New Zealand History

By Manatū Taonga - Ministry for Culture and Heritage (NZ)

History

What's New Zealand History about?

Podcast channel for seminars presented by Manatū Taonga - the Ministry for Culture and Heritage.

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New Zealand History episodes:

11.15.2023
An Open Conversation on a Secret History
The new book Secret History: State Surveillance in New Zealand, 1900-1956 by Richard S Hill and Steven Loveridge (Auckland University Press, 2023) opens up the ‘secret world’ of security intelligence during a period in which counter-espionage and counter-subversion duties were...
10.27.2023
Prison Labour and the Making of New Zealand’: Jared Davidson
Forced labour haunts the streets we walk today and the spaces we take for granted. From 1814 onwards, the unfree work of prisoners was used to forge roads, ports, buildings, harbour defences and other public works across New Zealand and...
09.20.2023
Adoption: From severance and secrecy to connection and openness
In this month's Public History Talk, the authors of two recently published books discussed the profound impact of closed stranger adoption in New Zealand and the drive for change. Closed stranger adoption under the 1955 Adoption Act, still in force...
09.07.2023
Downfall: The destruction of Charles Mackay
Paul Diamond's book, Downfall: The destruction of Charles Mackay, examines the startling ‘Whanganui Affair’ of 1920, when the mayor Charles Mackay, shot a young gay man, D'Arcy Cresswell. The affair and subsequent events reveal the perilous existence of homosexual men...
08.17.2023
Te Motunui Epa – making history from the underground
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...
07.28.2023
‘An overview of New Zealand’s radical right tradition’: Matthew Cunningham
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...
07.07.2023
Archives in Place: Deep Histories in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland
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,...
06.27.2023
Katherine Mansfield’s Europe: Station to Station: Redmer Yska and Cherie Jacobson in conversation
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...
06.21.2023
Musicians, Myths and Manifestos
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....
06.14.2023
Solidarity and the Right to Strike
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...
12.14.2022
Making Space: A history of New Zealand women in architecture
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...
12.01.2022
New Zealand’s Foreign Service: A History
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...
10.26.2022
A Biography of Lake Tūtira
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...
10.12.2022
Women Will Rise! Recalling the Working Women’s Charter
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...
09.22.2022
Mahuru Māori: Māni Dunlop and Jamie Tahana
Māni Dunlop (Ngāpuhi) and Jamie Tahana (Ngāti Pikiao, Ngāti Makino, Te Arawa) are journalists and national broadcasters who actively champion te reo Māori me nga tikanga Māori through their work. Māni was the first Māori journalist at RNZ to host a...
08.01.2022
Shifting perspectives about colonial conflict: The Wairau Affray and the Battle of Boulcott’s Farm
Liana MacDonald (Ngāti Kuia, Rangitāne o Wairau, Ngāti Koata) is a lecturer in the Faculty of Education, Victoria University of Wellington. She is interested in how racism, whiteness, and settler colonialism manifest in national institutions. In this talk, Liana focusses on...
08.01.2022
With the Boys Overseas: radio listening during World War II and New Zealand’s first broadcast war correspondents
In the 1940s radio played a central role in the life of the New Zealand household as a source of news and entertainment. Sound historian Sarah Johnston is researching radio during this era, particularly the role of our first radio...
07.08.2022
Learning in and from primary schools: Teaching Aotearoa New Zealand’s histories at Years 1 to 6
In September 2019, Hon Chris Hipkins announced Aotearoa New Zealand's histories would be taught in all schools and kura from 2022 (later extended to 2023). In this talk Dr Genaro Oliveira shared findings from a comprehensive survey of primary school teachers...
06.08.2022
‘There was no honour in it’: Two aspects of New Zealand’s military history
Please note: This talk contains material that may be distressing to some listeners, including the discussions of war crimes. If you wish to skip this discussion, it runs from 9:19 through to 16:36. Please take care of yourself, and if...
03.04.2022
The Platform: the radical legacy of the Polynesian Panthers
In this talk, Melani Anae, Associate Professor in Pacific Studies at the University of Auckland discusses aspects of her recent book, The Platform: the radical legacy of the Polynesian Panthers. In the book she writes, ‘Fifty years ago the Polynesian...
10.05.2021
Crossing the lines: the story of three homosexual New Zealand soldiers in WW2
In this talk author Brent Coutts discusses his recently published book, Crossing the Lines, a history of New Zealand homosexual soldiers in the Second World War. While he uncovered fifty homosexual men who served in the military during the war, his...
07.28.2021
Reflecting on the value of social media as a history-research tool
In this talk, historian Ryan Bodman explores the value of social media as a 21st century history-research tool. Over the past five years, Ryan has been researching and writing Rugby League: A New Zealand History, which is a social and...
06.01.2021
Dissenting Voices – New Zealand and the South African War 1899–1902
In this talk, Nigel Robson, author of Our first foreign war (Massey University Press, 2021), examines opposition within New Zealand to the South African War 1899–1902. At a time when patriotic fervour engulfed the country, those who questioned British actions in South Africa,...
06.01.2021
Inside the Bubble
Inside the Bubble : Kei Roto i te Miru is a collection of human stories recorded during Covid-19 lockdown in Aotearoa New Zealand. Oral historians worked in partnership with Ngā Pātaka Kōrero Auckland Libraries and Manatu Taonga to collect, create...
04.08.2021
Kei roto i te miru: inside the bubble
What happens when a pandemic hits and the country is locked down? How can we help keep New Zealanders connected? In collaboration with Sue Berman, Principal Oral History Advisor Auckland Libraries, staff at Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture and Heritage got...
03.04.2021
‘Palmy Proud’? Audience and Approach in Writing the History of a Provincial City
In this Public History Talk, co-editor and a writer for City at the Centre: A History of Palmerston North Margaret Tennant will discuss the dilemmas faced by its editors and the question of audience for such a volume: whether to take...
03.04.2021
Tamihana Te Rauparaha’s life of Te Rauparaha
‘He Pukapuka Tātaku i ngā Mahi a Te Rauparaha Nui’ is a 50,000-word account of Te Rauparaha’s life written by his son Tamihana Te Rauparaha in the late 1860s. A rich source of Ngāti Toa history, language and culture, it...
11.16.2020
Te Mana O Te Reo Māori
Today, te reo Māori is recognised as an important part of New Zealand culture and identity. But things were not always so hopeful for the language. By the 1970s, te reo Māori was on the verge of extinction. The long...
10.07.2020
Unpacking the Suitcase
When German-Jewish refugees arrived in New Zealand in the 1930s fleeing Hitler’s Europe, they brought everything they could from their former homes: furniture, luggage, personal documents, musical instruments, artwork, books, silverware, linen, a typewriter. Some of these humble and remarkable...
09.02.2020
Māori women and the armed forces in WWII
Angela Wanhalla (Kāi Tahu), is an associate professor in the History Programme, University of Otago. She teaches and writes about New Zealand history and is currently involved in a collaborative research project on the histories and legacies of the Māori...
07.19.2020
Memorials, names and ethical remembering
How do we remember the past? What place do colonial memorials have in public spaces? How can we better represent diverse histories in the landscape? In this first Public History Talk for 2020, Professor of Māori education at Victoria University, Joanna Kidman...
03.04.2020
‘Protest Tautohetohe: Objects of Resistance, Persistence and Defiance’
In this talk, authors Stephanie Gibson, Matariki Williams and Puawai Cairns will provide insights into the stories and objects that fill the recent publication ‘Protest Tautohetohe: Objects of Resistance, Persistence and Defiance’, their material history of activism in Aotearoa New...
10.02.2019
Wairoa Lockout: an oral history
Since 2010, the small town of Wairoa on the East Coast of New Zealand has been at the centre of the most bitter and protracted industrial dispute in New Zealand’s recent history. The agri-business giant, Talley’s Group, took over the...
09.11.2019
Pūkana: moments in Māori performance
From Porgy and Bess to haka, to Elsdon Best and Tuini Ngāwai, Pūkana will range far and wide to give a sense of the ihi, wehi and wana, inherent to Maori performance. Paul Diamond is lead curator for the Pūkana exhibition,...
08.07.2019
This Mortal Boy
In a career that spans more than 30 books, time as a librarian, radio producer and screenwriter, Wellington writer Dame Fiona Kidman also claimed New Zealand's most prestigious literary prize in 2019. At the 51st Ockham Book Awards. This Mortal...
07.03.2019
100 years of the Tararua Tramping Club
The Tararua Tramping Club (TTC) was founded in 1919. At that time, most people in New Zealand viewed tramping as an odd form of recreation, but today tramping has become one of New Zealand’s most popular leisure pursuits. The club...
05.01.2019
The Hidden Women of the Public Stage
In our 50th episode, ‘The Hidden Women of the Public Stage: Women in New Zealand orchestras at the turn of the twentieth century’, Inge van Rij, Associate Professor of Musicology at Victoria University of Wellington, explores the paradoxical position of...
04.03.2019
My Body, My Business
In this presentation, oral historian, writer and editor Caren Wilton talks about using oral history – ‘history from below’ – to document what can seem to be a secret or hidden world, and telling stories that are both extraordinary and...
03.06.2019
Ocean: tales of voyaging and encounter that defined New Zealand
New Zealand, an island nation, the sea surrounds us. Both barrier and highway, it was the only way for people, goods and ideas to come to this country for hundreds of years. In this first Public History Talk for 2019, Sarah...
11.07.2018
The Saving of Old St Paul’s
Soon after the opening of Old St Paul’s church in Mulgrave Street, Wellington, in 1866, Charles Abraham, the first Anglican Bishop of Wellington, said of the church that it was ‘a very handsome building of wood, and the interior is...
10.04.2018
The tragedy of the SS Talune and the 1918 influenza pandemic
In October 1918 the SS Talune was permitted to leave Auckland bound for Fiji and Polynesia, even though the ship's master knew that influenza was rife in the city and that there were sick on board ship when it left...
08.01.2018
Polly Plum and the first wave of feminism
As we celebrate 125 years of women’s suffrage, it's time to re-evaluate Polly Plum, once described as ‘a highly controversial public figure for a few years only’. In this Public History Talk, feminist historian and author Jenny Coleman shares some of...
07.04.2018
‘Researching kindergarten: the endeavours of women for the play of children’
In this Public History Talk about an iconic kiwi institution, two historians of early childhood education present the outline of their new book, Growing a Kindergarten Movement in Aotearoa New Zealand. Emeritus Professor at the University of Otago Helen May, and...
06.06.2018
‘The Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, redux’
The Dictionary of New Zealand Biography was originally published in five print volumes between 1990 and 2000. It comprised 3000 biographical essays about a wide range of deceased New Zealanders who had come to prominence by 1960. The Dictionary went...
05.02.2018
Jazzy Nerves, Aching Feet, and Foxtrots: New Zealand’s Jazz Age
Douglas Lilburn Research Fellow, Dr Aleisha Ward explores some of the many facets of ‘jazz’ in New Zealand’s Jazz Age. The image of 1920s New Zealand is frequently one of a quiet, staid society that ‘closed at 5’. Contrary to...
04.11.2018
How does a city make a writer?
Redmer Yska is a Wellington based writer and historian, and is author to many New Zealand history works. Redmer presents his latest work 'A Strange Beautiful Excitement, Katherine Mansfield’s Wellington, 1888-1903’, and discusses a new connection between Mansfield's family and Women's...
04.04.2018
Māori Women, Politics and Petitions in the 19th Century
Dr Angela Wanhalla teaches in the Department of History and Art History at the University of Otago, Dunedin. This presentation draws upon her most recent book, He Reo Wāhine: Māori Women’s Voices from the Nineteenth Century, co-authored with Māori-language scholar...
11.01.2017
The Great War for New Zealand
The Great War for New Zealand tells the story of the defining conflict in New Zealand history. War in the Waikato in 1863-64 shaped the nation in all kinds of ways, setting back Māori and Pākehā relations by several generations,...
10.04.2017
Counting redcoats: Who were the imperial soldiers serving in New Zealand in the 1860s?
In this episode, Charlotte Macdonald and Rebecca Lenihan will discuss the development of a database of men serving in the imperial regiments in New Zealand, the nature of the ‘big data’ generated by the War Office, issues, limitations and possibilities...
09.06.2017
The Broken Decade: 1928 - 39 by Malcom McKinnon
In this presentation, Malcolm McKinnon considers the significance of the year 1932 in New Zealand’s history. Keith Sinclair famously described the disturbances of that year and the government’s harsh response as marking New Zealand’s nadir. But the disturbances also prompted...

What's New Zealand History about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

New Zealand History episodes:

An Open Conversation on a Secret History

Prison Labour and the Making of New Zealand’: Jared Davidson

Adoption: From severance and secrecy to connection and openness

Downfall: The destruction of Charles Mackay

Te Motunui Epa – making history from the underground

‘An overview of New Zealand’s radical right tradition’: Matthew Cunningham

Archives in Place: Deep Histories in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland

Katherine Mansfield’s Europe: Station to Station: Redmer Yska and Cherie Jacobson in conversation

Musicians, Myths and Manifestos

Solidarity and the Right to Strike

Making Space: A history of New Zealand women in architecture

New Zealand’s Foreign Service: A History

A Biography of Lake Tūtira

Women Will Rise! Recalling the Working Women’s Charter

Mahuru Māori: Māni Dunlop and Jamie Tahana

Shifting perspectives about colonial conflict: The Wairau Affray and the Battle of Boulcott’s Farm

With the Boys Overseas: radio listening during World War II and New Zealand’s first broadcast war correspondents

Learning in and from primary schools: Teaching Aotearoa New Zealand’s histories at Years 1 to 6

‘There was no honour in it’: Two aspects of New Zealand’s military history

The Platform: the radical legacy of the Polynesian Panthers

Crossing the lines: the story of three homosexual New Zealand soldiers in WW2

Reflecting on the value of social media as a history-research tool

Dissenting Voices – New Zealand and the South African War 1899–1902

Inside the Bubble

Kei roto i te miru: inside the bubble

‘Palmy Proud’? Audience and Approach in Writing the History of a Provincial City

Tamihana Te Rauparaha’s life of Te Rauparaha

Te Mana O Te Reo Māori

Unpacking the Suitcase

Māori women and the armed forces in WWII

Memorials, names and ethical remembering

‘Protest Tautohetohe: Objects of Resistance, Persistence and Defiance’

Wairoa Lockout: an oral history

Pūkana: moments in Māori performance

This Mortal Boy

100 years of the Tararua Tramping Club

The Hidden Women of the Public Stage

My Body, My Business

Ocean: tales of voyaging and encounter that defined New Zealand

The Saving of Old St Paul’s

The tragedy of the SS Talune and the 1918 influenza pandemic

Polly Plum and the first wave of feminism

‘Researching kindergarten: the endeavours of women for the play of children’

‘The Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, redux’

Jazzy Nerves, Aching Feet, and Foxtrots: New Zealand’s Jazz Age

How does a city make a writer?

Māori Women, Politics and Petitions in the 19th Century

The Great War for New Zealand

Counting redcoats: Who were the imperial soldiers serving in New Zealand in the 1860s?

The Broken Decade: 1928 - 39 by Malcom McKinnon