History Conference

This week end Mister Harcourt and I went to a History Conference which was put on by the Stout Centre. It was called "Coming to Terms? Raupatu/Confiscations and New Zealand History". It was a great chance to find out some more about the confiscations that followed the wars and efefct they had on various Maori groups.

I was most interested in Alan Ward and James Belich but found Richard Boast, and Judith Binney interesting. I would have loved to get some of you along but it was a bit expensive. However we picked up some useful resources and some interesting ideas especially from Belichs talk on settlement patterns. One interesting speaker was the opening speech by MP Mahara Okeroa who spoke about different types of raupatu/muru which I made some connection with. Coming from Parihaka he has been unable to read more than a few pages of Dick Scotts books because of the pain they cause.

Reading Ranginui Walkers current book on Whakatohea I have found it hard to move past the section on the occupation and destruction of Whakatohea lands in retaliation for the death of Volkner. It is hard to read this material because there is a physical and emotional connection which can be difficult to distance yourself from.

This morning Chris Ladlaw interviewed several of the keynote speakers and you can hear or download it here. I will try to get a copy onto the Moodle site asap.

Any way gotta go.

Good luck with the research.