Land Wars not confined to history curriculum

Thursday, 20 September 2018

Brad Totorewa, director of the Rangiriri Cultural and Heritage Centre, atop Rangiriri Pā, North Waikato.

Teaching Land Wars in schools need not be confined to a single subject.

It can cover art, literature, science, maths and performance art, said educator and Rangiriri Cultural and Heritage Centre director Brad Totorewa.

'The beauty about this is that it doesn't just sit in the curriculum of history, but you can integrate what we have here into most curriculum areas,' Totorewa said.

Totorewa - a qualified teacher and adult educator - was instrumental in the 150-year commemoration of the Battle of Rangiriri in North Waikato.

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His aim was to etch the history into the nation's consciousness. Now he's taken the next step by opening a cafe and private museum in the Rangiriri village and offering tours through the remaining battle trenches overlooking the Waikato Expressway.

'Architecture,' he said, still thinking like a teacher.

'It's freaky how they figured out the physics and the velocity and path of travel of a cannonball of a certain weight, and how they knew to build a redoubt far enough inland so that cannonball could not penetrate the wall, and without any utensils of the day like measuring tape.'

Totorewa grew up nearby. As a child he played at the Rangiriri Cemetery amongst the individual, concrete-covered colonial graves and the mass pit where dead Māori were thrown.

Thousands of people have already been through the tour, including school, government department and executive groups.

Having New Zealand's colonial history taught in schools will influence personalities and create social change, he said.

'Part of that healing process is if you can open the eyes of someone who you've just educated or if you've enhanced their understanding, if they acknowledge that themselves, then my job is done.'

University of Canterbury senior lecturer Dr Richard Manning, who along with senior lecturer Garrick Cooper, wrote a submission to the Māori Affairs Select Committee inquiry on colonial histories in schools, said some teachers are doing good work educating students about the Land Wars. But others - who cite a lack of resources and interest - are letting the side down.

Resistant teachers should get out of the classroom and go to places like Rangiriri Pā, Ōrākau near Kihikihi, Gate Pā at Tauranga and Wairau at the top of the South Island and Ruapekapeka in Northland.

'We don't buy the argument there's not enough resources. People are the resources. The landscape is the resource. You need more than textbooks if you are teaching about the New Zealand Land Wars and Māori histories in general,' Manning said.

'You have to be able to read the landscape as the text. You go out on to the land and look at the landscape as the text. The text is the landscape and the landscape doesn't lie.'