ABSTRACT
Recent efforts by indigenous Maori in New Zealand to reassert aspects of their traditional culture have given rise to a liberalist desire amongst Pakeha (New Zealanders of European descent or origin) to reinvent the nation in a bicultural image. This image is most noticeable in public forms of remembering such as those to be found in art galleries and museums, but since 1987 it has also determined education policy, so that even official history-writing is now being organised around the written and oral accounts of the two main signatories to the Treaty of Waitangi – Europeans and Maori. Yet there are several problems with this treaty model of history-writing that need to be considered if the rewriting of the nation’s history is to represent a genuine transformation of the legacy of European colonialism. It is my aim here to draw attention to these problems and to outline an alternative approach to history-writing that might begin to address these problems in a practical way.
