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[Danny Butt]

New Zealand historian Michael King has died in a terrible car accident. 
Unfortunately, his obituaries are being used for some Pakeha 
self-gratification and trashing of academia, which irritated me enough 
to write about this morning, at the risk of being seen as 
disrespectful.

http://www.dannybutt.net/king.html

  A reflection on Michael King's obituaries

The shocking death of Michael King and his wife marks the passing of a 
crucial figure from New Zealand's public life. His work represented a 
turning point in Pakeha history and media, beginning an acknowledgement 
of Maori culture that was long overdue. His stature has been recognised 
in many moving obituaries, the latest by Tim Watkin in The Listener 
(April 10). However, I am concerned that Watkin's piece - like many 
others - glosses over significant issues in King's work and its ongoing 
relevance. More particularly, I am concerned at the way King's 
obituraries are being used to devalue contemporary historical and 
cultural work.

  Watkins states that King was "the man who knew us the best". The "us" 
he's referring to are a predominantly Pakeha group who believe in the 
basic principles of National cultural identity - the same New 
Zealanders the National Party mean when they say "We are all New 
Zealanders". What Watkins doesn't elaborate on are the two main 
character traits of Pakeha New Zealand that King's work also 
represents: anti-intellectualism and a troubled relationship with 
Maori. These are of course particularly present features in New Zealand 
political life right now, and at a time where there is a great deal 
being written on King's legacy, I think it's worth considering how 
these characteristics are being reinscribed.

  The most important question around King's work is his relationship 
with the profession of the historian. Much is made of King's "turning 
his back on the academy" in order to write for a "general audience". 
The argument is that academics are in their own little world, and by 
remaining outside the University system King remained untainted by the 
plague of terrible, jargon-infested prose that the academy produces. 
Like most "common-sense" arguments, there is some truth in this, even 
if it overlooks the significant amount of clear and elegant writing 
that does get produced in the academy. But I think it makes more sense 
to see King's position as turning away not from "bad writing", but from 
the professional discussion among historians about how to write 
history. It's King's refusal to engage with that discussion that is the 
reason for his success as a "historian of the people", rather than the 
relative "quality" of his writing compared to the academic sector. 
King's significant work began as a journalist, and in the end he chose 
to be a journalist rather than a historian, in that he didn't update 
his historical methodology so as not to complicate his relationship 
with "the people".

  Watkins notes King's enterprising spirit, and I think this holds a key 
to much of his "history for the people". King's history fits our 
"nation of shopkeepers". If contemporary history is about 
specialisation, collaboration, and understanding the limits of one's 
role, King runs the biggest general store on the block. You can get 
everything, as long as you like his product lines. Like the general 
store, the "historian of the people" approach is increasingly 
embattled, squeezed from above by the transnational book trade who 
write bigger and flasher general histories of the World, squeezed from 
below by a new generation for whom specialisation, global connectedness 
and methodological innovation are the watchwords. King's history was 
the store you grew up with, the familiar smells, the shopkeeper who 
knew your name, the place that you didn't find yourself going to as 
often as the economy diversified because the big stores were cheaper 
and the specialists had a better range. Like the small-business owner, 
King never had much time for evaluating his methods, because there was 
always too much to do.

There is sadness for me in King's decision to turn his back on the 
academic discipline he trained in, because at the time he faced his 
biggest challenge from Maoridom over cultural imperialism, the academy 
was dealing with precisely the issues of how to negotiate these 
cultural relationships. The humanities, taking on board insights from 
the social sciences, began the dialogue around cultural power that 
would fundamentally question, complicate and reinvigorate the basis of 
telling stories about culture. Prompted by the feminist and anti-racist 
movements, History realised that there was more than one side to any 
story, and that the historian's task of finding "the facts" required 
the integration of as many sides of the story as possible. The job of 
history changed from forcefully stating resolved uncertainties about 
how things were, to developing our sensitivity to the many factors 
influencing chains of events. History became more filled with questions 
than answers. Or more precisely, history uses the past to answer our 
own questions, here and now, leading to a greater level of 
*reflexivity* about what questions we ask of history. Whose interests 
do these questions serve? How much do they reflect our own interests at 
the expense of others? Contrary to popular belief, this so-called 
"political correctness" hasn't stopped Pakeha academics writing Maori 
history (and in Judith Binney's exemplary case, even popular ones), but 
it does mean accepting that in the colonial context "history" has 
meanings which are incommensurate across different peoples.

  The mass media, by definition, must try and claim a general audience 
and shared meanings. As a journalist by trade, King always assumed that 
Pakeha and Maori worlds were commensurable, which is why I think his 
death resonates so deeply among Pakeha journalists right now. At a time 
of deep racial fragmentation, King's history offered the hope for the 
Pakeha media that maybe, deep down, we could all be New Zealanders 
without subscribing to the National Party line. "Maybe by writing for 
the New Zealand Herald I am reaching New Zealand. Perhaps the emergence 
of Maori TV doesn't mean that Maori think TVNZ is just Pakeha TV".

  King's love affair with Maori culture followed a classic pre-feminist 
logic. The male worshipped the object of his affections but was 
ultimately unable to come to terms with her independence when it was 
asserted. For King, as for Reed, Sinclair, Oliver, and Belich and other 
Pakeha historians of "New Zealand", the lead actor is European culture, 
with Maori in a supporting role. Authoritative sources are those that 
have been validated by Pakeha, whereas Maori sources are "information" 
that helps illuminate the story. Even at his death, it was mostly 
Pakeha historians who spoke of his "support among Maori" (of course, 
many Maori do support him, but it's the suppression of the dissenting 
views I am concerned with here).

King's Penguin History of New Zealand - a book so supportive of the 
established order that even Don Brash could endorse it - eventually 
becomes an unfortunate summary of King's move from pathbreaker to 
cultural conservative. Except that it wasn't really King who moved, but 
New Zealand moved while King, removed from the global discussions 
around the craft of history that could have nourished him, stood still. 
It says something to me that in the printed discussions about the 
historical tradition King's "short history" sought to update, Ranganui 
Walker's Ka Whahai Tonu Matou - Struggle Without End was never 
mentioned, despite that work being a brilliant, highly readable and 
scholarly account of New Zealand's history from a Maori perspective. 
Walker's work was published by Penguin in 1990, but has never been 
given its due by New Zealand's Pakeha cultural pundits.

For me, the most relevant anecdote from King's various obituaries was 
his knowledge of te reo Maori, which he learnt at a time when it was 
"pretty radical", but which eventually "became a bit rusty". This 
rustiness occurred during a time of Maori language's rapid expansion, 
among Pakeha as well as Maori. It's a poignant marker of a failed 
romance with someone of another tongue, and a reminder that it was 
perhaps the romance rather than the culture that was of most importance 
to King.

My fondness for Michael King will be as the journalist who brought the 
stories of Te Puea Herangi and Whina Cooper to Pakeha New Zealand, or 
the TV production of Tangata Whenua. It was work like this that paved 
the way for Pakeha like myself to become aware of an indigenous culture 
that had been radically suppressed through colonialism. It's an 
awareness which fundamentally shifted my life for the better. But it's 
difficult bring my same fondness to the memory of Michael King, 
historian of New Zealand. My reading of indigenous cultural struggles 
is that they have been demands to share in setting the agenda for 
history, rather than just being subject to it. To be recognised and 
conversed with on their own terms, rather than those of colonial 
culture. When it came to summing up New Zealand, King wasn't quite 
prepared to have that discussion.

My concern here is not to bury King for his failures, which would be 
offensive, and in any case I have nothing to gain from it. No doubt 
some will think this piece insensitive anyway. But while we remember 
the man and his tremendous contribution, we shouldn't hold him up as a 
figure who could have charted the way through the current tensions 
between Maori and Pakeha. For Pakeha, a baseline for that process will 
be accepting Maori knowledge as equal to our own, and as more relevant 
for models for living here than European or North American ideologies. 
It will require increasing our knowledge of te reo and tikanga Maori. 
It will require coming to terms with painful histories that were not of 
our own choosing. It will require not always trying to be let off the 
hook. It will require not waiting for a Pakeha historian to tell us the 
"right answer" for Maori-Pakeha relations.

There are Pakeha out there right now who I see doing the required work. 
Most of them are under 40. Some of them are "academics", some are 
community workers, some are hip-hop artists. The ten year-old Pakeha 
kid who has a repertoire of waiata kori they practice in front of their 
baffled grandparents. These are the people who will guide us through 
the future even while we remember those who have passed.

Danny Butt
  http://www.dannybutt.net
  April 5, 2004