does narrating the historical past from Māori perspectives foster a more inclusive sense of national identity?

R2:

Does narrating the historical past from Māori perspectives generate support for addressing historical wrongs?

Moreover, the concerns voiced by conservative political actors about the possible effects of pluralistic storytelling also warrant empirical investigation:

R3:

Are Māori who integrate Māori perspectives into their understandings of history more likely to feel hostile towards European New Zealanders?

R4:

Are individuals who integrate Māori perspectives into their understandings of history less likely to feel a sense of identification with New Zealand?

In the next two sections, I apply the bottom-up perspective to collective remembering, with the aim to explore these questions in a systematic and rigorous fashion.

3. Designing a bottom-up survey

Data to investigate the four research questions was collected through an online survey of a national probability sample, fielded by Qualtrics between 26 October and 14 November 2022. Importantly, the timing of the survey provided considerable distance from Aotearoa New Zealand’s two most important commemorative holidays: Waitangi Day (6 February) and ANZAC Day (25 April). The data was cleaned by Qualtrics using the methodology described in the Appendix. In addition, respondents who failed the attention check (placed about one third into the survey) were redirected to a failure screen and automatically excluded from the study. This resulted in a total sample of 1,066, among which 676 respondents classified themselves as European New Zealanders (Pākehā) and 162 as Māori; the remaining 228 individuals fell into smaller categories of ethnic identity. For the purpose of the analysis, the ‘other’ subgroup was removed from the dataset. This helps simplify the interpretation of the findings, but it means that the analysis cannot speak to the question of what more recent immigrants think about Aotearoa New Zealand’s history. Descriptive statistics of the demographic variables can be found in Table A1 in the Appendix.

Following the demographic questions, the survey prompted participants to spontaneously recall the ‘most important’ event in the history of Aotearoa New Zealand. Such open questions have frequently been used by previous surveys on collective memory, as they help to tap into those memories that are most salient or accessible to respondents (e.g. Griffin and Bollen 2009; Hellmann 2022a; Paez et al. 2008). The open-ended format prevents researchers from imposing their own expectations about which events are important – or even about what constitutes an ‘event’ in the first place. Answers to the spontaneous recall question were subsequently coded into twelve categories: (1) Treaty of Waitangi, (2) World War I, (3) Polynesian discovery/settlement, (4) European discovery/settlement, (5) Women’s suffrage, (6) the New Zealand Wars, (7) earthquakes and other geological events, (8) sports, (9) unspecified discovery/settlement, (10) the COVID pandemic, (11) unspecified Māori history, (12) other/unclear response/don’t know.

To investigate R1 and R2, the survey employed the concepts of symbolic projection and historical recognition, respectively. While symbolic projection is defined as ‘the belief that markers and symbols of Indigenous culture provide a meaningful addition to representations of national identity’, historical recognition refers to ‘the belief that [injustices experienced by Indigenous peoples in the colonial era] are of continued relevance and that current generations of settler/colonial members of the population have an obligation to address such injustices’ (Sibley 2010, 108). Borrowing from previous studies (e.g. Sibley 2010; Sibley and Osborne 2016), the survey measured symbolic projection (α = .82) by asking respondents to indicate (on a seven-point Likert scale) how strongly they agreed or disagreed with the following statements: (1) ‘I think that Māori culture helps to define New Zealand in positive ways’, (2) ‘I reckon Māori culture should stay where it belongs – with Māori. It doesn’t concern other New Zealanders’, and (3) ‘New Zealand would be a better place to live if we forgot about trying to promote Māori culture to everyone’. Historical recognition (α = .80) was measured using the following statements: (4) ‘It is true that many things happened to Māori people in the past that should not have happened, but it is unfair to hold current generations of NZ Europeans/Pākehā accountable for things that happened so long ago’, (5) ‘We should all move on as one nation and forget about past differences and conflicts between ethnic groups’, and (6) ‘We as a nation have a responsibility to see that due settlement is offered to Māori in compensation for past injustices’. Before averaging scores into composite variables, all items – except (1) and (6) – were reverse coded.

Furthermore, to empirically assess R3 and R4, the survey utilised two additional measures. First, participants were required to rate their feelings of warmth towards the respective outgroup on a scale of 1 (feel least warm towards this group) to 7 (feel most warm towards this group). In particular, this ‘feeling thermometer’ makes it possible to explore whether Māori who recall difficult memories of European colonialism feel less warm towards the respective outgroup (i.e. Pākehā) than subgroups who recall historical events that are not directly related to European colonialism. Second, to capture individuals’ sense of attachment to the nation, the survey asked participants to rate their agreement (on a seven-point Likert scale) with the following statement: ‘I identify with New Zealand’.

4. Findings and discussion

When prompted to spontaneously recall the most important event in the history of Aotearoa New Zealand most respondents (41.8%) answered with the Treaty of Waitangi, followed by European discovery/settlement (13.6%), Polynesian discovery/settlement (11%), and women’s suffrage (5.1%). World War I – which is annually commemorated as ANZAC Day – was chosen by only 3.7% of participants, while responses that relate to the New Zealand Wars amount to a mere 2.5% (also see Table A2 in Appendix).

The Treaty of Waitangi was the most common response both among Pākehā (37.6%) and Māori (59.3%). As discussed earlier, there are two main interpretations of the Treaty of Waitangi: the original ‘one people’ reading and the revised ‘the Treaty was broken repeatedly, but we are committed to fixing our mistakes’ account. The data presented in Figure 1 suggests that participants who responded with the Treaty of Waitangi most likely espouse the latter. The Treaty was a particularly frequent response among participants who entered adolescence or early adulthood after 2000 – that is, after the state began investing heavily in narrating the Treaty in a way that foregrounds the responsibility to remedy past breaches. This birth cohort effect can be explained by previous research indicating that individuals’ beliefs about the historical past are formed and consolidated during the ‘critical’ teenage years and early twenties (e.g. Corning and Schuman 2015; Schuman and Scott 1989). A similar, albeit more modest, cohort effect can be observed in relation to the New Zealand Wars – an event that became more visible in public memory from the 1990s onwards. Multinomial logistic regression analyses confirm that, when compared to European discovery/settlement (the most common response associated with the ‘punching above its weight’ narrative), age is a significant predictor for recalling the Treaty of Waitangi or the New Zealand Wars (Table 1). Meanwhile, Polynesian discovery/settlement – which has also been a focus of Māori counter-storytelling – was more frequently recalled among older age cohorts, likely reflecting the ‘great fleet’ myth that had been taught in schools until the 1970s. As a result, we cannot observe a generational effect. Instead, the only variables that help predict the recall of Polynesian discovery/settlement are ethnicity (Māori) and political orientation (liberal).

Figure 1. Recall of most important historical event by birth cohort (in percent).

Table 1. Multinomial logistic regression predicting most important historical event.

	Dependent variable categories^a
Independent variables	Treaty of Waitangi	New Zealand Wars	Polynesian discovery/settlement
Age	−.033*** (.007)	−.047** (.016)	.016 (.009)
Female	.522* (.238)	−.094 (.518)	.263 (.303)
Māori	.739* (.394)	.657 (.684)	1.230** (.468)
Education^b
NCEA Level 1	−1.137 (.769)	.001 (1.44)	−.468 (.932)
NCEA Level 2	−.795 (.772)	.009 (1.39)	−1.08 (1.03)
NCEA Level 3	−1.76* (.723)	−2.41 (1.60)	−.972 (.909)
Vocational qualification	−1.41* (.651)	−.965 (.127)	−.790 (.789)
Undergraduate degree	−1.61* (.668)	−1.37 (1.31)	−.178 (.796)
Postgraduate degree	−.810 (.745)	−0.91 (1.38)	.063 (.887)
Political orientation^c	.204* (.100)	.698** (.212)	.324* (.125)
Nagelkerke R^2	.271

Entries are coefficients from multinomial regression analysis; standard errors are in parentheses.

^aEuropean discovery/settlement is the reference category for the dependent variable.

^bNo formal qualification is the reference category.

^cCoded from extremely conservative (1) to extremely liberal (7).

*** p < 0.001, ** p < 0.01, * p < 0.05.

To explore the effects that historical event salience has on attitudes towards national identity and redress of past wrongs, the sample was split between Pākehā and Māori, acknowledging the possibility that the same historical event may produce different attitudinal effects, depending on who is doing the remembering. Moreover, the analysis focused on those historical events that – within a given ethnic subgroup – were chosen by at least 15 participants. Excluding events with fewer than 15 responses resulted in a sample size of 681.

R1 seeks to understand the link between recalled historical events and symbolic projection – that is, the extent to which respondents believe that Māori culture should be a meaningful part of New Zealand’s national identity. As can be seen from Figure 2, central foci of Māori counter-storytelling and historical revisionism – Polynesian discovery/settlement and the Treaty of Waitangi – have higher mean scores on the dependent variable when compared to historical events that constitute the backbone of the ‘punching above its weight’ master narrative, including European discovery/settlement, women’s suffrage, and World War I. One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) tells us that these differences are statistically significant (F_{(9, 671)} = 10.53, p < .001). Additional Tukey’s post hoc analyses confirm significant pairwise differences (see Table 2). What this points to is that narrating Aotearoa New Zealand’s history in a way that recognises Māori experiences broadens the terms of national identity: respondents (irrespective of their ethnic background) were more likely to support a definition of the nation that is inclusive of Māori culture if they spontaneously recalled an event that is central to Māori-inclusive rather than European-exclusive reconstructions of history.

Figure 2. Symbolic projection (mean score) by historical event and ethnic group.

Notes: Whiskers represent the 95% confidence interval. (Māori) after historical event indicates Māori subgroup; all other data is from the Pākehā subgroup.

Table 2. Symbolic projection: Tukey’s post hoc tests for multiple comparisons.

Historical event	Mean difference	N	SD	p	95% CI		Cohen’s d
					Lower	Upper
Treaty of Waitangi (Māori)		96	1.12
European discovery/settlement	1.63	105	1.66	<.001	.984	2.27	1.15
Women’s suffrage	1.40	42	1.47	<.001	.561	2.25	1.08
World War I	1.59	23	1.37	<.001	.529	2.64	1.27
Polynesian discovery/settlement		74	1.43
European discovery/settlement	1.18	105	1.66	<.001	.486	1.87	.764
Women’s suffrage	.954	42	1.47	.022	.074	1.83	.661
World War I	1.14	23	1.37	.032	.049	2.22	.817
Treaty of Waitangi		254	1.43
European discovery/settlement	.955	105	1.66	<.001	.426	1.48	.616

N = observations; SD = standard deviation; CI = confidence interval.

Figure 3 displays the differences in mean scores on the historical recognition variable, which measures the extent to which individuals believe that injustices experienced by Māori in the colonial era are still relevant in the present and ought to be addressed politically (R2). Again, as above, it is those respondents identifying Polynesian discovery/settlement and the Treaty of Waitangi as the most important event in Aotearoa New Zealand history who, on average, report the highest scores on the dependent variable. ANOVA reveals that the differences in mean are statistically significant (F_{(9, 671)} = 16.27, p < .001). Moreover, Tukey’s post hoc tests indicate statistically significant pairwise differences (see Table 3). Overall, these results suggest that inclusive storytelling helps build popular support – both among Māori and Pākehā – for rectifying historical wrongs. In contrast, individuals who buy into the ‘punching above its weight’ master narrative display a strong tendency to draw a line under the colonial past.

Figure 3. Historical recognition (mean score) by historical event and ethnic group.

Notes: Whiskers represent the 95% confidence interval. (Māori) after historical event indicates Māori subgroup; all other data is from the Pākehā subgroup.

Table 3. Historical recognition: Tukey’s post hoc tests for multiple comparisons.

Historical event	Mean difference	N	SD	p	95% CI		Cohen’s d
					Lower	Upper
Polynesian discovery/settlement (Māori)		18	1.56
European discovery/settlement	1.99	105	1.35	<.001	.889	3.09	1.37
Women’s suffrage	2.00	42	1.16	<.001	.782	3.21	1.45
World War I	1.76	23	1.38	.002	.404	3.12	1.27
Treaty of Waitangi (Māori)		96	1.34
European discovery/settlement	1.90	105	1.35	<.001	1.29	2.51	1.41
Women’s suffrage	1.91	42	1.16	<.001	1.11	2.71	1.52
World War I	1.67	23	1.38	<.001	.671	2.67	1.32
Polynesian discovery/settlement		74	1.50
European discovery settlement	.826	105	1.35	.003	.172	1.48	.579
Treaty of Waitangi		254	1.38
European discovery/settlement	.804	105	1.35	<.001	.304	1.30	.589
Women’s suffrage	.812	42	1.16	.013	.094	1.53	.637

N = observations; SD = standard deviation; CI = confidence interval.

Turning to the question of how collective memories of the historical past shape individuals’ warmth towards ethnic outgroups (R3), we can see from Figure 4 that – once again – the mean scores on the dependent variable are comparatively higher for respondents who spontaneously recalled Polynesian discovery/settlement and the Treaty of Waitangi. What is particularly notable is that Māori respondents who rank Polynesian discovery/settlement or the Treaty of Waitangi as the most important historical event do not feel markedly cool towards the outgroup (i.e. European New Zealanders). In fact, it is Pākehā respondents harking back to episodes of the ‘punching above its weight’ master narrative who show the least warmth towards the outgroup (i.e. Māori). ANOVA reports that the differences between the subgroups are statistically significant (F_{(9, 671)} = 4.19, p < .001). Tukey’s post hoc tests reveal significant differences on the feeling thermometer between Pākehā respondents remembering episodes of the master narrative and Pākehā respondents remembering alternative episodes that feature Māori as (co-)storytellers (see Table 4). These findings mean that concerns voiced by conservative political actors cannot be substantiated: telling alternative stories of how the nation got to this moment, which may include stories of injustice and trauma, does not sow social disharmony. Rather, these stories appear to have the opposite effect: compared to the traditional master narrative, they increase – not decrease – mutual understanding and empathy.

Figure 4. Warmth towards ethnic outgroup (mean score) by historical event and ethnic group.

Notes: Whiskers represent the 95% confidence interval. (Māori) after historical event indicates Māori subgroup; all other data is from the Pākehā subgroup.

Table 4. Warmth towards ethnic outgroup: Tukey’s post hoc tests for multiple comparisons.

Historical event	Mean difference	N	SD	p	95% CI		Cohen’s d
					Lower	Upper
New Zealand Wars		16	1.50
World War I	1.74	23	1.44	.024	.120	3.36	1.18
Polynesian discovery/settlement		74	1.39
European discovery settlement	.777	105	1.61	.038	.020	1.53	.511
World War I	1.42	23	1.44	.006	.230	2.60	.997
Treaty of Waitangi		254	1.53
European discovery/settlement	.624	105	1.61	.022	.050	1.20	.395
World War I	1.26	23	1.44	.009	.180	2.35	.850

N = observations; SD = standard deviation; CI = confidence interval.

This leaves one final question to be addressed (R4): can national identity only be forged if all citizens subscribe to the same narrative of the nation’s historical past? The data provides a clear answer: no. As can be seen from Figure 5, all ten subgroups have very similar mean scores on the ‘I identify with New Zealand’ variable. ANOVA indicates that the small differences that exist between the subgroups fail to reach statistical significance (F_{(9, 671)} = 1.47, p = .155). What is more, Tukey’s post hoc tests find no significant pairwise differences among the subgroups (all p values > 0.05). That is to say, the data provides no empirical support for the claim made by conservative political groups that the manufacturing of national identity requires that all citizens are socialised into the same historical narrative. Individuals’ sense of identification with New Zealand is evidently not driven by how they remember and narrate the collective past. What is perhaps most striking is that Māori who consider Polynesian discovery/settlement or the Treaty of Waitangi to be the most important historical event are no less likely to identify with New Zealand than Pākehā respondents who recalled European discovery/settlement, women’s suffrage or World War I.

Figure 5. Identification with New Zealand (mean score) by historical event and ethnic group.

Notes: Whiskers represent the 95% confidence interval. (Māori) after historical event indicates Māori subgroup; all other data is from the Pākehā subgroup.

5. Conclusion

The politics of memory in settler colonies have been subject to a great deal of research in recent years. However, so far, scholars have mainly applied the top-down approach to collective remembering, seeking to understand how conflict between Euro-centric master narratives and Indigenous counter-narratives of the historical past plays out in the production of culturally mediated memories. Instead, to understand how these storytelling efforts shape citizens’ beliefs about the historical past, my paper followed the bottom-up perspective, which locates collective memories not in shared cultural resources, but in the minds of individuals.

The survey conducted in Aotearoa New Zealand revealed a number of findings. First, the analysis indicates an age cohort effect: when Māori counter-narratives of the historical past found their way into the cultural mainstream and state-sponsored commemoration from the late 1990s onwards, it was primarily individuals in their adolescence who weaved these narratives into their understandings of the historical past; older age cohorts – who were socialised into the ‘punching above its weight’ master narrative – have been much less likely to integrate Māori perspectives into their frames of historical sense-making. Second, the study provides empirical evidence that European New Zealanders who accept Māori as the narrators (or at least co-narrators) of the nation’s history show a significantly greater tendency to express a bicultural definition of national identity and support the amendment of historical injustices against Māori. This suggests the following mechanisms: understanding that Māori may have different, yet equally (if not more) valid, interpretations of history not only increases acceptance of a more inclusive sense of national identity, but also fosters empathy for Māori suffering under colonialism. Third, it can be inferred from the survey findings that concerns over pluralistic storytelling expressed by conservative political actors are without foundation: Māori histories – even when featuring episodes of conflict – do not weaken national identity nor do they perpetuate social division. Indeed, the survey suggests quite the opposite: it is Pākehā citizens who embrace the singular ‘punching above its weight’ master narrative who feel comparatively less warm towards Māori.

The empirical results of the survey study imply that the conflict between the Euro-centric master narrative and Māori counter-narratives of the historical past will remain key to understanding political debates in Aotearoa New Zealand. For one, conflicting storytelling efforts continue to inform the contestation over national identity and related discussions – for example, around changing the country’s official name or the role of Māori language in public life. Furthermore, public disputes over how to narrate the nation’s past are intimately entangled with conflicts over institutional reform. Because the Waitangi Tribunal has now settled most historical claims, significant parts of Pākehā society believe that this should put an end to Treaty grievances. However, as discussed earlier, many Māori consider Treaty settlements only the beginning of a much more substantial process of changing the ways in which political power is shared, which includes demands for constitutional reform, the development of co-governance institutions, and guaranteed Māori representation in local government.

The survey also allows careful predictions about how these political debates will unfold in the future. In the short term, parts of the conservative spectrum may seek to stir up sentiment against biculturalism and bilingualism, and push back against co-governance and other institutional arrangements that aim to advance Māori self-determination. Nevertheless, the reality is that the shift towards greater pluralism in storytelling about the historical past has created a younger generation of Aotearoa New Zealanders who – because they were socialised into seeing the history of colonialism from different perspectives – express relatively strong support both for a vision of national identity that is inclusive of Māori culture and for rectifying historical injustices inflicted upon Māori. This generational effect will likely be enhanced by the new compulsory history curriculum, which is designed to teach multiple histories rather than one single universal history. Hence, in the medium to long term, conservative positions in debates about national identity and political reform will probably become increasingly difficult to defend.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Olli Hellmann

Olli Hellmann is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Waikato, Aotearoa New Zealand. His research on collective memory has been published in numerous leading journals, including Memory Studies, Democratization, and Visual Communication.

Appendix

Data cleaning process

Before delivering the final dataset, Qualtrics cleaned the data by removing respondents who displayed at least one of the following behaviours:

• –speeding (i.e. moving through the survey too quickly);

• –inattentiveness (i.e. respondents who take significantly longer than the average respondent in the survey);

• –inconsistent answers (e.g. someone who claims they are 75 and retired, but earn $200k in income);

• –nonsense or irrelevant answers to open-ended responses;

• –duplication (established by reviewing respondents’ IP address and comparing the answers provided);

• –flatlining behaviour (i.e. a respondent chooses the same option for all items in a question).

Table A1. Descriptive statistics of demographic data.

Variable	Level	N	%
Age	18–24	98	11.7
	25–34	136	16.2
	35–44	104	12.4
	45–54	145	17.3
	55–64	137	16.3
	65+	218	26.0
Gender	Male	429	51.2
	Female	403	48.1
	Other	6	0.7
Ethnic identity	Pākehā	676	80.7
	Māori	162	19.3
Level of education	No formal qualification	69	8.2
	NCEA Level 1	69	8.2
	NCEA Level 2	67	8.0
	NCEA Level 3	87	10.4
	Vocational qualification	261	31.1
	Undergraduate degree	202	24.1
	Postgraduate degree	83	9.9
Political views	Extremely conservative	5	0.6
	Conservative	72	8.6
	Slightly Conservative	120	14.3
	Moderate	388	46.3
	Slightly liberal	108	12.9
	Liberal	123	14.7
	Extremely liberal	22	2.6

Table A2. Most important historical event.

	Pākehā	Māori	Total
Treaty of Waitangi	254 (37.6%)	96 (59.3%)	350 (41.8%)
World War I	23 (3.4%)	8 (4.9%)	31 (3.7%)
Polynesian discovery/settlement	74 (10.9%)	18 (11.1%)	92 (11.0%)
European discovery/settlement	105 (15.5%)	9 (5.6%)	114 (13.6%)
Women’s suffrage	42 (6.2%)	1 (0.6%)	43 (5.1%)
New Zealand Wars	16 (2.4%)	5 (3.1%)	21 (2.5%)
Earthquakes/other geological events	31 (4.6%)	4 (2.5%)	35 (4.2%)
Sports	11 (1.6%)	-	11 (1.3%)
Discovery/settlement	22 (3.3%)	2 (1.2%)	24 (2.9%)
COVID	8 (1.2%)	1 (0.6%)	9 (1.1%)
Māori history/wars	12 (1.8%)	5 (3.1%)	17 (2.0%)
Other/unclear/don’t know	78 (11.5%)	13 (8.0%)	91 (10.9%)