The Meeting Place - A New Zealand History Blog

Submissions on the Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill close on 7 January 2025 and can be made here . The Waitangi Tribunal has concluded that 'if this Bill were to be enacted, it would be the worst, most comprehensive breach of the Treaty/te Tiriti in modern times'. I have posted my submission to the Justice Committee on the Bill below.   At the Hīkoi mō Te Tiriti, 19 November 2024 My name is Dr Vincent O’Malley. I am a Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi (FRSNZ), a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (FRHistS), a recipient of the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in Non-Fiction, besides multiple other awards and prizes. For more than thirty years now I have worked as a professional historian, researching and writing on Te Tiriti o Waitangi, the New Zealand Wars and related matters, including a number of acclaimed and best-selling books. I draw on this background and expert knowledge of the topic matter, in making the following submission stron...

Author: Arthur J. Ray Reviewer: Vincent O'Malley Arthur J. Ray. Aboriginal Rights Claims and the Making and Remaking of History. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2016. 360 pp. $29.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-7735-4743-8. Reviewed by Vincent O'Malley (HistoryWorks) Published on H-Empire (March, 2017) Commissioned by Charles V. Reed At the Interface of Law and History   It has been said that if history is endless argument, then law is the end of argument. One seeks finality and closure, the other is constantly searching for new opportunities for debate. So what happens when law and history intersect? Although historians have long been employed as expert witnesses in a range of legal cases, over the past half century or so a major focus across several countries has been the use of historical evidence in various courts, commissions, and tribunals concerned with indigenous claims or cases a...

The Waitangi Tribunal has released a special edition of its Te Manutukutuku newsletter marking the 40th anniversary of the Tribunal’s founding in 1975. The special edition features articles and interviews from thirty current and former participants in the Waitangi Tribunal’s process, including Tribunal members, iwi leaders, historians and lawyers. Contributors include former chairperson Sir Edward Taihukurei Durie, former chairperson Justice Joe Williams, the Minister of Māori Development the Honourable Te Ururoa Flavell, former Māori Party co-leader the Honourable Dame Tariana Turia, former chairperson of the Ngāi Tahu Māori Trust Board Sir Tipene O’Regan, and lawyer Annette Sykes. Justice Joe Williams (left) and Sir Edward Taihukurei Durie (source: teara.govt.nz) I was also asked to contribute and noted as part of my piece the importance of ensuring that the research commissioned for the Tribunal process is made accessible to iwi and the wider public. While the Tr...

I was recently one of a number of speakers at the Waitangi Rua Rautau Lectures for 2016, held at Victoria University of Wellington's Te Herenga Waka Marae. After the first address from Rotorua mayor Steve Chadwick discussing the council's recent partnership agreement with Te Arawa, the second part of proceedings focused in particular on the role of historians in the Waitangi Tribunal process. My own talk was a tribute to the late Professor Alan Ward, who passed away in December 2014. As I noted, I first met Alan in 1993, when I came to Wellington from Christchurch on a three-month contract to research claims for the Crown-Congress Joint Working Party, where Alan was the chief historian. Within six months of that, the CCJWP was defunct, but more than two decades later I'm still here doing more or less the same thing. And although there were times after that when we had less to do with one another, Alan and I worked closely together again on his final major publication, jo...