Mixed Race Studies

Mothers’ Darlings of the South Pacific: The Children of Indigenous Women and U.S. Servicemen, World War II

University Of Hawai’i Press
April 2016
424 pages
95 b&w illustrations
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8248-5152-1

Edited by:

Judith A. Bennett, Professor of History
University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand

Angela Wanhalla, Associate Professor of History
University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand

Like a human tsunami, World War II brought two million American servicemen to the South Pacific where they left a human legacy of some thousands of children. Mothers’ Darlings of the South Pacific traces the intimate relationships that existed in the wartime South Pacific between U.S. servicemen and Indigenous women, and considers the fate of the resulting children. The American military command carefully managed intimate relationships in the Pacific Theater, applying U.S. immigration law based on race on Pacific peoples of color to prevent marriage “across the color line.” For Indigenous women and their American servicemen sweethearts, legal marriage was impossible, giving rise to a generation of children known as “G.I. Babies.” Among these Pacific war children, one thing common to almost all is the longing to know more about their American father. Mothers’ Darlings of the South Pacific traces these children’s stories of loss, emotion, longing, and identity, and of lives lived in the shadow of global war.

This book considers the way these relationships developed in the major U.S. bases of the South Pacific Command from Bora Bora in the east across to Solomon Islands in the west, and from the Gilbert Islands in the north to New Zealand, in the southernmost region of the Pacific. Some chapters consider in-depth case studies of the life trajectories of one or two people; others are more of a group portrait. Each discusses the context of the particular island societies and how this often determined the way such intimate relationships developed and were accommodated during the war years and beyond.

The writers interviewed many of the children of the Americans and some of the few surviving mothers as well as others who recalled the wartime presence in their islands. Oral histories reveal what the records of colonial governments and the military largely have ignored, providing a perspective on the effects of the U.S. occupation that until now has been disregarded by historians of the Pacific war. The richness of this book should appeal to those interested the Pacific, World War II, as well as intimacy, family, race relations, colonialism, identity, and the legal structures of U.S. immigration.

Matters of the Heart: A History of Interracial Marriage in New Zealand

Auckland University Press
July 2013
312 pages approx
240 x 170 mm, illustrations
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-86940-731-5

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

A history of the intimate relations between Māori and Pākehā, and the intersections of public policy and private life.

Philip Soutar died at Ypres in 1917. Before becoming a soldier, Soutar’s life revolved around his farm at Whakatāne, where he lived with his Māori wife Kathleen Pine in an ‘as-you-please marriage, uncelebrated by a clergyman’. Matters of the Heart introduces us to couples like Philip and Kathleen to unravel the long history of interracial relationships in New Zealand.

That history runs from whalers and traders marrying into Māori families in the early nineteenth century through to the growth of interracial marriages in the later twentieth. It stretches from common law marriages and Māori customary marriages to formal arrangements recognised by church and state. And that history runs the gamut of official reactions—from condemnation of interracial immorality or racial treason to celebration of New Zealand’s unique intermarriage patterns as a sign of us being ‘one people’ with the ‘best race relations in the world’.

In the history of intimate relations between Māori and Pākehā, public policy and private life were woven together. Matters of the Heart reveals much about how Māori and Pākehā have lived together in this country and our changing attitudes to race, marriage and intimacy.

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

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.