I sat under the shade of a large marquee, and watched a flatbed truck drive haltingly by, while tears escaped from behind the cover of my sunglasses. On the back of this truck, and two which followed it, dancers performed vignettes from Butakoci, a dance-based production which (in its entirety) tells stories about human trafficking in Fiji’s past and present. The parts adapted for performance on Friday 8 November, 2024, at the 160th Commemoration of the Arrival of Melanesian Labourers to Fiji, related to the experiences of ‘blackbirded’ people. Many of those blackbirded were kidnapped from the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu and brought to Fiji to undertake hard agricultural labour on plantations for a minimum of three years (unless they died first): these were the ‘Melanesian labourers’ mentioned in the commemoration event’s name. Over the period 1864–1911, around 27,000 contracts were signed for terms of indenture in Fiji (many other Solomoni and Ni-Vanuatu people were taken to Queensland and some to Sāmoa). Many decades later, dancers expressed the grief, pain and desperate fear of this group of people, while a haunting song played.

The producer of Butakoci, Talei Draunibaka, spoke at the 160th Commemoration both about how acknowledging past pain could assist healing in the present, and about the process of creating the work and the thinking behind the artistic decisions she made. (She has spoken about this elsewhere, also.) In the short video we have produced about the 160th Commemoration, Draunibaka is speaking at the inflection point, parts of the adapted version of Butakoci are depicted, and some of the show’s version of Lai tei dalo ko tamaqu can be heard as part of the video’s own soundtrack. As masterful a choice as this song was for its Fijian audience, some background knowledge of its context for those watching who are not Fijian may or may not add depth to our understanding—as my own experience suggests, though, not understanding the words doesn’t mean that watching the show can’t be deeply moving. I also write this post to foreground the significance and value of song as a primary document, as living history, as a way of keeping experiences alive in spirit, even when more official versions of the past might be repressed or ignored. As the video of the 160th Commemoration shows, soundtracked only by music and words spoken at the event, the days involved grieving, dancing, singing, speaking and advocating for a better tomorrow.

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It is clear that some Anglicans were engaged with the work of the WCTU from the time of Leavitt’s tour in New Zealand. In a letter to Hannah Whitall Smith, co-founder of the WCTU and part of the Holiness Movement, Leavitt praised the work of Rev. Joseph S. Hill. Rev. Hill had come to New Zealand in 1879 to work with the Church Missionary Society, but he ended up working in Auckland to serve as chaplain to the Gaol. As president of the Auckland YMCA, he was able to offer a welcoming site for Leavitt’s work in organising the Auckland WCTU NZ. While most of the venues for Leavitt’s speeches were in Non-Conformist churches or in town halls, the Anglican Church of St. Paul’s in Papanui, a village to the northwest of Christchurch, hosted an event for her. At least three daughters of William G. Filleul, a lay leader in the Anglican Church of Oamaru, worked to keep the fledgling WCTU NZ chapter there going. More detailed work can be done on the home congregations of the women-led groups moving out of the pious and domestic roles expected of them and into the public-facing reform movements of New Zealand.

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New Zealand was a colonial power. It may have been a small one, compared with the metastasised behemoths spreading out from their northern hemisphere origins, but its nineteenth and early-twentieth-century governments were keen to get in on the colonial action. My anecdotal experience is that alarmingly few Pākehā adults seem to be aware of the existence of New Zealand’s own empire, or to know details about the impacts this empire had on the people who lived on the islands governed by New Zealand. It was, therefore, encouraging to see New Zealand’s empire, which reached Sāmoa, the Cook Islands, Niue, and Tokelau, explicitly included in the Aotearoa New Zealand Histories curriculum.

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Meanwhile, in the same article, the ACT Party education spokesperson Laura Trask provided an statement criticising the ‘flawed and divisive’ curriculum, and suggesting it divides ‘history into villains and victims, contains significant gaps and entrenches a narrow understanding of New Zealand’s history.’

The statements of these two MPs reflect different ideas of ‘balance’. Stanford explores the ‘balance’ of scale—to what extent should we zoom out and look at national and international perspectives alongside local examples? Trask seems to emphasise ‘balance’ of viewpoint, though her critique is harder to reconcile with the curriculum documents and the ERO report. Exploration of the viewpoints of different historical actors is one of the critical components of the curriculum, particularly as ākonga progress through their intermediate years and beyond.

Whether one is in agreement with these government MPs or not, the ERO report and its reception provides a salient opportunity for historians and those producing curriculum support materials to ask themselves how they might bring ‘balance’ to their mahi, and to reflect on what ‘balance’ looks like for their organisation. How will we, as a project inaugurated by the Anglican Hāhi, seek balance in our mahi?

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The Northern Michigan Diocese of the Episcopal Church has launched a travelling exhibit, intended as a step towards reconciliation with indigenous people in the area, which engages with the impact of the residential schools system on First Nations people in the United States. These schools were intended to assimilate native children into the dominant culture of the United States, and to erase indigenous languages and cultural practices. The exhibit designers have sought to document ‘how Indigenous boarding schools’ legacy continues to impact Native American people today’, through survivors’ personal narratives, and also to tell histories and cultural practices of Anishinaabe people (one of several tribes in the region) through to the present day.

After reading this article, I had two responses to it that may inform our ongoing mahi at He Taonga Tuku Iho. Though there are many elements of digital material in this exhibition (QR codes to connect to survivors telling their stories, for instance), it is a physical, touring exhibition. The rationale for the physicality of the exhibition is not explored in this article, but those who created it clearly expect there to be benefits from people interacting with it in a physical space. How will we balance physical accessibility with technological accessibility?

Second: when telling stories about historical violence and injustice, particularly stories which continue to resonate with or circumscribe the lives of descendants of those targeted by that violence and injustice, should reconciliation be the expected outcome? Reconciliation is a two-way process, a moving towards one another. Is creating an exhibition in hopes that it will lead to reconciliation impelling victims to behave in a proscribed way in the present?

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