Frontier Town: History, Memory and Myth on the King Country Aukati (Dr Vincent O'Malley)
Channel: Difficult Histories: The New Zealand Wars
Date: 2020-09-28

Today, the street signs pay silent homage to the Pākehā politicians and soldiers responsible for its conquest and confiscation in the Waikato War of 1863-64. Grey, Cameron, Carey, Whitaker and other streets in the small Waikato town of Kihikihi taunt its many Māori residents with daily reminders of the devastating effects and consequences of that conflict felt over many generations. Drawing on research for a Marsden Fund project documenting how the New Zealand Wars are remembered and forgotten, this seminar traces the intersections of history, memory and myth in this Waikato frontier town.


Dr Vincent O’Malley is a co-founder of HistoryWorks, a collective devoted to Treaty of Waitangi research. He is the author of several acclaimed works, including most recently The Great War for New Zealand: Waikato 1800-2000 (2016) and The New Zealand Wars/Ngā Pakanga o Aotearoa (2019). He is presently a co-Principal Investigator on a Marsden Fund entitled ‘He Taonga te Wareware? Remembering and Forgetting Difficult Histories in Aotearoa/New Zealand’, which explores how the nineteenth-century New Zealand Wars have shaped history, memory, and identity.


History Seminar Series 2020, Department of History, University of Auckland