Guilt-Edged Legacy

Guilt-Edged Legacy

ROBIN MACONIE

The recent passing of historian Dame Judith Binney and piously abbreviated editorializing on her legacy in national media are an opportunity to reflect on the parlous and debilitated state of historical scholarship in New Zealand.

Judith Binney’s academic career was launched with the publication of a PhD study of the life and work of Thomas Kendall, a teacher and aspiring ethnologist appointed at the same time and by the same duo of advisors who recommended Samuel Marsden to lead the New Zealand mission. Elder brother of evangelist John Milner, Cambridge University Lucasian professor Isaac Milner was a mathematician and chemist of working-class origin who rose to academic eminence and was converted to evangelical Christianity and social reform. Politician William Wilberforce was a tireless advocate of political reform and improvement of the law relating to the transportation of slaves and convict labour by sea. Both Milner and Wilberforce were notable opium addicts at a time when addiction was as fashionable among the well-to-do as it is in New Zealand today. Both saw the export trade in human lives to Australia and New Zealand as a virtuous and potentially lucrative substitute for the loss of the US colonies. This aspect of our history is freely available on Wikipedia but deleted from the official NZ historical record by compliant academics following a familiar and disreputable political agenda.
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Thomas Kendall is a controversial figure in New Zealand history. His appointed task in 1814 was to compile a written vocabulary of the Maori language. On arrival however, the pale, earnest scholar went far beyond his brief. He became a lifelong friend of Hongi Hika and under his guidance immersed himself in the study of Maori language and custom. Kendall’s concern and respect for Maori beliefs and passionate interest in the iconology of Maori arts perplexed and offended Marsden and other pakeha. In 1820 he returned to Cambridge with Hongi Hika and Hohaia Waikato in a bid to defend his achievements as a scholar in the court of academic opinion. The visiting party was widely feted and formally received by King George IV, who presented Hongi with a suit of armour.

Marsden and the Church Missionary Society never forgave Kendall for stepping out of line when Kendall was simply attempting, against considerable odds, to continue the scientific task of engagement with Maori initiated under Cook by Joseph Banks and the German scholars Reinhold and Georg Forster. Since his dismissal from the NZ mission and subsequent exile to Australia, Kendall’s role in New Zealand colonial history and the implications of his achievements have been persistently ignored, misrepresented and excoriated by historians as perverse, unChristian, and disloyal.

For her PhD supervised by Keith Sinclair Binney was assigned the task of putting Kendall’s reputation in proper perspective, a subject Sinclair himself had been unable to accomplish. Binney set out with immense energy to lay Kendall’s ghost finally to rest. Published in 1968 under the intimidatingly apt title The Legacy of Guilt, and still in print today, her thesis demonizing Kendall as a wastrel and failure set new standards in New Zealand for textual illiteracy, cultural incomprehension, strident rhetoric, and superfluous footnotes.

Binney’s attempt at manipulating historical perception is only one particularly egregious example of a national tendency to conflate the historical record with kiss-and-tell romance fiction, a genre initiated by J. C. Beaglehole (who joked that Cook was no writer, and could not even spell), continued by Michael King, and perpetuated today in the charming literary fantasies of Dame Anne Salmond. Dame Judith’s service to the cause of historical correctness was amply rewarded with accolades and honours during her lifetime by a nation more interested in the political rewriting of history than uncomfortable revelations of the actual motives of pakeha founding fathers.

Her more recent work with the people of Tuhoe has been acknowledged on both sides as a remarkable and helpful contribution to the eventual resolution of Treaty related differences. But to say, as one press release has said, that her contribution “brought Tuhoe to life” is simply to perpetuate the myth of written pakeha historical scholarship as superior to Maori oral history and tradition. How dumb is that? Tuhoe are already alive. They are already here. And they have been waiting long enough to have a voice.

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