ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors focus attention to the aims of education in the Antipodean South and explore what it means to be a native citizen in a settler-colonial environment of ongoing cultural and ethnic tension. They argue that one of the primary motivations is hope. Everyday hope in the face of struggle and dispossession. In education contexts, however, hope and the radical imagination must also be grounded in educational practice and aligned with indigenous political struggle. The establishment of settler-colonial societies in distant lands was therefore justified on the basis of settler denial that previous societies were in existence prior to colonization and this lies at the heart of educational thinking in the late imperial era. Imperial victory in the Waikato paved the way for settler and European dominance in the years to come and the Crown regularly acted in breach of the Treaty of Waitangi, refusing to consult on matters concerning Maori peoples and their lands.
