Mixed Race Studies

God’s governor: George Grey and racial amalgamation in New Zealand 1845-1853

University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand
August 2005
346 pages

Susannah Grant

A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand

The legend of Governor Grey is a major feature of nineteenth century New Zealand historiography. This thesis seeks to understand Grey as a real person. Acknowledging the past as a strange and foreign place, it argues that Grey (and previous interpretations of him) can only be understood in context. The intellectual milieu of liberal Anglicanism and Victorian structures of imperial authority are crucial to understanding Grey’s policies of racial amalgamation.

Focusing on Grey’s first governorship of New Zealand, 1845 – 1853, this thesis begins by exploring the imperial networks within which he operated. The members of Grey’s web gathered and shared information to further a range of different agendas – scientific, humanitarian, and political. Grey’s main focus was native civilisation. His ideas about race were informed by liberal Anglican theology, scientific investigation and personal experience. Grey believed in the unity and improvability of all mankind. His mission as governor was to elevate natives to a state of true equality with Europeans so that all could progress together still further up the scale of civilisation. This model formed the basis of Grey’s 1840 plan for civilising native peoples, in which he proposed a range of measures to promote racial amalgamation in Australia.

Between 1845 and 1853 Grey implemented those measures in New Zealand. He used military force and British law to establish peace and enforce Crown authority. He used economic policies to encourage Māori integration in the colonial economy. He built schools and hospitals and enacted legislation to encourage the best features of British culture and limit the effects of its worst. He also augmented his power and encouraged amalgamation through personal relationships, official reports and the structures of colonial authority.

Grey was driven by complex, sometimes contradictory motives including personal gain, economic imperatives and political pressures. His policies have had ongoing, often devastating effects, on Māori and on race relations in New Zealand. This thesis brings to light the ideas and attitudes which formed them. Grey understood himself as a Christian governor ordained to civilise Māori and join them with British settlers in accordance with God’s divine plan for improving humankind.

Table of Contents

• Introduction: Beyond Black and White
• 1. Information and Improvement: an Imperial Web
• 2. Civilising Schemes: Ethnography and Empire
• 3. Law and War: the Politics of Humanitarian Control
• 4. Economic Integration: Land, Labour and Loans
• 5. Social Elevation: Education, Health and Culture
• 6. Personal Rule: Performing Authority
• Conclusion
• Bibliography

Read the entire dissertation here.

Pacific children of US servicemen for study

Otago Daily Times
University of Otago, New Zealand
2010-01-05

Allison Rudd

World War 2 brought two million United States servicemen to New Zealand and many Pacific Islands. Inevitably, many formed liaisons with local women and fathered possibly several thousand children. What happened to those babies, and, more than 60 years later, where are they now? Allison Rudd talks to University of Otago historian Prof Judith Bennett, who has won funding to try and trace the all-but forgotten offspring.

Judith Bennett was doing some research when she got sidetracked.

She was compiling information for a book on the environmental effect of the war on Pacific Island countries when she came across references to the mixed-race children of local women and United States servicemen.

Her interest was piqued.

“I was very curious because I could find very little on this topic.

“So it seemed to me there were questions that needed to be answered: How were these children accepted?

“Did their parentage affect their land rights?

“Did it affect their marriage prospects?

“How were their mothers characterised in their own societies?

“How did the US Government view marriage?

“How did the indigenous people view these relationships?

“Were they profitable, were they shameful, or were they a mixture?

“What have been the long-term effects of mixed parentage?

“These children would have looked different – their fathers were white or African American.

“What impact did that have on them as they were growing up and when they were adults?”

Now Prof Bennett hopes to satisfy her curiosity, having secured a $917,000 Marsden grant to embark on a three-year research project…

Read the entire article here.

In/visible Sight: The Mixed-Descent Families of Southern New Zealand

Bridget Williams Books also Athabasca University Press
June 2009
220 pages
ISBN: 978-1-877242-43-4

Angela Wanhalla, Lecturer in History
University of Otago, New Zealand

Angela Wanhalla starts her story with the mixed-descent community at Maitapapa, Taieri, where her great-grandparents, John Brown and Mabel Smith, were born. As the book took shape, a community emerged from the records, re-casting history and identity in the present.

Drawing on the experiences of mixed-descent families, In/visible Sight examines the early history of cross-cultural encounter and colonisation in southern New Zealand. There Ngäi Tahu engaged with the European newcomers on a sustained scale from the 1820s, encountering systematic settlement from the 1840s and fighting land alienation from the 1850s. The evolving social world was one framed by marriage, kinship networks and cultural practices – a world in which inter-racial intimacy played a formative role.

In exploring this history through a particular group of family networks, In/visible Sight offers new insights into New Zealand’s colonial past. Marriage as a fundamental social institution in the nineteenth century takes on a different shape when seen through the lens of cross-cultural encounters. The book also outlines some of the contours and ambiguities involved in living as mixed descent in colonial New Zealand.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. It may be reproduced for non-commercial purposes, provided that the original author is credited.

Download the entire book here (9.13 MB).

• Front Matter
• Table of Contents
• List of Maps and Tables
• Acknowledgements
• Maps of Key Locations
• Chapter 1. Intimate Histories
• Chapter 2. Pátahi’s Story
• Chapter 3. Interracial Families and Communities
• Chapter 4. Boundary Crossings
• Chapter 5. Fears and Anxieties
• Chapter 6. Racial Categories and Lived Identities
• Chapter 7. Migration Stories
• Chapter 8. In/visible Sight
• Endnotes
• Bibliography
• Index

Skin Colour: Does it Matter in New Zealand?

Policy Quarterly (Institute of Policy Studies, Victoria University of Wellington)
Volume 4, Number 1 (2008)
pages 18-25

Paul Callister, Senior Research Fellow
Institute of Policy Studies
Victoria University of Wellington

Introduction

Pick up any official New Zealand publication which includes photographs representing the population and it is highly likely that the people featured will have visible characteristics, including skin colour, that are stereotypically associated with the main ethnic groups living in this country. Equally, examine official reports which consider differences in outcomes between groups of people, such as in health and education, and it is very likely that ethnicity will be a key variable in the analysis. But it is extremely unlikely that skin colour will be explicitly mentioned in either type of report.

This article explores three areas where skin colour might matter. First, with reference primarily to US literature, the question of the role of skin colour in discrimination and, ultimately, economic and health outcomes is examined. Then, turning to New Zealand, there is a discussion of whether skin colour is a factor in why those responding to official surveys who identify themselves as ‘Māori only’ have, on average, worse outcomes than those reporting Māori plus other ethnicities. Finally, two connected health issues are looked at. One is skin colour and the risk of skin cancer; and the second is the hypothesised, but still controversial, links between skin colour, sun exposure, vitamin D production and an inverse risk of developing colorectal cancer. Two main questions are asked in this article. First, in contrast with many other countries, why in recent years have researchers and policy makers in New Zealand been averse to discussing and researching skin colour? Second, is there a case to be made for the use of measures other than self-identified ethnicity – such as skin colour – in official statistics and other large surveys, including health-related surveys?…

…Single and multiple ethnicity and outcomes

Moving back to the American context, two hypotheses have been put forward to explain the effect of mixed race on a variety of outcomes, including health status. One is that mixed-race individuals will be at greater risk of poor outcomes than those who affiliate with a single race because of stresses associated with a mixed identity. The other theory is that outcomes will lie between those of the two single groups. Many factors are likely to be influencing these outcomes, but variations in skin colour could be important, either directly or indirectly.

In New Zealand there has been relatively limited use made to date of single versus dual and multi-ethnic responses when analysing advantage and disadvantage. However, early work by Gould (1996, 2000) suggested a gradient of disadvantage in relation to degree of ‘Māori-ness’. In his 1996 paper Gould associated Ngāi Tahu’s integration into European society with their relative success when compared with other iwi. However, while other people have talked about Ngāi Tahu as being the ‘white tribe’, skin colour was not discussed by Gould in any of his papers.

In a number of papers, Chapple (e.g. 2000) divided the Māori ethnic group into two groups, ‘sole Māori’ and ‘mixed Māori’, and found better outcomes for ‘mixed Māori’. Chapple raised the idea that the disadvantage amongst Māori is concentrated in a particular subset: those who identify only as Māori, who have no educational qualifications, and who live outside major urban centres. Again, skin colour was not a feature of these studies.

However, Kukutai (2003) suggests that social policy makers should not put much weight on categories such as ‘Māori only’ and ‘Māori plus other ethnic group(s)’. Using survey data and a system of self-prioritisation, Kukutai showed that those individuals who identified as both Māori and non-Māori, but more strongly with the latter, tended to be socially and economically much better off than all other Māori. In contrast, those who identified more strongly as Māori had socio-economic and demographic attributes that were similar to those who recorded only Māori as their ethnic group. Kukutai’s work shows that some people recording multiple ethnic responses feel a strong sense of belonging in more than one ethnic group. For others, however, a stronger affiliation is felt with one particular ethnic group. While not discussed directly in the study, factors such as visible difference, including skin colour, may influence such decisions.

What is causing different outcomes between those recording only Māori ethnicity and those recording Māori and European responses? We do not know. No one single factor is likely to be a driver, but skin colour, in a variety of ways, may exert some influence. For example, it may be that those who ‘look more Māori’ (or look more ‘Pacific’) are more likely to record only Māori (or Pacific) ethnicity in official surveys. If this is correct, and if discrimination is common in New Zealand, the Māori-only (or Pacific peoples) group would be more likely to suffer discrimination from police, landlords and healthcare providers…

Read the entire article here.

The historical politics of the New Zealand half-caste

MAI Review
Issue 3 (2008)
Article 7
ISSN 1177-5904
11 pages

Gina M. Colvin-McCluskey

The archives of settler journalism provides us with a rich resource for engaging with some of the ‘raced’ discourses in circulation at the commencement of Britain’s colonial project in Āotearoa/New Zealand. From these early literary resources we find chronicled in the settler press evidence of a complex, contradictory and largely imagined relationship with the ‘Natives’. As the colonist confronted the ‘Native’ and authored the encounter in the settler media, he was at the same time working through social hierarchies, resource entitlements, political institutions and the face of a burgeoning indigenous contest.

The Euronesians is a single newspaper article which appeared in 1843 in an Auckland newspaper, The Daily Southern Cross, established in the same year. This article has been analysed using a critical discourse methodology in order to understand the way in which seemingly munificent articles, that appear superficially, at least, to demonstrate a generous disposition toward the ‘Native’, are at the same time wedded to Britain’s colonising project, and work to justify, excuse, and accommodate a hegemonic white presence. At the core of critical discourse methodologies therefore is a desire to understand how language works to normalise social, economic and political domination. The discourse analyst’s methodological tool kit is therefore a set of key questions that are asked of the text. What is the background to the text? What does it say at its surface? What patterns of meaning do we find and what political work is the text doing? What is silenced? Are the patterns of meaning consistent over time? This paper addresses these questions.

An analysis of the text demonstrates that the apparent display of generosity toward those children of mixed racial parentage (Pākehā and Māori) is in fact demonstrative of a complex relationship between the seemingly contradictory discourses of cultural benevolence and appropriation. As will be demonstrated, the appearance of goodwill and concern for the ‘half-caste’, in this article, retreats into a rationale for demonstrating the untenable nature of certain obligations, protection and rights afforded to the Treaty of Waitangi signatories, which effectively precluded the colonist from the purchase of Native lands. The article ‘The Euronesians” is partially reproduced along with the punctuation and editing used in the original publication. The use of ‘native’ using the lower case was standard form of the day.

THE EURONESIANS, Or the Children of European and Native Parents.
Daily Southern Cross
Volume I, Issue 23, (23 September 1843)
Page 2

We have advocated the rights of the European and Native, frequently and fully. We have treated of the effects of British Government, as far as the present and prospective circumstances of both are concerned, but there is another, and a very important portion of our community whose interests we have always had in view, although we have not had an opportunity until now of bringing their case prominently before the public. A class of persons, who appear to have been entirely subjects of treaties and of laws; the privileges of the former have been attempted to be limited and prescribed, and the rights of the latter have been usurped and violated, but there is a class of persons who cannot be affected in their rights, either by the treaty of Waitangi, or the Land Claims Bill. We allude to the descendants of European fathers, and Maorie mothers, commonly called “half casts.” These persons are in many instances, the children of misfortune, and as such, are too often neglected and despised; but they are still our, fellow-creatures, and entitled, under the laws and dispensations of the God of nature, to an equal interest, and an equal participation in the soil on which he has planted them…

Read the entire article here.

Tune Your Engine – What is a New Zealander?

Afternoons with Jim Mora
Radio New Zealand National
2011-08-02, 03:10Z (15:10 NZT)

Jim Mora, Presenter

Zarine L. Rocha, Research Scholar in the Department of Sociology
National University of Singapore

Zarine Rocha is a research Scholar in the Department of Sociology at the National University of Singapore. She’s exploring the issues of mixed race and mixed ethnic identity in New Zealand and Singapore. (00:19:25)

Listen to the interview here in (MP3 or Ogg Vorbis format).

Racial Crossings: Race, Intermarriage, and the Victorian British Empire

Oxford University Press
May 2011
320 pages
Hardback ISBN13: 9780199604159; ISBN10: 0199604150

Damon Ieremia Salesa, Associate Professor of History, American Culture, and Asian/Pacific Islander Studies
University of Michigan

The Victorians were fascinated with intersections between different races. Whether in sexual or domestic partnerships, in interracial children, racially diverse communities or societies, these ‘racial crossings’ were a lasting Victorian concern. But in an era of imperial expansion, when slavery was abolished, colonial wars were fought, and Britain itself was reformed, these concerns were more than academic. In both the British empire and imperial Britain, racial crossings shaped what people thought about race, the future, the past, and the conduct and possibilities of empire. Victorian fears of miscegenation and degeneration are well known; this study turns to apparently opposite ideas where racial crossing was seen as a means of improvement, a way of creating new societies, or a mode for furthering the rule of law and the kingdom of Heaven.

Salesa explores how and why the preoccupation with racial crossings came to be so important, so varied, and so widely shared through the writings and experiences of a raft of participants: from Victorian politicians and writers, to philanthropists and scientists, to those at the razor’s edge of empire—from soldiers, missionaries, and settlers, to ‘natives’, ‘half-castes’ and other colonized people. Anchored in the striking history of colonial New Zealand, where the colonial policy of ‘racial amalgamation’ sought to incorporate and intermarry settlers and New Zealand Maori, Racial Crossings examines colonial encounters, working closely with indigenous ideas and experiences, to put Victorian racial practice and thought into sharp, critical, relief.

Table of Contents

• Introduction: Crossing Races
• 1. Systematic Colonisation and Racial Amalgamation
• 2. Intimate Encounters in New Zealand Before 1840
• 3. Racial Amalgamation in New Zealand 1840-1850s
• 4. Crossing Races, Encountering Places
• 5. The Tender Way in Race War
• Conclusion: Dwelling in Unity
• Bibliography

White Mothers, Brown Children: Ethnic Identification of Maori-European Children in New Zealand

Journal of Marriage and Family
Volume 69, Issue 5 (December 2007)
pages 1150–1161
DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-3737.2007.00438.x

Tahu H. Kukutai, Senior Research Fellow
Population Studies Centre
University of Waikato

Studies of multiethnic families often assume the ethnic identification of children with the minority group results from the minority parent. This study examines an alternate view that mainstream parents also play an important role in transmitting minority ethnicity. It explores this argument using data from New Zealand on the ethnic labels mothers assign to their Māori-European children. It finds that European mothers are just as disposed as Māori mothers to designate their child as Māori, either exclusively or in combination. Two explanations, grounded in ethnic awareness and gendered inheritance, are proposed. Although neither satisfactorily predicts maternal designation decisions, the readiness of European mothers to identify their child as Maori underscores their role in diffusing Māori ethnicity.

Read or purchase the article here.

Transgressing Boundaries: A History of the Mixed Descent Families of Maitapapa, Taieri, 1830-1940

University of Canterbury, New Zealand
2004
393 pages

Angela Wanhalla, Lecturer in History
University of Otago, New Zealand

A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History at the University of Canterbury

This thesis is a micro-study of intermarriage at the small Kāi Tahu community of Maitapapa from 1830 to 1940. Maitapapa is located on the northern bank of the Taieri River, 25 kilometres south of Dunedin, in Otago. It was at Moturata Island, located at the mouth of the Taieri River, that a whaling station was established in 1839. The establishment of this station initiated changes to the economy and settlement patterns, and saw the beginning of intermarriage between ‘full-blood’ women and Pākehā men. From 1848, Otago was colonized by British settlers and in the process ushered in a new phase of intermarriage where single white men married the ‘half-caste’ and ‘quarter-caste’ daughters of whalers. In short, in the early years of settlement intermarriage was a gendered ‘contact zone’ from which a mixed descent population developed at Taieri. The thesis traces the history of the mixed descent families and the Maitpapapa community throughout the nineteenth century until the kāika physically disintegrated in the 1920s. It argues that the creation of a largely ‘quarter-caste’ population at Maitapapa by 1891 illustrates the high rate of intermarriage at this settlement in contrast to other Kāi Tahu kāika in the South Island. While the population was ‘quarter-caste’ in ‘blood’, the families articulated an identity that was both Kāi Tahu and mixed descent. From 1916, the community underwent both physical and cultural disintegration. This disintegration was rapid and complete by 1926. The thesis demonstrates that while land alienation, poverty, poor health and a subsistence economy characterized the lives of the mixed descent families at Maitapapa in the nineteenth century, it was a long history of intermarriage begun in the 1830s and continued throughout the nineteenth century which was the decisive factor in wholesale migrations post World War One. Education, dress and physical appearance alongside social achievements assisted in the integration of persons of mixed descent into mainstream society. While Kāi Tahu initially welcomed intermarriage as a way of integrating newcomers of a different culture such as whalers into a community, the sustained pattern of intermarriage at Maitapapa brought with it social and cultural change in the form of outward migration and eventual cultural loss by 1940.

CONTENTS

• Abbreviations
• Note on Dialect
• Glossary
• Graphs
• Tables
• Maps
• Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Chapter One: Literatures
• Chapter Two: Encounters
• Chapter Three: Boundaries, 1844-1868
• Chapter Four: Assimilations, 1850-1889
• Chapter Five: Recoveries, 1891 164
• Chapter Six: Identities, 1890-1915
• Chapter Seven: Migrations, 1916-1926
• Chapter Eight: Destinations, 1927-1940
• Conclusion
• Appendix One: Taieri Native Reserve Succession List, 1868-1889
• Appendix Two: Taieri Native Reserve Succession List, 1890-1915
• Appendix Three: Taieri Native Reserve Succession List, 1916-1926
• Appendix Four: Taieri Native Reserve Succession List, 1927-1940
• Appendix Five: SILNA Grantees: Taieri
• Bibliography

GRAPHS

1. Composition of the Taieri Kāi Tahu Population, 1874-1886
2. Kāi Tahu Census, 1891
3. Kāi Tahu Mixed Population, 1891
4. Kāi Tahu ‘Racial’ Composition, 1891
5. Application of national census categories to the 1891 Census
6. Composition of Taieri Kāi Tahu and mixed descent population, 1891-1911

TABLES

1. Whakapapa of Patahi
2. Mixed Community, Maitapapa, 1849-1852
3. Census of Maitapapa, 1853
4. Taieri Native Reserve Owners’ List, September 1868
5. Marriages (Maitapapa Women): 1850-1889
6. Marriages (Maitapapa Men): 1879-1889
7. Kāi Tahu Mixed Population, 1891
8. Kāi Tahu ‘Racial’ Composition, 1891
9. Family Size
10. ‘Racial’ Composition of Taieri Kāi Tahu Population, 1891
11. Marriages (Maitapapa Women): 1890-1915
12. Marriages (Maitapapa Men): 1890-1915
13. Marriages (Maitapapa Women): 1916-1926
14. Marriages (Maitapapa Men): 1916-1926
15. Marriages (Maitapapa Women): 1927-1940
16. Marriages (Maitapapa Men): 1927-1940

MAPS

1. Location Map of Whaling Stations in Otago and Southland
2. Lower Taieri Place Names
3. England’s Topographical Sketch Map of Taieri Native Reserve, 1860
4. MacLeod’s Survey Map of the Taieri Native Reserve, 1868
5. Sketch Map of Lake Tatawai (Alexander Mackay)
6. Location Map of Destinations

ILLUSTRATIONS

1. William Palmer
2. Edward Palmer
3. Ann Holmes
4. Peti Parata and Caroline Howell
5. Eliza Palmer
6. Sarah Palmer
7. Robert, William and Jack Palmer
8. James Henry Palmer
9. George Palmer and Mary List
10. Helen McNaught and George Brown
11. Taieri Ferry School Pupils in the mid-1880s
12. Harriet Overton and her son George
13. Thomas Brown, 1885-1974
14. The Joss Family at Rakiura
15. Tiaki Kona/Jack Conner
16. Robert Brown, 1830-1898
17. Te Waipounamu Hall, 1901
18. Official opening of Te Waipounamu Hall, 1901
19. Hangi at opening of Te Waipounamu Hall, 1901
20. Wellman Brothers and Band at Henley
21. William George Sherburd
22. Wedding of Thomas Garth and Annie Sherburd
23. The Drummond Family
24. James Smith and Emma Robson
25. Matene Family
26. Ernest Sherburd and Isabella Mackie
27. George and Caroline Milward
28. William Richard Wellman
29. Elizabeth Garth, Thomas Garth and John Brown
30. The Crane Family at Waitahuna Teone Paka Koruarua and the Maahanui Council, 1905
31. Lena Teihoka, Waitai Brown and Mere Teihoka
32. Teihoka family gathering at Taumutu, c. 1930s
33. Tuarea
34. Portrait of Jane Brown
35. Portrait of Robert Brown
36. Portrait of Mere Kui Tanner

Read the entire thesis here.

New research explains why we see Barack Obama as “black” rather than “white”

News of Otago
University of Otago, New Zealand

2010-11-25

Why do people tend to see biracial individuals such as Barack Obama as belonging to the minority group in their parentage rather than the majority one? According to new studies led by a University of Otago psychology researcher, this phenomenon—known as “hypodescent”—can be explained by underlying mechanisms in how human brains learn and categorise groups.

Otago Department of Psychology Associate Professor Jamin Halberstadt says that previously, the hypodescent phenomenon was presumed to be a product of one of several motivations: for example, to deny rights to minority group members, or to grant rights to restore historical inequities.

“Through our face perception research we show that hypodescent need not be motivated by prejudice or anything else, and that the same minority-biased perception of mixed-race individuals can emerge as a simple result of how our brains learn new groups,” Associate Professor Halberstadt says…

“So when people encounter biracial individuals, who exhibit features of both majority and minority groups, their minority features are more influential. In other words, Barack Obama is “black” because, due to most people’s learning history, his dark skin is especially strongly associated with that category,” he says…

Read the entire article here.