How Ngāi Tahu had to push the University of Canterbury into a bicultural relationship

Saturday, 9 December 2023

REVIEW: Cast your mind back 50 years, if you can, and think about the kind of city Christchurch was then. White was the dominant colour. Culture still largely came from abroad. When the University of Canterbury celebrated its centenary in 1973, it was as though it was happening in another country entirely.

University historian Chris Jones spells it out in a major new publication summing up 150 years of the institution, which will be launched at the Arts Centre next week.

There was a cantata written for a celebratory concert, “penned in an appalling confusion of Latin, Greek, German and French,” Jones writes. “Apart from conveying the unshakable impression that it is a parody purloined from some lost Evelyn Waugh novel, to contemporary eyes, given the significant shift in public life over the past two decades, the absence of te reo Māori stands out.”

As Jones looked through the material from 50 years ago, he got the sense that a provincial English university, perhaps in Durham or York, was celebrating its centenary, rather than a university in the South Pacific.

“Beyond the granting of an honorary degree to Charles Moihi Te Arawaka Bennett, a graduate who commanded the Māori Battalion in 1942-43, there was no thought whatsoever to incorporate anything indigenous into the centennial week celebrations.”

Jones wrote the prologue to A New History: The University of Canterbury 1873-2023, and was chairperson of the editorial board. The book was mostly written by freelance historian John Wilson, and published by the University of Canterbury Press.

Yes, it is an in-house history, but it allows for some surprising honesty. One of its most interesting themes is the journey from Māori being invisible on campus to the university being in a partnership with Ngāi Tahu. It is a story that does not always reflect well on the institution.

It mirrors the wider journey of the city itself, especially in the post-earthquake era. It is also, purely by accident, well-timed for current debates about the pushback against the Māori language and Treaty rights.

Access to universities is restricted in the new Government’s coalition agreement, where it is agreed students will no longer be eligible for free fees in their first year. That will be replaced by a free final year. But the first-year policy was designed to increase access for less privileged students.

The agreement will also take a look at Māori placements in medical schools, although that only affects Otago and Auckland universities.

Back at Canterbury, the new history reveals some surprising and even shameful facts. Try this one: there were no Māori on the academic staff until 1967, when Māui John Mitchell, a Canterbury graduate, was appointed to the psychology department. He was then the only Māori member of the academic staff for a further seven years, although there was a Māori technician in the School of Engineering.

But the evolving politics of the outside world finally started to catch up with the sleepy university. Māori Studies became a subject at other universities and schools. At a Students’ Association referendum in 1971, more than 3000 students from a total roll of 6300 voted in favour of a Māori Studies course at Canterbury, and only 179 students were against.

But still, more dramatic action was needed. The Christchurch arm of protest movement Ngā Tamatoa held a sit-in in the registry in 1973 and would not let vice-chancellor Neville Phillips leave until he agreed to put Māori Studies on the University Council’s agenda. The deal was negotiated by Māui John Mitchell.

A year later, the university hired Bill Te Awaroa Nepia, who founded a Māori Studies department. But low numbers of Māori staff continued to have “a detrimental effect” on the university’s academic life, as historian John Wilson puts it, and even in the 1990s, the university conceded it was not achieving the equity and diversity the Government expected and was not making progress towards becoming bicultural.

That section of the book provides an honest account of a university’s failings. A bicultural council and a Māori liaison officer were established, but were focused on recruiting students not staff. There were still only three Māori on the academic staff as late as 1997. A programme to recruit Māori staff, Kia Ngaringari, was finally launched in 2017. By 2022, Māori made up a little over 6% of academic staff, an increase from between 1% and 2% in the early 21st century.

As for student numbers, Māori were just over 5% of undergraduates in 2002, and are now about 10% of the student body.

Ngāi Tahu’s persistence

Bill Te Awaroa Nepia was Ngāti Porou, not Ngāi Tahu. Sir Apirana Ngata had famously been the first Māori to graduate from a New Zealand university when he graduated from Canterbury in 1894, but he too was Ngāti Porou, from the North Island. The university’s poor relationship with Ngāi Tahu was one of the issues raised in the same 1991 report that talked about the failure to achieve equity and diversity, and the lack of bicultural progress.

Historian Te Maire Tau explains what happened and why in a fascinating and long chapter that opens the book. Tau is pou whakarae and professor of history at the university, and a specialist on Ngāi Tahu oral histories and indigenous knowledge systems.

He emphasises that Ngāi Tahu were renowned for adapting to new forms of knowledge and technology, but for about a century, the University of Canterbury was closed to them. The iwi’s future leaders tended to be educated at an Anglican school in Hawke’s Bay, Te Aute College. As far as urban Christchurch was concerned, the iwi was out of sight and out of mind.

That began to change with the wider urban migration of Māori in the post-war years. But the true turning point, as Tau notes, came with the involvement of the indefatigable Tā Tipene O’Regan, historian and Treaty negotiator.

Nepia had talked to Ngāi Tahu about creating a research fellowship. O’Regan was the first of those fellows and he also arranged for the university to host the Ngāi Tahu archive that was growing in advance of its landmark Treaty claim.

And yet, the university still failed. Tau’s chapter opens with the following sequence of events, which suggest a startling breakdown in communication.

In 2001, Ngāi Tahu and the university signed a memorandum of understanding to cooperate in research and education. The signing was witnessed by then Prime Minister Helen Clark. But within a year, the relationship faltered.

“The university, it appeared, was lapsing into long-standing provincial habits, closing the circle and excluding others,” Tau writes.

There was even a naming problem, as John Wilson explains. When the university sought a Māori name, the hapu Ngāi Tūāhuriri suggested Te Wānanga o Waitaha, which meant a place where knowledge is advanced. The hapu advised the university it should not call itself a whare wānanga, as that implied sacred knowledge.

But the university, “behaving as many Pākehā institutions did at the time”, ignored that advice and called itself Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha.

The relationship worsened. In 2004, Ngāi Tahu withdrew an offer to fund a professorial chair in the law school and offered it to Victoria University instead. A year later, Ngāi Tahu developed a relationship with Stanford University. Relations with Canterbury were so bad that, by 2010, Ngāi Tahu warned that if the university “intended building a wharenui, the tribe would oppose it in court”.

What happened to improve things? The earthquakes played a major role. Ngāi Tahu became a legislative partner in the rebuild, and became “too prominent in Canterbury affairs to be ignored”.

If the university needed $260 million for new buildings, Ngāi Tahu would support the recovery plan, but “the tribe was also of the view that the university needed to produce undergraduates with a broad knowledge and skill base in the science, humanities and social sciences”.

But as Tau explains, the iwi’s expectations were still not met. The university was told in 2019 that Ngāi Tahu did not support its bicultural programming, expected better outcomes for its students and the Office of the Assistant Vice-chancellor Māori did not represent Ngāi Tahu or Māori. If changes were not made, the relationship would be terminated and the Ngāi Tahu Research Centre, which opened after the earthquakes, would be closed.

But it was not. Instead it evolved into Kā Waimaero, a Treaty partnership office.

Tau puts it boldly: “By 2019 the question was no longer one of how Ngāi Tahu could have a relationship with the University of Canterbury; the question was whether the university could meet Ngāi Tahu’s expectations in a relationship.”

There are complications and benefits with an iwi relationship that the professors of 1973, with their dreaming spires and songs in Greek, could never have imagined. As Wilson writes in a closing chapter called “Towards a postcolonial university”, Canterbury had to be pushed by Ngāi Tahu and the result is unique.

“Thanks in part to Ngāi Tahu’s persistence, but also to its readiness to respond to pressures put on it, Canterbury in its 150th year was closer than any other New Zealand university to a true partnership with its local iwi.”

The book shows that such relationships don’t always grow organically and don’t always come easily. They need work and they can fall apart quickly. It’s a timely and valuable lesson, which can also be applied off campus.

A NEW HISTORY: The University of Canterbury 1873-2023 will be launched at the Great Hall of the Arts Centre on December 12.