Building Counter-Colonial Commemorative Landscapes through Indigenous Collective Remembering in Wānanga
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThank you for the opportunity to review this paper. I believe this paper to be academically sound and would make a welcome and significant contribution to memory studies and Kaupapa Māori research more broadly.
The following ar possible improvements that coud be made be the Author(s):
Line 65: use of kaipūrakau - why not use mana whenua - I would suggest a footnote here to explain your useage. Also kaipūrakau would suggest something more then a "tribal representative"
Line 89: Fomatting issue with the line - This could be a MPDI thing?
Line 132: Would suggest adding this paper to the literature cited: Simon, H. (2023). Settler/Invader Identity and Belonging in Aotearoa New Zealand: Critiquing “Tāngata Tiriti” and Moving Toward the Collective Future. Ethnic Studies Review, 46(3), 95-127.
Section Western Collective Remembering and Public Memory in Colonial Settler Societies
With this section I did ask the question: How does this relate to cultural memory and why the extensive focus on collective memory only? I would suggest that this couls be covered by adding a broad footnote
Line 183-195: The Author(s) is/are downplaying the significance of what was happening at this time. There is a significant amount of literature here that the Author has missed that would suggest that this was a global movement. In the Aotearoa context there was a significant resistence to Tuia 250 which produced the self-published book "Kia Mau" by Tina Ngata which would strengthed where the Author(s) used media, issues with Captain Hamilton and the Marmaduke Nixon monument. More broadly it would be good if the Author(s) could contexualise this in its international setting:
South Africa and #RhodesMustFall:
Maylam, P. (2002). Monuments, memorials and the mystique of empire: The immortalisation of Cecil Rhodes in theTwentieth century. African Sociological Review/Revue Africaine de Sociologie, 6(1), 138-147.
Schmahmann, B. (2023). Whatever happened to Cecil?: Monuments commemorating Rhodes before and after# RhodesMustFall. In Visual Redress in Africa from Indigenous and New Materialist Perspectives (pp. 95-108). Routledge.
Calderisi, R. (2021). Cecil Rhodes and Other Statues: Dealing Plainly with the Past. Gatekeeper Press.
Cecil Rhodes and Oxford University
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2021/oct/11/oxford-college-installs-plaque-calling-cecil-rhodes-a-committed-colonialist
https://globalcapitalism.history.ox.ac.uk/files/case31-rhodesmustfallpdf
Australia
Carlson, B., & Farrelly, T. (2023). Monumental disruptions: Aboriginal people and colonial commemorations in so-called Australia. Aboriginal Studies Press.
Carlson, B., & Farrelly, T. (2022). Monumental upheavals: Unsettled fates of the Captain Cook statue and other colonial monuments in Australia. Thesis Eleven, 169(1), 62-81.
Gregory, J. (2021). Statue wars: Collective memory reshaping the past. History Australia, 18(3), 564-587.
Fredericks, B., & Bradfield, A. (2023). Asserting Indigenous Agencies: Constructions and Deconstructions of James Cook in Northern Queensland. In The Palgrave Handbook on Rethinking Colonial Commemorations (pp. 351-382). Cham: Springer International Publishing.
Paton, D., Marsden, B., & Horton, J. (2022). 'No time for a history lesson': The contest over memorials to Angus McMillan on Gunaikurnai country. Aboriginal History, (46), 3-27.
Kennedy, T. (2023). ‘It’s Just Always Been There’: Rutherford Falls, Monuments and Settler Colonial Hegemony. In The Palgrave Handbook on Rethinking Colonial Commemorations (pp. 401-415). Cham: Springer International Publishing.
Namibia
Niezen, R. (2018). Speaking for the dead: The memorial politics of genocide in Namibia and Germany. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 24(5), 547-567.
Sweden
Hübinette, T., Wikström, P., & Samuelsson, J. (2022). Scientist or Racist? The Racialized Memory War Over Monuments to Carl Linnaeus in Sweden During the Black Lives Matter Summer of 2020. Journal of Ethnic and Cultural Studies, 9(3), 27-55.
UK
Weyer, J. (2024). Colonial monuments and the treatment of history The example of the toppled Colston monument in Bristol. Shared Heritage Revisited: National and Postnational Dimensions on the Example of Germans, Palestinians and Israelis, 7, 207.
My point here is that a lot was happening in this space including He Taonga Te Wareware and the Otorhanga High petition. Contexualising the monument in the Hutt vlley in the international "social movement" provides an expalination of the impetus to having wānanga and the need to "alter" the monuments respresentations of the event and its implications.
Wānanga
I do not have much of an issue with this section. I do believe that the Author(s) should cite/consult this:
Mahuika, R. (2019). Ngā niho tēte o Pekehāua: An Indigenous articulation of governance (Doctoral dissertation, The University of Waikato).
Wānanga is the methodology of this PhD and it is the begining point for the journal article between Rangimarie and Nēpia Mahuika that the Author(s) has cited.
Line 349: Author(s) need to be more consistent with their use of tohuto eg tūpuna
Line 370: I think you should use mana motuhake and tino rangatiratanga. Also for purposes of clarity and consistency in other places the Author(s) utilised "tribal autonomy and self-determination" Author(s) should utilise one or the other throughout the entire document
Line 434: I would suggest the the physical representation of what is being described here is in the form of a rakau whakapapa. It would be good to see a representation of that in a photo. Here is an example from the British Museum https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/E_Oc1854-1229-22
Informed Consent Statement: Need to be changes from patients to participants
Note 3: You may want to reference this book as well in case reader may want to explore the concept to a significant depth:
Crosby, R. (2015). Kūpapa : the bitter legacy of Māori alliances with the Crown. Penguin Books.
Note 4: To help the Author(s) explain this and if the reader wants more indepth knowledge refer them to:
Mutu, M. (2018). Behind the smoke and mirrors of the Treaty of Waitangi claims settlement process in New Zealand: No prospect for justice and reconciliation for Māori without constitutional transformation. Journal of Global Ethics, 14(2), 208-221.
Mutu, M. (2019). The treaty claims settlement process in New Zealand and its impact on Māori. Land, 8(10), 152.
Mutu, M. (2019). ‘To honour the treaty, we must first settle colonisation’(Moana Jackson 2015): The long road from colonial devastation to balance, peace and harmony. Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand, 49(sup1), 4-18.
Finlayson, C., & Christmas, J. (2021). He Kupu Taurangi : Treaty settlements and the future of Aotearoa New Zealand. Huia Publishers.
Overall comment:
I would really like to see this manuscript published.
Author Response
Please see the attachement
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsKia ora - this is an excellent piece of work and I look forward to seeing it published. A few comments:
I wondered if, in section 1, as part of the discussion of 'Western collective remembering' (which the author notes is elastic and contested term), there needs to be a brief discussion of how memory might operate differently in a settler colonial society. Much of this is implied, but a connective discussion would help enhance the contribution of the article (showing how western forms of memory are transplanted and changed). Rowan Light's Why Memory Matters with BWB with its call for more memory studies that attend to the specific context of Aotearoa New Zealand could be cited here.
I think the challenge of this section is that there are such competing ways of thinking about memory, that it's important not to be too definitive about what 'western collective memory' - for example, Jan and Aleida Assman emphasise relationality in ways that run parralel to indigenous forms discussed in section 2.
It struck me reading Burgess and Moko-Painting' statement that ‘History is deliberately taught to seem unrelated to ourselves, and our sense of self’ is something very different to memory as Nora frames it. This distinction between history and memory is clearer in the next section, however.
Conventionally, it is the 'Wellington War' (singular) not 'Wars'
Overall, the contribution to ethical remembering is really interesting, and the author outlines the difficulties of translating rich indigenous patterns of memory into a government report. Karen Til's recent work on wounded landscapes (an evolving concept for her) is something that the author might want to also engage with either for this study or in future.
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
