Statue protest sparks Hamilton name-change debate
Sunday, 2 September 2018
Councillors should change the city's name to Kirikiriroa-Hamilton, says a Waikato historian.
The comment was made of a Huntly kaumātua's vandalism of the Captain Hamilton statue in Civic Square on Thursday.
Taitimu Maipi said he did it in protest and the city should not be celebrating a man who murdered the ancestors of local Māori.
There have also been questions about the process in which the statue was erected, Ngāti Wairere historian Wiremu Puke said.
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The bronze statue was gifted to Hamilton by the Gallagher Group and stands in Civic Square outside council chambers.
Puke said there was no consultation with Ngāti Wairere before the statue was erected.
He did not know if council had consulted Tainui.
'The council is funded by ratepayers and they are public servants - they have a duty to disclose how they arrived at this decision.
'I had to question the context of why it was there and why it was put up in the first place.
'It's [the statue] better off over at Memorial Park.'
'People shouldn't be afraid to speak of the painful history and how Hamilton started.
'There was a name that existed before. It was Kirikiriroa. Let's embrace it and let's look at Kirikiriroa-Hamilton as an option.'
Captain John Charles Fane Hamilton was a naval commander who died at the Battle of Gate Pā, Tauranga. It's doubted he ever visited Hamilton. The city was named by Colonel William Moule in 1864, after Hamilton's death that same year.
Moule commanded the 4th Regiment of the Waikato Militia, which settled the area.
Author Peter Gibbons, in his book Astride the River, says it's likely Moule had in mind other Hamiltons, too - both places and people. Moule may also have heard that many of the 4th Regiment had sailed from Australia to Auckland in the ship Maud Hamilton. Says Gibbons: 'The word had several immediate associations, and it survived.'
The debate about restoring the name Kirikiriroa was put forward earlier this year by Mayor Andrew King.
King suggested looking into a name change to Kirikiriroa City Council in a bid to promote closer links with iwi.
What followed was a storm of public debate - much of it against the move - so he withdrew the proposal.
But historian Vincent O'Malley, author of The Great War for New Zealand: Waikato, 1800-2000, says restoring Hamilton's name to Kirikiriroa should be part of the conversation again.
'There's a lot of ignorance about this history [New Zealand Land Wars] and it's something that we need to do a lot better at as a nation.
'I think with something like the statue there, people wouldn't really be able to place that in a wider historical context of what happened in the Waikato.
'From my point of view, we need to teach this history in schools and that's where it should start. There also needs to be more resources available for adults to engage with this history and learn about it.'
He said there were several more relevant figures who could have been immortalised in bronze.
'In the Waikato, there are all sorts of figures that you could be talking about for that … [Pōtatau] Te Wherowhero, Tāwhiao, Wiremu Tamihana, Rewi Maniapoto … the list goes on and on, and these are people who made a real contribution to the region …. Hamilton, I don't know whether or not he even visited.'
O'Malley also gave context to the country's early history.
'One of the things that a lot of people don't know is that in the 1840s and the 1850s, Māori were the drivers of the New Zealand economy.
'Most of New Zealand's exporting came from Māori and Tainui were at the forefront of that. They also played a huge role in feeding the settlers of Auckland - protecting them, building their homes, building their roads and so on.
'That economic infrastructure that was built up over those decades after 1840 was destroyed almost literally overnight and that has consequences that last over many generations.
'Obviously it's important that people in the Waikato understand that history and I wonder also if there was any consultation with Tainui about that decision as well.'
Waikato-Tainui have been contacted for comment.