Myth, Race, and Identity in New Zealand

Abstract

THIS ESSAY explores aspects of the collective identity of two peoples, Maori and Pakeha, the neo-Polynesians and neo-British of New Zealand. It deals in the interactions of myth and history, of race, tribe, and nation, of Europe and the Pacific, and of Us and Them. It does so in the conviction that New Zealand, an intersection between two cultures exceptionally prone to spawning reproductions of themselves, is a good place to study such matters. The paper is an exercise in the social history of ideas, as against their intellectual history. The latter can lapse into a kind of intellectual granny-hunting, debating which ancestor to make eponymous: was it Social Lamarckianism, Biological Spencerism, or Social Darwinism? The former pursues the lower and wider role of ideas as lenses on, and determinants of, history. This is a field in which testing is difficult: the paper is speculative; and caution is invoked if not delivered herein. A key assumption is that socialized (widely-disseminated and culturallyvalued) ideas can congeal into discernible knots or currents, without deliberate artifice or conspiracy. 'Myth' is a convenient label, though we should note that these ideas are not merely falsehoods to be debunked, nor texts to be deconstructed, but also important historical refractors and determinants. Modern myths can be seen as fluid cultural motifs, shifting according to time and context and layered such that acceptance of one element encourages, but does not absolutely require, acceptance of another. Each may derive cohesion through dissemination from a common source, but also from atheoretical thinkers with similar backgrounds who make similar choices from sets of options limited by a shared conceptual language. There is an element of convergent evolution as well as of shared descent. Occupying a space between theories and attitudes, myths can draw on the former, but sometimes do so eclectically and inconsistently, knotting strategically contradictory theories together to provide tactical legitimation. We find several works of mid-nineteenth century New Zealand ethnography simul-