As the young and distant land we see ourselves to be beneath the long white cloud, we find ourselves more at the whim than the centre of things, though our connection to Empire as it was in the nineteenth century gave us a sense that we were still a part, all be it far flung and remote, of the greater order of things., if not the greatest. Even if in coming here, the larger portion of our pioneers were looking for something more than the Old World could afford them. I’m speaking here of course about our colonial heritage as we recognise it today. Hardy and brave British, Scottish, Irish and European stock, bringing with them those institutions of civil order and association deemed necessary and appropriate to the forging of a ‘new world’, forgoing those archaisms that would keep them shackled to the birthrights of the old.
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‘KIA ORA FROM NEW ZEALAND’- Chapter Eleven:
Victorian Colonial Jewellery & Pounamu: Part one.
Humanity has a propensity to name the ages through which we live and progress. It gives us a sense of being aware of what’s going on at the time I suppose, as if we’re all a part of the programme. The Age of Reason, the Age of Enlightenment, The Industrial Age, The Age of Discovery, The Age of Information and Technology or if you’d rather, the Digital Age in which we now find ourselves, for example.
These were and are ages marked by clear determiners, great agencies and engines of change and innovation, and even disruption. These Ages are periods in history of massive shifts in thinking and action that seem to propel us forward inexorably into an unknown yet somehow, more predictable and prosperous future. Or so we’d like to imagine.
New Zealand enters the official documents of record towards the end of the Age of Discovery and the beginnings of the Industrial Age in Great Britain. We might lay claim as well to the last colonial acquisition of Empire when Britannia really did rule the world, or at least the waves that crashed around it.
And so, after a brief seventeenth century encounter with the Dutch, which gave us the Zealand part of our European heritage and something of a murderous reputation, and the more lingering influence of Captain Cook and his Eighteenth century expeditions - or incursions - depending upon your point of view, we of the antipodes began to build a Nation in the modern sense of the word.
The first to arrive as far as both good scholarship and oral tradition informs us, was Māori, as the indigenous of these islands are now known. Romance would have them arrive as one great fleet of seven or eight waka from far distant Hawaiki nui, Hawaiki roa, Hawaiki pamamao, some eleven or twelve hundred years ago, but romance doesn’t write history.
It seems more likely that there was a period of migration, perhaps over two or three generations, primarily from islands of East Polynesia around seven or eight hundred years ago, though all those figures are still hotly debated today among Māori and non-Māori, scholar and layperson alike. For my own Tainui whakapapa, we place our arrival at Kawhia around 1340 AD and acknowledge the presence of people already present in these lands. But we found the harbour at Kawhia abundant and the hills around to our liking and so we stayed and we settled. Settlers are pioneers. Pioneers begin to build a sense of place they can call Home. In time, if they stay, this new Home of theirs will become part of their bones, as their bones will become part of the land of this new Home. How they build this new Home will reflect where they have come from and will adapt to where they are.
Soon, if they become comfortable enough and find the time, they will make art and adornments that display this sense of being at ease in this place that, while new in the collective memory, feels more and more their own. Again, these artworks and adornments will reflect where they have come from and will adapt to where they are. Better yet, if they prosper, they might export to the world or at least, to the old Home Country Herself, both quaint and beautiful examples of this sense of being at ease.
So silver ferns are rendered in gold and appear to lose nothing in their grandeur for this miniature display to be hung from the neck of a loved one. And yet, to arrive in a new land and stand beneath these fronds in their maturity and realise the black trunks from which they display could wall a house to insulate and shelter you from all weathers is to fully realise and appreciate their value. So the humble Ponga gives us a national emblem.
