My friend and fellow historian Kate Hunter and I have just had an opinion piece published on Newsroom, looking at the attacks on the historical profession in Aotearoa New Zealand over the past few years. The article is a response to the gutting of the history team at Manatū Taonga, the Ministry for Culture and Heritage, the team that has produced such outstanding resources as Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand and the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. The cuts at Manatū Taonga come on top of the continuing devastation of university history departments, cuts to staffing and services at Archives New Zealand, and the ending of funding for the humanities and social sciences through the Marsden Fund. And that’s without even considering further threats looming in future. What will the promised ‘rebalancing’ of the history curriculum in schools look like? What are the implications of the Government’s pressure on local councils to focus on ‘basics’ for local funding of museums, archives, libraries, and heritage protection and interpretation?

Historians are not taking these attacks lying down. A number of associations of historians have joined together to issue a very strongly-worded statement on the restructuring at Manatū Taonga. Historian Vincent O’Malley has written a couple of posts on what he’s called the ‘war on history’, and was also interviewed by Stuff. Former Chief Historian Jock Phillips has also spoken out strongly in a couple of interviews on Radio New Zealand.

Will the politicians who are responsible for these funding decisions listen to the chorus of outrage? It’s hard to be optimistic. And yet a lot of people care deeply about Aotearoa New Zealand’s history, and greatly value resources such as Te Ara. It’s notable that the New Zealand Society of Genealogists was among the organisations that signed the letter of protest, and genealogy is a hugely popular pastime. Politicians need to know that people care about our past, and want it to have a future. If you’re one of those people, please consider writing to your local MP or to the Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage or other Ministers.

In happier news, Bruce Connew’s wonderful photographic exhibition ‘A Vocabulary’ is about to open at the National Library in Wellington. I wrote about the exhibition here. At the time I’d only been able to view the book based on the exhibition, but since then, I’ve had the opportunity to see the exhibition at Toi Mahara Gallery in Waikanae. I can confirm that it’s well worth seeing in person. The photography of the colonial memorials is stunning, and the impact of seeing the photographs together is even greater than seeing them on the page. This work is so clever in the way it subverts heroic colonial narratives by picking out particular words in the inscriptions. If you’re able to, please do go and see it, and you may also like to get along to the artist talk that Bruce is giving on Saturday 16 August.