Signposts - a blog about Te Ara the Encyclopedia of New Zealand

Scholar and anthropologist Mākereti (Maggie) Papakura, around 1910 (click for image credit)

Today we launch four stories about creativity in academic disciplines in this country – Anthropology and archaeology, Māori studies – ngā tari Māori, Linguistics and Philosophy. The idea that academic work is ‘creative’ may at first sight surprise those who associate the university with boring lectures and examinations – indeed one of my esteemed colleagues suggested that ‘academic creativity’ is a contradiction in terms, like ‘military intelligence’. Creativity, you might say, surely belongs to the arts – such as dance and poetry and painting. Funding agency Creative New Zealand does not support academic work.

These stories firmly undermine such prejudices – the idea of the ‘open society‘ developed by the great philosopher Karl Popper, who taught at the University of Canterbury from 1937 to 1945, or Lisa Matisoo-Smith’s ingenious use of the DNA of rat and chicken bones to trace Polynesian migration across the Pacific are but two examples of the creativity to be found in these stories.

Of the four disciplines represented, philosophy is the oldest, its origins lying with the ancient Greeks. It is a highly international pursuit, but our story shows a remarkable level of contribution by New Zealanders or people based here. They included Arthur Prior and Max Cresswell, internationally recognised logicians, and Jeremy Waldron, a philosopher of law, who is represented by a fascinating conversation in which he traces his life from Invercargill to New York. The philosophers are a brilliant, sometimes eccentric and often colourful breed – Otago University lecturer Dennis Grey caused a bit of a shock to post-Second World War Dunedinites by wearing lipstick to his classes.

Logician Max Cresswell, with train (click for image credit)

Anthropology first began to claim existence as a discipline about the time that Europeans reached New Zealand, but the early practitioners were not academics. As our story shows, early anthropology here came about from Europeans’ desire to understand, and attempt to control, Māori. This included explorers such as James Cook and governors such as George Grey, who was quite explicit that he studied Māori language and culture in order to govern them. Later there were surveyors, interpreters and Native Land Court judges. At the end of the 19th century the Polynesian Society was founded, partly impelled by the desire to record what was widely believed to be a ‘dying race’.

Along with European enthusiasts, the Polynesian Society also attracted some very significant Māori scholars – Āpirana Ngata, Māui Pōmare and Peter Buck (Te Rangi Hīroa) – and it is fascinating to look at this story alongside Ranginui Walker’s one on Māori studies– ngā tari Māori. As the 20th century unfolded Māori studies began to emerge as a separate discipline out of anthropology. As early as 1926 Ngata had tried to get Māori language accepted as a BA subject. This did not happen until 1951, when Bruce Biggs was allowed to teach it at the University of Auckland, and it was not until 1978, at Victoria University of Wellington, that Māori studies first became a separate department. Meanwhile, anthropology and archaeology developed their own professionalism and began to explore the archaeology of non-Māori topics such as Chinese gold-mining communities and West Coast coal mines.

Linguist and Māori studies scholar Bruce Biggs undertaking field work in Papua New Guinea, 1959 (click for image credit)

Linguistics was another late 20th century off-shoot, with its origins in both English and anthropology. Bruce Biggs again played a founding role in the recognition of linguistics. The first separate department was at Victoria in 1988, and once more there was an expansion into exciting new areas of study, many with a New Zealand focus, including the history of New Zealand English and of the New Zealand accent, and sociolinguistics, which explored, for example, speech in work places and how speech is affected by gender. For a young subject, linguistics in New Zealand has been extraordinarily impressive in its researches, and the country has given the world some outstanding lexicographers and sociolinguists. I particularly point you to the eloquent interview with the New Zealand-born and Israel-based scholar Bernard Spolsky, who makes the case for New Zealand becoming a multilingual society.

These four entries are packed with fascinating stories of inventive individuals and intellectual pioneers who have helped to reshape our view of the world. I dare you to possibly claim that they are not highly creative people.

Te Ara writers (from left) Peter, Ben, Megan and Mark

Yesterday Te Ara bid a very fond farewell to four of our writers, who leave us after completing all their stories for the Creative and Intellectual Life theme, which will be launched in October.

Ben Schrader joined us when he worked on the Wairarapa regional story in 2006; Mark Derby and Megan Cook began working here in May 2008, after we had finished all the natural science content and were focusing on historical and social subjects; and Peter Clayworth arrived three years ago.

It’s not easy writing stories for Te Ara, and the four have done the job magnificently. The challenge is to present up-to-date, accurate stories aimed at a general audience and in a web-friendly manner. You first have to read everything that has been written on a subject to take your understanding to the very frontiers of knowledge. On occasion, when other researchers have not travelled the territory before you and written helpful secondary texts, you have to start from scratch and search newspapers and original documents to piece together a story. So, some Te Ara stories become original contributions to knowledge – for example Ben’s one on Street life, Megan’s on Strip clubs, Peter’s on Weekends and Mark’s on Camping (amazing that there are no researched books on the history of camping and the weekend, true Kiwi institutions!!). Sometimes there is so much material already published that you have to read and read and read, and then try to boil it all down.

Once you have collected the evidence, you have to make it work on the web – distill the essence of the story in clear, simple, direct prose, all neatly organised into pages of around 500 words, signposted with headings and enriched with natty topic boxes that amuse and illuminate. Creating a good topic box is a real art – look, for example, at Ben’s great box on Elbe’s Milk Bar in Lower Hutt, or Megan’s one about the addition of the smell of rotten cabbage to LPG.

Once you’ve written your story, then you have to turn it over to the scrutiny of fellow-historians, such as myself. Questions are asked, red pencils come out, and we all try to ensure that everything that you, the reader, would want to know about a subject is appropriately answered.

So now we have a clear, neatly ordered text. Then images and media (or, as we call them, ‘resources’) are chosen to illustrate the story, and the writer is faced with a new task – to write captions that both illuminate the wider story and explain the resources themselves. You also have to choose biographies of appropriate people to link to each page, and select further sources that might be useful to readers.

Finally, there is the task of dealing with the queries that come in from editors and the growls that come down from the senior editor’s desk (ie, from me), and the story is ready to go up on the web.

But that was only half the writer’s job. Their other role was to check, restructure and, at times, even rewrite stories that have come in from outside authors (experts in their field but not always familiar with the requirements of a Te Ara story). Often this was a comparatively easy task; but on other occasions it required the sleuthing skills of a detective and great tact and sensitivity. As checker, the writer had to ‘own’ the story from then on – writing the captions and overseeing it through to publication.

We, and you, have been wonderfully served by the four departing writers, for each has brought to the task their own interests and background knowledge. Ben brought a fascination with the city and a passion for architecture and design; Mark brought a fluency in te reo Māori and a wide knowledge of labour and Māori history; Megan brought an interest in gender and ethnicity and developed a real interest in subjects as varied as rugby league and modern dance; and Peter brought a broad knowledge of labour and social history and an extraordinary ability to sleuth the truth out via Papers Past. He was also our morning Dompost quiz king. Together these four people were responsible for about 350 of our 1,000 stories.

So we are sad to see these four fine historians leave; but it is a mark of how close Te Ara is to finishing the first run-through of all the initially planned subjects about New Zealand and its people. In the future the task will be to keep Te Ara refreshed and up-to-date, and to add new content as the country changes. We are confident that a smaller team of writers will be up to the task. But they have a great tradition, firmly established by our departing friends, to live up to.

Farewell, Ben, Megan, Mark and Peter – thanks for the huge contribution you have made – and thanks from all our users.

Jane Goodall in 2007 (click for image credit)

Yesterday I was part of a capacity audience that gathered at the Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington, to hear celebrated English scientist and chimpanzee expert Jane Goodall speak and promote her latest book, Seeds of hope.

Her story is a remarkable one. Growing up in the 1940s, she showed a strong affinity for animals and an enquiring mind. Early on she decided that she wanted to go to Africa to study animals and write about them. But her family did not have much money – she wasn’t able to go to university – and in any case, at that time girls were not encouraged to dream such big dreams.

However, Goodall persisted, and when the opportunity arose to visit a school friend in Kenya she waitressed to raise money to travel there. In Kenya she visited archaeologist and palaeontologist Louis Leakey and so impressed him with her knowledge that he offered her a job as an assistant. With Leakey and others she went on a field trip to the Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, and her abilities convinced Leakey that she was the person to study wild chimpanzees at Gombe Stream National Park, also in Tanzania. She first went to Gombe in 1960 (with her mother as her only companion) and gradually gained the confidence of the chimpanzees so she could observe their behaviour.

There she made a breakthrough discovery that changed the way we think about animals. One day she noticed a chimpanzee sitting beside a termite mound, poking a piece of grass into it. The termites clung to the grass and the chimp then proceeded to eat them. Then she saw another chimp stripping the leaves from a twig in order to do the same thing. She concluded that chimpanzees could not only use tools, but make tools – an attribute previously considered to be the preserve of humans. As Leakey remarked when she reported this to him: ‘Now we will have to redefine man, redefine tool, or accept chimpanzees as human.’

This work prompted National Geographic coverage of her work and instant celebrity. Leakey encouraged her to go to Cambridge University to study for a PhD – a huge challenge for someone who did not even have an undergraduate degree. There she was affronted by the attitude of scientists who insisted that she should not have named the chimps in her study, but rather given them numbers, and who rejected any suggestion that animals had emotions. This conflicted with her observations, which convinced her that chimpanzees not only had complex social behaviours, but expressed emotions such as fear, rage, happiness and grief. And, as she remarked to the audience, anyone who has shared their life with a pet knows they have personalities and feelings.

Goodall nevertheless enjoyed academic work, gained her PhD and returned to Gombe to continue her fieldwork and setting up the Jane Goodall Institute. She wrote numerous books, including In the shadow of man (1971), which I remember poring over as a child.

But a conference she attended in the 1980s led to a change of direction. The discussions focused on the threat to various species because of the worldwide loss of habitats. As she put it, she went to the conference a scientist and left an activist.

On her return to Gombe she realised that the forest, which had been extensive when she first arrived, was now reduced to a fragment, threatening the viability of chimpanzee populations within it. She also recognised that the people who lived nearby were struggling to scratch a living from the infertile soil. So her first step was to approach them to see how she could help improve their lives. This led to a range of development programmes to establish tree nurseries, improve water supplies, and encourage further education, particularly for women and girls. The social benefits were soon apparent, and one consequence was that the locals agreed to leave the forest margins to regenerate. Many of them became involved in the work of monitoring the chimpanzees.

Goodall went further, supporting the conservation of species worldwide – and she referred to extraordinary efforts in New Zealand to bring species such as the black robin back from the brink of extinction. She has also started a youth programme that now operates in over 130 countries, called Roots and Shoots. Young people are encouraged to adopt three projects in their local communities – one to benefit people, one to benefit animals and one to benefit the environment. Her recognition of the interconnectedness of causes resonated strongly with me and clearly with the rest of the audience, who rose to their feet at the end to give her a prolonged ovation.

A fragile-looking, elegant woman, at the age of 80 Goodall still travels 300 days of the year to promote conservation and animal rights and spread her message of hope. To hear her talk and see her sincerity and respect for all species is truly inspirational.

There’s nothing quite like being overseas to make you think about home.

On a recent trip to Europe I found I was pleased when people asked me where I was from, and that I felt proud to say ‘New Zealand’. This was a bit of a surprise to me, but I think my pride came from two things.

Firstly, New Zealand is a ridiculously long way from anywhere, especially Europe, and I thought they should be impressed that I’d travelled such an enormous distance (and many people were – and I was rather impressed myself).

Secondly, I was pleased to let them know that I wasn’t American or English or Australian or any of the other slightly less exotic and, I suspect, more annoying tourist possibilities. (As much as I’d like to be mistaken for a local, with my paleness and limited knowledge of any language other than English, that was not likely to happen in Italy or Greece. And in fact my pale friend who is actually Greek often gets mistaken for a tourist, but that’s a whole other story.)

Gratuitous holiday snap from one of my favourite places (Oia, Thira)

I’m sure individual American tourists, for example, are completely lovely, but I did notice a general level of demandingness that most ‘I’m-not-really-a-tourist-I’m-a-traveller’ New Zealanders don’t have. And I didn’t want the waiters or shop keepers or ticket sellers to think that I was going to waltz on in to their country and start demanding things.

At home in New Zealand I have to admit I don’t feel that I entirely fit into this culture. I don’t like rugby, that universal topic of conversation (though I do have some interest in the weather – that other universal topic of conversation). I’m not really that interested in sports at all. I’m not much of a DIYer; I don’t hunt, fish, tramp or rock-climb, I have neither a bach nor a crib. I don’t like beer. ‘Mate’ and ‘cheers’ aren’t in my vocabulary. (Please don’t throw me out.) But overseas I was proud to be a New Zealander, which suddenly seemed to mean a certain kind of polite intrepidness rather than a sporty repression.

For Wellingtonians overseas, finding a decent coffee is a major concern

What are New Zealanders like overseas? What are New Zealanders like in general? Well, according to the American sitting behind me on the plane to LA, who I overheard talking to the English woman next to him, New Zealanders are friendly. He was at the end of his first visit to New Zealand, which he had enjoyed. He said he had been told New Zealanders were friendly, and indeed, in his new experience, they were. Americans could be friendly, he said, but it was often false. Australians also were quite friendly, but New Zealanders were even friendlier. And he had a theory about why this was. Australia is like a big brother to New Zealand, in the same way the US is to Canada, and so, because of this rivalry, New Zealand needed to be even better at things than Australia. Hence New Zealanders needed to be even friendlier than Australians.

I found his theory interesting, but unconvincing. If New Zealanders are indeed so friendly (are we really?), I suspect it’s probably more to do with our belief in egalitarianism (which these days, with increasing inequality in New Zealand, is not actually reflected in reality), along with our desire for people from the outside world to love us (‘So … what do you think of New Zealand?’).

Back home in New Zealand (click for image credit)

A last anecdote vaguely related to the topic at hand – which I guess must be New Zealand identity – in Vienna we rushed into the Art History Museum (more properly the Kunsthistorisches Museum) with less than an hour until closing time. The ticket seller made sure we knew how little time we had before he would sell me the tickets (we did, but I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to see just one thing – frescos painted by Gustav Klimt above the grand staircase). Then he asked me where we were from. ‘New Zealand,’ I said. ‘A very long way,’ he said. ‘Yes,’ I agreed. Then he said, obviously trying to be witty, ‘Where is Harry Potter?’ I was bamboozled, but smiled my polite New Zealand smile, and it wasn’t until a few minutes later that I realised he’d confused one fantasy film series – Harry Potter – with another: the Lord of the rings. Perhaps that’s what we are to the world: extras from Middle Zealand – as the Lego movie (which I watched on the plane on my way home) humorously called us. Oh well, it’s nice to be back in my castle.

What do you think? What are New Zealanders like? What are we like overseas? Are we actually that friendly? Leave a comment!

A group of West Coasters, dressed in their best, photographed with Faith in Australia at Ikamatua on 15 January 1934

It is well known that the first flight from Australia to New Zealand was made by Charles Kingsford Smith, with his co-pilot Charles Ulm and two crewmen, flying the Southern Cross in September 1928. It is less known that Kingsford Smith and Ulm made return trips in 1933 and 1934 when they were trying to establish an airmail service across the Tasman Sea.

They were always short of funds, and in order to pay for the fuel for return flights they had to tour the country giving short rides to paying passengers. Prendergast’s Paddock near Ikamatua was then the largest airstrip on the West Coast of the South Island, and we are fortunate that photographer Joseph Divis from Waiuta was there to record two of the landings, as shown in the accompanying photographs.

In January 1934 Charles Ulm carried the first airmail from Australia to New Zealand in Faith in Australia. He landed at Ikamatua on 15 January 1934, and the newspapers reported that there was a large queue of people waiting for flights at 10 shillings a time (approximately $55 in today’s value).

A group of from Waiuta photographed in front of the Southern Cross

Charles Kingsford Smith arrived only two months later, on 14 March 1934, in the Southern Cross – one of several planes with same name. The date and time that Kingsford Smith would arrive was known in advance, so a special train was arranged from Greymouth. In the late afternoon Kingsford Smith, his wife and the crew were taken back to Greymouth by train, gave a broadcast at the local radio station and stayed overnight at Revington’s Hotel.

Kingsford Smith and Ulm were unsuccessful in their bid to start an airmail service. Although their flying prowess was admired, both the Australian and New Zealand governments felt the venture was too risky.

Flying certainly was a risky occupation. Ulm disappeared in December 1934 while attempting to fly from California to Hawaii. Kingsford Smith disappeared a year later while attempting to fly from India to Singapore.

Further information: Simon Nathan, Through the eyes of a miner: the photography of Joseph Divis. Wellington: Steele Roberts, 2010.