For more than 150 years, five carved panels that once formed the back wall of a pātaka, slept in a small swamp just north of Waitara. The carvings, which uri of Taranaki now call the Motunui Epa, emerged from their long sleep in 1971 setting off an extraordinary chain of events that would take them around the world and back again.

In this talk, Dr Rachel Buchanan will discuss how unearthing the government records has changed the way she works as a historian, taking her much closer to the power of the underground and the sovereignty that exists, undiminished beneath our feet.  This work resulted in her book Te Motunui Epa (BWB Books, 2022).

This talk was recorded on 15 May 2023 at the National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa. 

Dr Rachel Buchanan (Taranaki, Te Ātiawa) is the author of three books that explore Taranaki histories, including the invasion of Parihaka. Her new book, Te Motunui Epa (BWB Books, 2022), was shortlisted for the 2023 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards in the illustrated non-fiction category. Along with Hana Buchanan and Debbie Broughton, Rachel is also member of Te Aro Pā poets. A former journalist, Rachel has also documented the collapse of newspapers in the history-memoir, Stop Press: the last days of newspapers.

Download a transcript of this talk: https://nzhistory.govt.nz/files/pdfs/new-lenses-history-talk-rachel-buchanan-transcript.pdf

In seeking to understand the terrorist attacks of March 2019, several commentators observed the similarities with the murder of an elderly Chinese man named Joe Kum Yung by Lionel Terry in 1905. It is tempting to draw a direct causal line between the two attacks, both as a concise way of framing an uncomfortable subject and as an emotional salve against the possibility that New Zealand’s radical right tradition is more than the occasional ‘lone wolf’. But this obscures far more than it explains.

In this talk, historian Matthew Cunningham explores some of the many threads of New Zealand’s diverse radical right tradition between the murder of Joe Kum Yung and the rise of identitarianism and the alt-right. Drawing on his recent co-edited book, Histories of Hate, this talk suggests that the radical right is a diverse mix of ideas, ideologues, organisations, social clubs and political parties animated by different combinations of ideas in different ways and at different times. It also draws out some common themes across this disparate tradition in terms of ideology, structure, and political behaviour.

Matthew Cunningham is an independent historian residing in Wellington, New Zealand. He has a diverse publication history, including books, edited collections, oral histories, peer-reviewed journal articles, Waitangi Tribunal commissioned research reports, Marine and Coastal Area reports, public history articles, and journalistic and general interest pieces. He is also a published children author.

Download a transcript of this talk: https://nzhistory.govt.nz/files/pdfs/transcript-matthew-cunningham-pht.pdf

In this podcast, Dr Lucy Mackintosh discusses aspects of her recently published book, Shifting Grounds: Deep Histories of Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland (Bridget Williams Books, 2021), which explores the layered histories embedded in three landscapes in the city. Starting with rocks, lava flows, a grassy paddock, the remains of a garden, the site of a cottage, or a monument, the book examines the histories that unfolded in these places and connects them with the broader historical context of the city, the nation and the world. Lucy’s talk considers how histories told from particular places, at particular moments of time, opens up new stories and perspectives that can change the way we currently tend to think about the past and the present in urban spaces.

Dr Lucy Mackintosh is a Senior Research Fellow, and formerly Curator of History, at Auckland War Memorial Museum. Her debut book Shifting Grounds: Deep Histories of Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, drew extensively on the collections of the Alexander Turnbull library and other archives throughout New Zealand. The book was awarded the Ernest Scott Prize for History (co-winner), the ARANZ Ian Wards Prize and the NZSA Heritage Book Award for Non-Fiction in 2022.  

The talk was recorded live at the National Library of New Zealand on 1 March 2023, as part of the Public History Talks series, a collaboration between the Alexander Turnbull Library and Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture and Heritage. 

Download a transcript of this talk: https://nzhistory.govt.nz/files/pdfs/lucy-mackintosh-talk transcript-2023.pdf

Katherine Mansfield was a New Zealand author of international renown. Her short stories and poetry have been translated into more than 25 languages and her work continues to have an impact one hundred years after her death in France in 1923. 

Mansfield spent most of her adult life in Europe, working as a writer, editor, and critic, and living in various places, moving as fortune and misfortune decreed.

Author Redmer Yska follows these movements in his new book, Katherine Mansfield's Europe: Station to Station. Using Mansfield’s letters and diaries as guides, he travels through Germany, France and Switzerland to the villas, pensions, hotels, spas, railway stations, churches, towns, beaches and cities where Mansfield wrote some of her finest stories.

In this Public History Talk, recorded live in June 2023, Cherie Jacobson, Director of Katherine Mansfield House & Garden, interviewed Redmer about his new book.

These monthly Public History Talks are a collaboration between the Alexander Turnbull Library and Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture and Heritage.

Download a transcript of this talk: https://nzhistory.govt.nz/files/pdfs/redmer-yska-and-cherie-jacobson-public-history-talk-june-2023.pdf

What can popular music tell us about a country and its culture?

As the 2023 Lilburn Research Fellow, Nick Bollinger is looking at ways in which pop music in Aotearoa New Zealand has reflected, contradicted, and contributed to our national stories. In this talk he will offer a progress report on a few of his discoveries.

These monthly Public History Talks are a collaboration between the Alexander Turnbull Library and Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture and Heritage. Recorded live on 3 May 2023.

Download a transcript of this talk: https://nzhistory.govt.nz/files/pdfs/nick-bollinger-transcript-may-2023.pdf

Cybèle Locke’s recently published biography of Bill Andersen, Comrade, examines labour activism, communism and social change, from the 1930s until the turn of the twenty-first century. This talk offers possibilities for how Bill Andersen’s Communist, working-class life might speak to us in the current moment.

These monthly Public History Talks are a collaboration between the Alexander Turnbull Library and Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture and Heritage. Recorded live on 5 April 2023.

Download a transcript of this talk: https://nzhistory.govt.nz/files/pdfs/solidarity-and-the-right-to-strike-transcript.pdf

Brilliant, hardworking and creative, women architects have made many significant contributions to the built environment, creativity and community of Aotearoa New Zealand. A ground-breaking new book, Making Space, tells the story of women making space for themselves in a male-dominated profession while designing architectural, landscape and urban spaces over a century.

Edited by Elizabeth Cox and written by 30 women architects, architectural historians and academics, the book’s bold, vivid chapters shine light on hundreds of remarkable women, including many whose careers have until now been lost to the historical record.

Elizabeth and authors Divya Purushotham and Mary-Jane Duffy discuss the many challenges and triumphs of women architects in Aotearoa.

These monthly Public History Talks are a collaboration between the Alexander Turnbull Library and Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture and Heritage. Recorded live on 2 November 2022.

Download a transcript of this talk: https://nzhistory.govt.nz/files/pdfs/making-space-transcript.pdf

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFAT) is a remarkable organisation that has represented New Zealand for more than 75 years.

A new book, New Zealand’s Foreign Service: A History examines how MFAT (and its predecessors) responded to ever-evolving political and military allegiances, trade globalisation, economic threats, natural disasters and military conflict on behalf of a small nation that seeks to engage on the global stage while maintaining the principles that underpin its political institutions.

Commissioning editor Ian McGibbon and two of the authors Steven Loveridge and Anita Perkins will discuss what is distinctive about MFAT's approach to diplomacy in New Zealand and globally, and reflect on the process of researching and writing the book. Facilitated by Malcolm McKinnon.

These monthly Public History Talks are a collaboration between the Alexander Turnbull Library and Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture and Heritage. Recorded live on 12 October 2022.

Download a transcript of this talk: https://nzhistory.govt.nz/files/pdfs/transcript-mfat-pht-2022-10-12.pdf

This talk sketches Lake Tūtira’s history from formation to today. Historian Jonathan West will follow in the traces of Herbert Guthrie Smith, whose obsessive records of the changes witnessed while farming by the lake made him the founder of environmental history here. He will take his cue from Guthrie Smith’s first book’s opening lines: ‘The lake on Tutira may be considered the heart of the run. It is the centre of all the station’s life and energy.’ Guthrie Smith preserved the lake as a sanctuary for his beloved birds.

But since the 1950s Lake Tūtira has faced problems – now posed much more widely – of invasive weeds, nutrient pollution, poisonous algal blooms, and mass fish kills. Jonathan will conclude considering the lessons its history provides for our future.

These monthly Public History Talks are a collaboration between the Alexander Turnbull Library and Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture and Heritage. Recorded live on 6 July 2021.

Download a transcript of this talk:

It's over 40 years since the Working Women's Charter was adopted as policy by the New Zealand Federation of Labour. The 16-clause Charter demanded rights for women in all aspects of life and work, including equal pay; ending discrimination; education and health rights; improved working conditions; quality child care; family and parental leave, and reproductive rights. But persuading the male-dominated trade union movement to adopt the Charter wasn't an easy job.

A panel of authors from the book Women Will Rise will trace the earlier working women's charters in New Zealand, and the work and organising done by trade union women and their supporters to achieve the Charter. Finally, a feminist historian of the generation following the 1970s Charter women reflects on their work. Songs from the period are included.

The speakers are among 11 co-authors of the book Women Will Rise! Recalling the Working Women's Charter:

• Sue Kedgley is a women’s advocate, author of a recent memoir Fifty Years a Feminist, and a former Green MP.

These monthly Public History Talks are a collaboration between the Alexander Turnbull Library and Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture and Heritage. Recorded live on 3 October 2021.

Download a transcript of this talk: