The Māori historian providing a critique of controversial New Zealand governor George Grey

A Māori historian with Taranaki links has been asked to critique a controversial figure in New Zealand colonial history as part of project examining the statues at St Paul’s Cathedral in London.

Keenan, Ngati Te Whiti ki Te Ātiawa, is one of 50 historians, writers, poets, musicians and theologians from around the world asked to write about statues that are inside or around the cathedral.

St Paul’s is one of London’s most recognisable landmarks and has dominated the skyline of the city for more than 300 years.

The project to examine the monuments associated with it comes at a time when statues in Britain and the USA have been pulled down or vandalised in the wake of the Black Lives Matter and Rhodes Must Fall movements.

READ MORE:
* Margaret Thatcher statue egged hours after being installed in UK
* It’s a surprisingly persistent view, but Māori have not forgotten the land wars

Both movements have sought a reassessment of some leading political figures from history as racist and/or key parts of racist systems.

Each writer in the Pantheons: Sculpture at St Paul’s project, is paired with one of the statues and Keenan’s brief was ‘’Taking a Māori view of Sir George Grey to an international audience’’.

Sir George Grey was a towering and dominant figure in New Zealand colonial politics, serving two terms as governor before becoming premier on 15 October 1877.

He also served in Parliament until his return to England, where he died in 1898.

While Governor for the second time the tensions in Taranaki over land ownership and sovereignty led to the involvement of British military forces at Waitara.

He also launched the invasion of Waikato in 1863, and was part of the confiscation (raupatu) of Māori land.

The monument ‘to the memory of Sir George Grey’, which stands inside St Paul’s, was presented by the New Zealand Government in 1904, following Grey’s death and burial there in 1898.

The statue of Grey in Albert Park, Auckland, was vandalised in 2020.

Keenan said he has never been too sure about statues.

‘’I’ve been reading the St Paul’s contributions from the other writers with interest; opinion as to what happens next is really divided.’’

Perhaps pulling down statues is more of a political act, where distinguishing between black and white appears straightforward, he said.

’’When the statues were falling overseas, my cousin (Te Pāti Māori co-leader) Debbie Ngāwera-Packer and others were quite outspoken, and unequivocal, about what should happen, and they were not the wrong per se.

‘’History as a discipline though is really nuanced and complicated, with a lot going on at once, as the St Paul’s writers are showing.’’

Writing about Sir George Grey was interesting, because not a lot is known about him beyond New Zealand, certainly not in the Rhodes Must Fall context, he said.

‘‘I was interested to focus on his early career as a British Army Officer in Ireland, followed by colonial administrator in Australia and South Africa, where his uncompromising defence of Empire was set in concrete.’’

Grey is remembered as a strong-minded, reforming politician who mentored a later generation of radical Liberal politicians who would transform New Zealand after 1891, Keenan said.

‘’But for Māori, Grey’s insistence that Māori could not be anything other than subjects in their own country did not of course go down well.

‘’In particular, his pre-emptive invasion of the Waikato and the punitive land confiscations that followed, which inflicted so much hurt, dispossession and loss on Māori – only recently ameliorated – undoubtedly tainted his otherwise striking legacy.’

Keenan is turning his St Paul’s piece into a much larger chapter for a book being published next year.

Perhaps Grey’s legacy will be clearer then, he said.

‘‘Or perhaps not – as they say, you can lie 100 historians down in a line, but you’ll never reach a conclusion.’’

The project, entitled Pantheons: Sculpture at St Paul’s, was launched on December 1, 2021 in partnership with the Department of the History of Art, University of York.