Historian and former Labour MP Michael Bassett also cited King when he wrote that “Māori didn’t have a name for these lands, and only came to accept ‘Aotearoa’ in relatively recent times”. Among those names is Aotearoa, which he said was “of dubious authenticity”. Journalist Karl du Fresne, writing an opinion piece titled Māorification of Smiling Zombies in the Australian Spectator magazine, talked about “Māori place names, most previously unheard of by most New Zealanders and unused even by people of Māori descent” that “have displaced official names bestowed by British colonists”. He told his Magic Talk listeners in 2020 that he had been up reading King’s history the night before, and that this book, which “is regarded as the best history of New Zealand”, shows that “the concept of Aotearoa did not exist in common usage till just over a hundred years ago, and was based on some pretty shonky historical interpretation”. Take conservative radio host Peter Williams. And Michael King, who endeavoured to create an understanding between Māori and Pākehā worlds before he died in 2004, has been posthumously roped in as their ally. Other companies have made similar moves.īut if it can be proved that New Zealand was never Aotearoa, these and other acts could be dismissed as woke play-acting or virtue signalling gone mad. Nine months ago, the communications provider switched the banner on customers’ phones from Vodafone NZ to VF Aotearoa. Stewart Island was Rakiura.īut unlike Captain Cook, who sailed around all three islands and immediately recognised them as a set, the great Polynesian navigators did not see the same pattern, according to this story.Īnd as Daley predicted, King’s claim has become useful to those who resist the growing popular use of Aotearoa, which they see as part of a “Māorification” by stealth, whether it is government departments or companies that want to seem progressive. The South Island was Te Wai Pounamu, or sometimes Te Waka-a-Aoraki or Te Wahi Pounamu. So the North Island was widely known as Te Ika a Māui, although some did call it Aotea or Aotearoa, he conceded. Polynesian ancestors came from individual islands, he said, and they named islands. In fact, King added, pre-European Māori had no name for New Zealand as a whole. King called it a myth “popularised and entrenched” by William Pember Reeves, who wrote a history of New Zealand in 1898, titled The Long White Cloud. The relevant part is King’s claim that pre-European Māori did not call New Zealand Aotearoa. She wrote that line in 2004, in the time of former National leader Don Brash’s infamous Orewa speech, but she also seems to have looked ahead to the culture wars of 2021. University of Auckland historian Caroline Daley wrote in her review that “King offers talkback radio callers ammunition in their war against racially based policy”. It can seem like almost every New Zealand home has a copy.īut while the public lapped it up, there were critics. It is a general history, not a specialist one, and it romps through the story. The book, which appeared in 2003, is that rare thing: a hefty bestseller about New Zealand history. Historian Michael King, who endeavoured to create understanding between Māori and Pākehā, has posthumously become an ally to Aotearoa naysayers. And they will point to a very legitimate source, which is The Penguin History of New Zealand, by the eminent historian Michael King. Some will tell you that the idea that Māori ever called New Zealand Aotearoa is as bizarre and unlikely as stories about Kupe fighting a giant octopus on his journey across the ocean. But the name Aotearoa? The historical jury is still out on that. David Simmons, the author of a book called The Great New Zealand Myth, was probably the best known of them. That grand, heroic version of the fleet story was largely discredited by historians in the 1970s. That too was taught for decades in New Zealand schools, in a version outlined in the School Journal. The adventures of Kupe became part of a myth about a great fleet of seven canoes that sailed to New Zealand from further north in Polynesia. Myths and legends gather around splinters of history, to form new narratives, sometimes with a nationalistic or other purpose. Saying who Kupe was and what he really did is no easier than saying who King Arthur was, or whether there actually was a King David in ancient Israel. “Aotearoa, as they came to call their home,” is how the historian Keith Sinclair put it back in 1959. * Putting history in its place: the move to Māori names * Is it time to restore all of New Zealand's Māori place names? * Be honest, New Zealand is a ridiculous name * University academics' claim that mātauranga Māori is 'not science' sparks controversy A statue of Kupe, his wife, Kuramārōtini (sometimes known as Hine-te-apārangi) and tohunga, Pekahourangi, on the Wellington waterfront celebrates the discovery of Aotearoa.