Becoming Aotearoa and the Contested Remaking of a Nation’s Historiography

The Transformation of Aotearoa New Zealand Historiography

New Zealand historiography has undergone a profound transformation over the past half-century, moving decisively away from celebratory colonial narratives toward a complex, often challenging engagement with the nation’s past. This shift, driven by a remarkable cohort of historians, has fundamentally reshaped Aotearoa New Zealand’s understanding of itself, increasingly centring Māori experiences, confronting some of the realities of colonisation and establishing the Treaty of Waitangi as the cornerstone of national identity and ongoing political discourse. This essay analyses the major thematic currents within this historiography and considers how these insights should guide the direction of future historiographical studies for a nation with a growing momentum for change, reflecting a frequent national conversation about identity and history.[1]

The most significant and enduring theme has been the sustained effort to ‘decolonise historical narratives.’ Pioneered by Māori scholars and allies, this movement actively dismantled the myth of peaceful settlement and benign colonisation. Historians like Judith Binney (1995), through works such as Redemption Songs and her contribution to Tangata Whenua (Anderson & Binney, 2014), revolutionised methodology by privileging Māori oral histories (pūrākau), visual sources like whakapapa scrolls and community knowledge. She demonstrated how colonial archives silenced or distorted Māori voices, offering instead rich, nuanced accounts of Māori resistance, adaptation and spiritual life, particularly within iwi like Tūhoe. Ranginui Walker’s (1990) seminal Ka Whawhai Tonu Mātou: Struggle Without End provided an unflinching Māori-centred perspective on the continuous struggle against colonisation, linking historical land confiscation and cultural suppression directly to contemporary socio-economic disparities and activism. This foundational work paved the way for scholars like Aroha Harris’s (2004; 2018, 2022) Hīkoi and Te Ao Hurihuri, to explore the complexities of twentieth-century Māori experiences, including urban migration and social policy impacts. Crucially, Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s (1999) Decolonising Methodologies provided the theoretical underpinning, challenging Western academic frameworks and advocating for research by, with and for Indigenous communities, fundamentally reshaping not just history but all research involving Māori.

Closely linked to decolonisation is the rigorous reinterpretation of the conflict in cross-cultural encounters. James Belich’s (1986) groundbreaking The New Zealand Wars shattered the Victorian narrative of inevitable British triumph and Māori defeat. He recast these conflicts as hard-fought wars for sovereignty (mana motuhake), demonstrating sophisticated Māori strategy and near-victories, fundamentally altering public perception of this pivotal period. Angela Ballara’s (2003) Taua similarly challenged Eurocentric views of pre-colonial Māori warfare, arguing for its deep roots in tikanga (customary law) and complex political dynamics, rather than inherent savagery. Vincent O’Malley (2016, 2021), in The Great War for New Zealand: Waikato 1800-2000 and Voices from the New Zealand Wars: He Reo nō ngā Pakanga o Aotearoa, has powerfully brought the human cost and enduring legacy of these wars into contemporary public consciousness, emphasising the direct link between historical invasion and modern Treaty settlements. Simultaneously, the Treaty of Waitangi has been transformed from a historical footnote into a ‘living document’ central to national identity and governance, largely due to Claudia Orange’s (2021) authoritative and evolving work The Treaty of Waitangi. Her meticulous scholarship traced the Treaty’s journey from signing through neglect to its modern renaissance as the basis for bicultural partnership and restitution, making its history accessible and essential for understanding contemporary New Zealand.

A third major theme explores the complexities of early contact and mutual influence. Anne Salmond (1997, 2003, 2017), bridging history and anthropology (Between Worlds, The Trial of the Cannibal Dog, Tears of Rangi), masterfully depicted the early encounters between Māori and Europeans as dynamic ‘middle grounds’ or ‘contact zones.’ Her work reveals not just conflict, but significant cultural exchange, adaptation and the creation of new hybrid social spaces, while also increasingly highlighting Māori environmental philosophies (kaitiakitanga). Tony Ballantyne’s (2002, 2012) Orientalism and Race and Webs of Empire expanded the frame, positioning New Zealand firmly within global imperial networks. He analysed how knowledge, racial ideologies and power circulated within the British Empire, showing how Aotearoa was shaped by, and contributed to, these broader currents. Alongside this, historians focused on uncovering social history and structures. Erik Olssen (1984), in A History of Otago, pioneered the study of class, labour movements and regional development, revealing the social fabric beneath national narratives. Michael King’s (1977, 1989, 2003) Te Puea, Moriori and The Penguin History of New Zealand played an unparalleled role in bringing diverse New Zealand histories – including Māori biography and the tragic history of Moriori – to a wide public audience with empathy and clarity, advocating powerfully for marginalised voices.

Collectively, these historians have established core principles for understanding Aotearoa New Zealand: the centrality of Te Tiriti o Waitangi; the agency and resilience of tangata whenua; the violence, trauma and enduring consequences of colonisation; the importance of diverse perspectives (regional, class, gender); and the dynamic nature of cultural encounter. This historiographical revolution provides not just a corrected past, but a crucial foundation for envisioning the nation’s future. The work of New Zealand’s leading historians has irrevocably changed the nation’s understanding of its past. By decolonising narratives, reinterpreting conflict and encounter, increasingly centring the Treaty and Māori perspectives and uncovering diverse social histories, they have provided the essential tools for honest self-reflection, mostly on the part of iwi Māori but also increasingly with iwi Pākehā. The direction for futures studies is clear: it must be deeply informed by this historiography, actively decolonial, Treaty-based, focused on equity and environmental sustainability, grounded in Indigenous knowledge and fundamentally collaborative. Only by building upon the foundations laid by these scholars can Aotearoa New Zealand hope to navigate its future with justice, resilience and a commitment to the partnership envisioned by Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

Belgrave’s Becoming Aotearoa

Michael Belgrave’s (2025) Becoming Aotearoa: Post-Settlement Histories and the Remaking of New Zealand represents a significant evolution in New Zealand historiography. Building on decades of decolonising scholarship while confronting contemporary tensions, Belgrave positions this work as a critical intervention in understanding how historical narratives shape – and are reshaped by – the post-Treaty settlement era. New Zealand historiography stands at a pivotal juncture. Decades of rigorous scholarship have dismantled colonial myths, centred Māori voices and enshrined Te Tiriti o Waitangi as the nation’s foundational narrative. Yet, as historian Michael Belgrave (2025) in Becoming Aotearoa: Post-Settlement Histories and the Remaking of New Zealand, the most profound revolution may not be in our understanding of the past, but in how the very process of grappling with that past – specifically the Waitangi Tribunal settlements – is actively forging new historical consciousness and reshaping the nation’s future. Belgrave’s intervention demands a critical examination: it celebrates the transformative power of the settlement era while exposing its inherent tensions and limitations, positioning history not as a closed book but as an open wound and an ongoing experiment in national becoming.

Belgrave’s central thesis is radical in its implications: ‘the Treaty settlement process is not merely addressing history; it is “making” it.’ Building on his deep engagement as a Tribunal researcher in Historical Frictions (2005), Belgrave demonstrates how the mechanics of claims, evidence and negotiations have become a powerful engine for historical revision. The Tribunal process, he argues, forced the Crown and Pākehā society to confront ‘deliberate historical amnesia’ – the systematic erasure of events like the illegal land confiscations (raupatu) following the New Zealand Wars, events meticulously documented by Vincent O’Malley’s (2016) The Great War for New Zealand. This was not passive recall but an active, often painful, reconstruction. Iwi, presenting whakapapa, pūrākau (oral traditions) and detailed research as evidence, didn’t just correct the record; they forcefully reinserted their perspectives, experiences and interpretations into the national narrative, fulfilling the decolonising imperative championed by Linda Tuhiwai Smith (2021) in Decolonising Methodologies but through a state-mandated channel. Crucially, settlements generated ‘new historical infrastructures’: iwi research units, digitally accessible tribal archives and mandated historical accounts within settlement legislation. These challenge the traditional monopoly of academic historians and Crown narratives, creating a polyphony of historical voices that fundamentally decentres authority. Belgrave thus moves beyond the work of Claudia Orange (who charted the Treaty’s ‘political’ journey) by showing how the settlement process itself has become a dynamic historical actor, generating new knowledge and legitimising previously marginalised narratives.

However, Becoming Aotearoa is no simplistic celebration of a more honest consideration of nationhood. Belgrave’s critical contribution lies in his unflinching exploration of the ‘inherent tensions’ within this transformative process. He maps a complex, often uncomfortable, terrain where three powerful forces intersect and sometimes collide: ‘academic history,’ committed to critical analysis, evidence-based revisionism and complex causality (exemplified by James Belich’s reframing of the NZ Wars); ‘iwi-driven narratives’ that often prioritising cultural revitalisation, the restoration of mana, political restitution and the needs of the collective – goals that may sometimes sit uneasily with academic notions of ‘objectivity’ or critical distance; and ‘state-sponsored reconciliation,’ focused on achieving legal ‘full and final’ settlements, providing financial redress and creating a narrative of ‘closure’ and moving forward – a pragmatic, sometimes reductive, political imperative.

Belgrave argues this friction is not a flaw but ‘productive.’ It forces historians out of the ivory tower, demanding engagement with communities and ethical reflection on the power dynamics of research (echoing Judith Binney’s collaborative ethos centred on Māori voices and knowledge, including oral narratives and whakapapa, but within a formalised legal framework). It pressures the state to acknowledge uncomfortable truths, even as it seeks resolution. It compels iwi to articulate their histories within structures not entirely of their making. The Tribunal process becomes a crucible where these competing demands – truth, justice, pragmatism, cultural imperatives – are constantly negotiated. Belgrave avoids easy resolutions, instead highlighting how this ongoing negotiation is the messy reality of ‘becoming Aotearoa.’

Belgrave respectfully critiques foundational works that framed Māori history primarily through lenses of ‘victimhood’ and ‘resistance,’ such as Ranginui Walker’s (1990) Struggle Without End. While acknowledging the brutal realities of colonisation, Becoming Aotearoa explores more nuanced realities emerging in the post-settlement era, including Māori agency within the system. Belgrave examines how iwi and hapū have strategically navigated, and sometimes adeptly utilised, Crown legal and political frameworks to achieve their goals within the settlement process. This is not capitulation but sophisticated engagement. In terms of post-settlement identity formation, settlements act as catalysts for profound internal iwi reconnection, rebuilding fractured communities and fostering new inter-iwi relationships and diplomacy. The focus shifts beyond resisting the Crown to rebuilding ‘iwi’ as nations within a nation. Belgrave contends that settlements force a necessary, if often reluctant, engagement of Pākehā with their own history, confronting complicity and inherited privilege in ways abstract scholarship alone cannot achieve.

Critically, Belgrave rejects the notion that Treaty settlements represent an endpoint for Māori. Drawing on the insights of Anne Salmond’s (2017) Tears of Rangi on the dynamism of encounter, he frames settlements as ‘foundations for ongoing negotiation.’ They create platforms for co-governance (e.g., Te Urewera, Whanganui River), but these are experiments, fraught with challenges regarding power-sharing and implementation. They raise new historical questions, such as, how do urban Māori, disconnected from tribal roots, fit into this iwi-based restitution framework? Belgrave astutely observes that settlements starkly reveal ‘the state’s limited capacity to redress profound cultural harm’: money and land cannot fully restore severed connections or erase intergenerational trauma. The project of ‘becoming’ is inherently unfinished, which is the essence of all phenomenological history, whether it is nation-building narratives, foundational myths or spiritual encounters.

Becoming Aotearoa is a crucial, albeit provocative, addition to New Zealand historiography. Its strengths lie in its sophisticated analysis of the process of history-making, its embrace of complexity and tension, and its forward-looking focus on identity formation and governance. However, critical questions arise. First, the risk of depoliticisation: does framing the settlement process as a generative historical force risk downplaying the ongoing power imbalances and the Crown’s ultimate authority within it? Does the focus on ‘negotiation’ obscure the fundamental injustice that necessitated the setting up of the Waitangi Tribunal in the first place? Second, the ‘full and final’ mirage: Belgrave effectively critiques the closure narrative, but does his analysis adequately address the profound disillusionment felt by some Māori when settlements fail to meet expectations or adequately restore mana? The tension between legal finality and lived experience remains acute. Third, the need to look beyond the Tribunal: does focusing on the formal settlement process overshadow other vital sites of historical recovery and decolonisation happening outside the Tribunal framework, driven by community initiatives and scholars?

Michael Belgrave’s Becoming Aotearoa compels New Zealand to confront a profound truth: grappling with history is not about achieving a fixed, agreed-upon past for Pākehā or the Crown. It is an active, contested and ongoing process that fundamentally shapes the present and the future. By centring the Treaty settlement era as a dynamic crucible generating new narratives, identities and governance challenges, Belgrave moves historiography beyond revisionism into the realm of ‘critical engagement with the present.’ He shows how the Tribunal process, for all its flaws and tensions, has irrevocably altered the nation’s historical consciousness, forcing a reckoning that extends far beyond the negotiation table. The ‘becoming’ of the title is apt: Aotearoa New Zealand is not a finished product emerging from a resolved past, but a nation perpetually in formation, its identity and future inextricably linked to how it continues to negotiate the complex, often painful, legacies laid bare by historians like Belgrave himself. His work stands as a powerful testament to the idea that history is not merely studied; it is lived, contested, and, ultimately, always in transition. The remainder of this essay examines unexamined assumptions of the nation’s historiography and the way recent scholars have begun to rework and renarrativise history in Aotearoa. Countering notions of historical inevitability, their work portrays a past characterised by sudden breaks, pervasive conflict, orchestrated forgetting and simmering tensions. Significantly, this legacy is not passive; it actively permeates contemporary institutions, identities and social conflicts, demonstrating history’s living imprint.

Remaking a Nation’s Historiography

For much of the 20th century, New Zealand history was framed as a triumphant, linear march: a story of ‘gradual national becoming.’ This narrative depicted a smooth evolution from rugged colony to harmonious, egalitarian nation-state, underpinned by assumptions of inevitable progress, benevolent race relations (‘the best race relations in the world’) and the steady assimilation of Māori into a unified ‘New Zealand’ identity. This essay argues that a central, critical thrust of recent New Zealand historiography – exemplified by scholars like Michael Belgrave (2025), Vincent O’Malley (2016), Angela Wanhalla (2013), and Alison Jones and Kuni Jenkins (2011) – has been the systematic dismantling of these linear, gradualist assumptions. Their work reveals a past characterised not by steady progress, but by rupture, conflict, deliberate forgetting and unresolved tensions that continue to shape the present.

This dominant, often implicit, narrative rested on several key assumptions:

1. ‘Peaceful settlement’ and gradual integration: colonisation was framed as fundamentally peaceful and orderly, with Māori willingly ceding sovereignty and gradually integrating into British institutions and a shared national identity. Conflict (like the New Zealand Wars) was minimised or presented as isolated aberrations.
2. Benevolent assimilation: the fate of Māori was seen as one of inevitable, and ultimately beneficial, assimilation into European culture and society, facilitated by paternalistic Crown policies. This ignored the violence of cultural suppression and land loss.
3. The inevitable progress of the liberal nation-state: the journey from dependent colony to fully realised, unified and independent nation was portrayed as a natural, teleological process. The Treaty of Waitangi was often relegated to a symbolic starting point, its ongoing relevance downplayed.
4. ‘Best race relations’ and social harmony: the narrative promoted a self-congratulatory myth of uniquely successful race relations, obscuring systemic discrimination and the persistent struggle for Māori rights.

Recent historians have attacked these assumptions not as minor corrections, but as foundational myths and operating assumptions requiring radical revision:

1. Centring violence and conflict (Belich, O’Malley, Ballara): James Belich’s (1986) The New Zealand Wars shattered the myth of peaceful settlement, demonstrating these conflicts as large-scale, hard-fought wars for sovereignty. Vincent O’Malley’s (2016, 2021) works The Great War for New Zealand and Voices from the New Zealand Wars meticulously document the devastating impact and ‘enduring’ legacy of this violence, proving it was central, not peripheral, to national formation. Angela Ballara’s (2003) Taua reframed pre-contact Māori warfare, challenging the notion of pre-colonial ‘savagery’ replaced by European order.
2. Exposing assimilation as dispossession and cultural suppression (Walker, Harris, Smith): Ranginui Walker’s (1990) Struggle Without End provided a powerful Māori-centred counter-narrative, framing history as continuous resistance against colonisation and assimilationist policies designed to destroy Māori identity and secure land. Aroha Harris’s Hīkoi (2004) and Te Ao Hurihuri (Harris et al., 2022) documented the realities of 20th-century urban migration and social policy, revealing systemic disadvantage rather than smooth integration. Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s (2021) Decolonising Methodologies provided the theoretical framework, exposing the colonial power structures embedded in historical research itself.
3. The Treaty as dynamic contested covenant, not relic (Orange, O’Malley, Belgrave): Claudia Orange’s authoritative work The Treaty of Waitangi traced the Treaty’s ‘neglect’ and subsequent ‘revival,’ demonstrating its fluctuating, contested and always ‘political’ life. Crucially, she showed that its history was not one of smooth implementation but of broken promises and struggle. Michael Belgrave’s (2025) Becoming Aotearoa takes this further, arguing the Treaty settlement process itself is an active, contested force generating new historical narratives and power dynamics, fundamentally disrupting any notion of a settled, linear progression beyond colonisation.
4. Unmasking ‘best race relations’ (Wanhalla, Jones, Williams): work on intimate colonial encounters such as Angela Wanhalla’s (2013), In/Visible Sight: The Mixed-Descent Families of Southern New Zealand and on cross-cultural relationships (Jones & Jenkins, 2011) reveals the complex realities beneath the surface of the ‘best race relations’ myth, exposing prejudice, legal discrimination and the lived experience of racial hierarchies. Dominic O’Sullivan’s (2020) We Are All Here to Stay critically examines the limitations of contemporary biculturalism, challenging complacency.
5. Highlighting rupture and forgetting (Belgrave): Belgrave’s concept of ‘deliberate historical amnesia’ is pivotal. He argues that the linear, progressive narrative required the ‘active forgetting’ of traumatic events like the New Zealand Wars and land confiscations. The smooth national story depended on suppressing uncomfortable truths. The Waitangi Tribunal process, in his view, forces a confrontation with this amnesia, revealing history not as a smooth continuum but as fractured by deliberate silences and resurgent memories. The ‘settlement era’ isn’t the culmination of gradual progress, but a belated, contested and incomplete reckoning with foundational violence.

This critique has profound implications. First, by rejecting teleology, recent historians emphasise that New Zealand history loses its comforting inevitability. The nation-state is not the natural, pre-ordained endpoint but one contested possibility among others, forged through conflict and negotiation. Second, by embracing complexity and contingency, history becomes messy, non-linear and contingent. Events like the New Zealand Wars or the Treaty signings are not steps on a ladder but critical junctures shaping multiple possible futures. Third, by centring power and conflict, power relations – conquest, resistance, negotiation, suppression – move to the heart of the narrative, replacing myths of harmonious consensus. Fourth, the past is an unfinished project. Belgrave’s work, especially, insists the past is not ‘settled.’ Treaty settlements are not endpoints closing the book on history, but catalysts for new forms of relationship, governance and historical questioning. The ‘becoming’ of Aotearoa is ongoing, contested and inherently incomplete. Finally, in terms of the foundations of justice, dismantling the progressive myth is essential for justice. It reveals the unhealed wounds of colonisation and challenges the state’s legitimacy when based on historical erasure. True reconciliation requires confronting the lack of smooth progress and the reality of unresolved harm.

The critique of linear, gradualist assumptions in New Zealand historiography is much more than an academic exercise. It is a necessary act of intellectual and political decolonisation. Historians like Belgrave, O’Malley, Wanhalla and others have demolished the comforting myth of inevitable progress and benevolent nation-building. In its place, they offer a history marked by foundational violence, deliberate forgetting, cultural suppression and ongoing contestation. This history reveals the Treaty not as a relic but as a dynamic, living covenant demanding continual renegotiation. It shows ‘settlement’ not as an end, but as a fraught beginning of new relationships forged in the crucible of remembered injustice. Recognising that Aotearoa New Zealand’s past is neither linear nor resolved is the essential first step towards imagining and building a future for Aotearoa that is genuinely just, grounded in truth and open to the complexities of its ongoing becoming.

It is tempting to contemplate ‘varieties’ of histories – not merely as an academic exercise – but as a decolonial imperative and a methodological revolution. This move transcends dismantling two pillars of Western hegemony. First, historicism’s ‘linear tyranny’: the Western tradition often frames history as a unified, linear narrative of ‘progress,’ whether it be technological, moral or civilisational. ‘Varieties’ of histories shatter this teleology, revealing time as non-linear – cyclical, spiral, or fragmented – as understood in Māori (whakapapa), Hindu (yugas), or Indigenous Australian (Dreamtime) traditions. Second, the Nation-State’s invented past: nationalist histories weaponise the past to legitimise borders, hierarchies and exclusion. They turn history into a political tool, as indicated in the legalities of terra nullius myths and ‘manifest destiny.’ Plural histories expose nations as modern constructs, destabilising their claims to ancient, immutable roots.

The true power of embracing multiple histories lies not just in critique but in reimagining existence to recover erased futures. Histories buried by colonialism (e.g., pre-contact governance, queer Indigenous identities or communal ecologies) contain alternative visions of society. Reclaiming them isn’t nostalgia – it’s an act of futurism. For example, Māori concepts of kaitiakitanga (guardianship) challenge capitalist extraction, offering models for ecological survival. Multiple histories also decentre the human. Western history prioritises human agency. ‘Varieties’ of histories recentre more-than-human actors – rivers, mountains, ancestors – as in Andean cosmovisions or animist epistemologies. This reframes ‘agency’ itself. Varieties of history help to cultivate radical empathy. Contradictory histories force us to hold multiple truths simultaneously. This discomfort breeds ethical humility, countering fundamentalism. Acknowledging both the brutality of colonialism and Indigenous resistance without reconciling them into a single ‘story.’ ‘Varieties’ enable reparative justice.
Plural histories make visible the unfinished projects of justice, consisting of land theft, cultural genocide and broken treaties. They transform history from abstraction into a lived demand for repair. Multiple histories also encourage a more radical approach to ‘national’ narratives by situating iwi histories as primary in crafting the cloak of the nation.

In the new historiography, there are both risks and responsibilities. Not all histories are equal (the relativism trap); some enable oppression (e.g., fascist myths). The goal is critical pluralism – evaluating narratives through ethics and evidence. There is also the commodification danger. ‘Diversity’ of histories can be tokenised by institutions seeking alibis for ongoing violence (e.g., land acknowledgments without land return). And the question ‘Who Speaks?’ is never far away. Amplifying suppressed voices requires ceding authority – not ‘giving voice’ but removing barriers to self-representation. In history as a constellation (think Matariki), ‘varieties’ of histories reject the lighthouse – a single beam guiding ‘progress’ – and instead embrace the constellation: countless points of light, each a distinct perspective on time, space and meaning. This multiplicity does more than deconstruct – it re-enchants the world, revealing possibilities buried beneath the monoculture of Western historicism and nationalist myth. It is, ultimately, an act of intellectual sovereignty and existential liberation.

Aotearoa’s future as a nation is also neither linear nor internalist. Increasingly as the world becomes more integrated and connected the future history of Aotearoa, I would argue, needs to take account of those forces over which we have some control and those that are beyond our control to shape except as a very small nation-state on the edge of an increasingly complex world system that is now becoming an active system of twin system rivalry between China and the USA. Interpreting the future of New Zealand’s history in these terms requires an assessment of ‘outside’ global forces and processes that originate in the wider world, such as the secret compact Mark Brown, the Cook Islands’ Premier, entered into with China without due regard for the history of its association with New Zealand. The larger Pacific context is becoming and will become a more significant element of the future history of Aotearoa New Zealand as a state, nation and iwi, conceived of as bicultural or otherwise.

It is also clear that for Aotearoa New Zealand, once dubbed a (white, male) ‘wage-earners’ welfare state (Castles, 1985, 1994), under the combined impacts of AI, automation and robotisation, will have to address one of its historical organising principles of its white society inherited from Chartist and working-class socialist Britain. The shift from welfare state to a ‘post-work’ society is a momentous consequence of the advance of AI, automation and robotisation. Future history may well have to adjust its originating vision of a male Pākehā welfare state, the centrality of work union-building and industrial conciliation, as a ‘free’ and ‘equal’ liberal society intent on becoming more inclusive. It may take into greater account an environmental history that becomes both more scientific and more central to survival on this planet.

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[1] I use the term ‘Aotearoa New Zealand’ as a preferred name (for now). As everyone knows, the name ‘New Zealand’ originates from Dutch colonial exploration in the 17th century. In 1642, Dutch explorer Abel Tasman encountered the islands, naming them ‘Staten Landt,’ and believing they were part of a landmass connected to South America (Isla de los Estados). However, Dutch cartographers soon realised this was incorrect. Around 1645, Dutch cartographers renamed the islands ‘Nieuw Zeeland’ the Dutch province of Zeeland (‘Sea Land’). Zeeland was a major maritime province whose sailors and financiers were heavily involved in the Dutch East India Company (VOC) that sponsored Tasman’s voyage. When British explorer James Cook arrived in 1769, he mapped the islands extensively. He anglicised the Dutch name to ‘New Zealand’ on his charts, and this became the name used by subsequent British settlers and colonists. The name itself isn’t generally considered highly offensive or slur-like in the same way some other colonial names might be. However, it is increasingly viewed as problematic, colonial and inappropriate for several reasons, sparking ongoing debate and efforts for change. The most significant criticism is that it completely ignores the existence and prior naming by the Māori people, the indigenous Polynesian inhabitants who arrived centuries before Europeans. Their name for the country is Aotearoa, commonly translated as ‘Land of the Long White Cloud.’ ‘New Zealand’ reflects a colonial perspective that disregarded the indigenous worldview and connection to the land. Thus, the name represents the broader process of European colonisation – the imposition of European languages, place names, governance and culture over indigenous systems and identities. It signifies the beginning of a process that led to significant land alienation, cultural suppression and social disruption for Māori. ‘New Zealand’ has no inherent meaning related to the geography, ecology or spiritual significance of the islands it names. It solely references a province in the Netherlands, thousands of miles away. Aotearoa, in contrast, is deeply rooted in Māori history, discovery narratives and the unique environment. As New Zealand grapples with its colonial history and seeks to build a more equitable partnership between Māori (embodied in the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi/Te Tiriti o Waitangi) and Pākehā (New Zealanders of European descent), retaining a purely colonial name feels increasingly out of step with national identity and aspirations for biculturalism and reconciliation. There is a significant and growing movement, particularly among Māori and increasingly supported by non-Māori New Zealanders, to officially change the country’s name to Aotearoa or, as a transitional strategy, to adopt the dual name Aotearoa New Zealand.

I would like to thank Sean Sturm for several perceptive remarks and suggestions on earlier version of this essay, including the relevance of the concept and name ‘New Zealand.’

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