Decolonizing Historiography in New Zealand and Australia: Indigenous Rights and the Remaking of National Narratives

Since 1945, historical writing in New Zealand and Australia has undergone profound transformation. The post-war decades saw a project of constructing progressive, masculinist national narratives, driven by growing professionalization. By the 1970s and 1980s, a new generation of historians, including many women and first-generation scholars, challenged this triumphalist story. They embraced social and cultural history, emphasizing differences of class, gender, sexuality, race, and ethnicity. While this pattern mirrors broader Western historiographical trends, the region developed a distinctive focus with significant public impact: the historical treatment of indigenous peoples.

Representations of the encounter between indigenous and settler peoples have changed dramatically since World War II. New histories both reflected and informed major debates about indigenous rights and the basis of national sovereignty. These shifts were propelled by global movements, including growing attention to human rights and challenges to imperial rule. In both nations, policies of assimilation were adopted to address indigenous poverty and integrate communities as citizens. Simultaneously, claims to land rights and self-determination drew the moral legitimacy of the settler nation into question. Demographic changes and shifting geopolitical ties further unsettled earlier white, British colonial identities.

The impact of indigenous claims and the histories they prompted has been most publicly striking in Australia but more profound in New Zealand, due to differing pasts and historiographical traditions.

NEW ZEALAND. Pre-1945, New Zealand historiography narrated a story of settler progress. The indigenous Maori were co-opted into this story through a myth of harmonious race relations and Maori nobility. Post-war, the field of "race relations" emerged, framing the encounter primarily through race rather than nation, yet still focusing on European structures. Historian Keith Sinclair, a leading figure, recast the New Zealand Wars in his work The Origins of the Maori Wars (1957). He shifted blame to settler greed for land and aggressive British racialism, while also acknowledging Maori nationalism.

Sinclair’s A History of New Zealand (1959) championed a national myth of uniquely happy race relations, attributing this to early imperial humanitarian ideals and racial amalgamation experiments following the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi. He presented the Treaty as a symbol of biracial harmony. Sinclair’s work stimulated further research by scholars like Keith Sorrenson and Alan Ward, who incorporated perspectives from African and Pacific history. Their studies presented a bleaker picture, emphasizing sovereignty disputes, white supremacy, and the oppressive nature of amalgamation policies, while countering a "fatal impact" narrative by highlighting Maori adaptive resistance.

A conceptual turn from "race relations" to "cultural contact" occurred, influenced by anthropology. Historian Judith Binney, in the 1960s, examined early Maori-missionary encounters, analyzing pragmatic Maori responses to Christianity and new technologies. Studies of Maori prophetic movements, like Pai Marire and Ringatu, interpreted them as adaptive strategies to colonization. This research highlighted Maori agency but socioeconomic explanations still predominated.

In the late 1970s-80s, historian James Belich fundamentally reshaped understanding. His studies of the New Zealand Wars stressed the scale and effectiveness of Maori military resistance. He argued the settlers won only through overwhelming numbers and described a pre-1870 frontier of Maori and Pakeha (settler) autonomy. Belich’s work dismantled myths of both happy relations and fatal impact, reframing narratives away from assumed Pakeha sovereignty.

The rise of Maori history as a distinct approach is dated to the 1970s "Maori renaissance", marked by events like the 1975 Maori Land March. Pioneering works were often biographical, rooted in oral history and fieldwork, by scholars like Michael King, Judith Binney, and anthropologist Anne Salmond. These works revealed Maori accounts of the past differed radically, structured around whakapapa (genealogy), mana (authority/prestige), and preserved through oral tradition. Scholars confronted the incommensurability of Maori "memory" and European "facts", leading to methodological innovations that juxtaposed narratives to preserve integrity.

Alongside oral history, scholars utilized a rich archive of te reo Maori (Maori language) sources. Ann Parsonson studied Maori land selling, arguing it was often a strategic pursuit of mana and access to Pakeha resources. Angela Ballara analyzed Maori warfare, emphasizing its roots in traditional cultural imperatives like utu (reciprocity). Their work showed hapu (sub-tribe) and iwi (tribe) dynamics remained central.

From the 1980s, Maori scholars increasingly contested the field, asserting that Maori history should be written by Maori, following Maori protocols. Debates shifted to the nature of history itself, with scholars like Linda Tuhiwai Smith critiquing history as a colonial discipline. Others, like Te Ahukaramu Charles Royal, argued for iwi- and hapu-based histories grounded in whakapapa. This intervention profoundly affected historical authorship, audience, and authority.

Concurrently, the "Treaty of Waitangi" became a dominant historical and public focus. The 1975 establishment of the Waitangi Tribunal, empowered in 1985 to hear historical claims back to 1840, revolutionized historical practice. Claudia Orange’s seminal work, The Treaty of Waitangi (1987), argued for "two histories" stemming from the English and Maori treaty texts, seeking a foundation for bicultural reconciliation. The Tribunal’s work generated massive historical research, termed "juridical history", which has been critiqued as presentist but also credited with producing sound scholarship and shaping national consciousness.

Recent national histories, like those by James Belich and Michael King, operate within this bicultural framework. Debate continues whether they represent a decolonizing historiography or a reformed narrative that ultimately upholds Pakeha sovereignty. The journey from a myth of happy race relations to the contested, treaty-centered historiography of today defines New Zealand’s distinctive path in grappling with its colonial past and indigenous claims.