N.Z. ‘a Pacific nation’

Press, 10 March 1984, Page 14

N.Z. ‘a Pacific nation’

New Zealand must see itself as a Pacific nation, a lecturer in Pacific history at Massey University, Dr Kerry Howe, believes. “People still think New Zealand is in the British channel,” he says. Apart from particular issues which have highlighted New Zealand’s place in the Pacific, such as French atomic testing and the problem of Pacific Island overstayers, New Zealanders still tend to overlook their closest neighbours, he says. Dr Howe has spent six years working on a book which he hopes will go some way to changing that view. “Where the Wave Falls,” a 400-page book on the history of the Pacific i islands from the time of i their settlement until i colonial rule last century, for the first time puts New j Zealand history in the con- i text of Pacific history. ]

Dr Howe’s book, which went on sale recently, breaks new ground in other ways. It is the first time since the 1950 s that an overview of Pacific islands history has been attempted. During that time, historians’ views of the region have changed considerably. A fantastic amount of detailed research was done during the 1960 s and 19705, Dr Howe says. However, the material has been “locked away” in specialist publications and this is the first time it has been brought together in a book available to the general public. Dr Howe says that his book is an account of the human settlement of the Pacific islands and of the cultural interchange that took place with the arrival of the Europeans. He says that the old and persistent view of European settlement was that the European influence was

dominant and aggressive and that the Islanders were .passive recipients of the change. “What Pacific historians have been finding out over the last 20 years is that cultural contact is very much a two-way process

and that many Pacific Islanders turned European developments, such as trading ventures, to their own ends,” he says. Dr Howe says the book, which is the culmination of 15 years research and study, aims to put all the recent findings together to “see what they add up to” and to present the material in a way that is accessible to the general reader, as well as students and historians. Pacific island nations have a strong awareness of their history, although few yiproach the subject in the Western way, he says. “It seems that when Islanders look at their past and develop a concern for their identity they do it in different forms. There is a whole new industry of public poems, short stories, novels, and plays. They have a different view of their past and often express it through literature,” he says.

Dr Howe already has plans for another important work, which will look at the preconceptions of prehistory in New Zealand. He says there is a popular romantic view that life in New Zealand before the Europeans arrived was wonderful and idyllic. However, modem research points to a very different view of early history in New Zealand. Life for the early Maoris was short, brutal, and harsh, he says. People lived to an average age of 25 or 26, there was a high incidence ■of illness and degenerative disease, and there was a high rate of infant mortality. “The two views provide an interesting contrast. I would like to go back and explain why there is this divergence,” he says.