Dialogue: Let's look forward to Tuku's series

By SANDY BURGHAM

I was poised to join the wave of Tuku Morgan bashers last week, deploring our $1.6 million of taxes being spent on the wrong things again, when I suddenly realised that I was genuinely interested in the subject matter of his documentary series.

Having lived most of my life in New Zealand, I am, like many, discovering as time goes on that I seem to know less and less about my homeland.

My questions just keep getting bigger. Sure, I have the fundamentals and a vague timeline, but with regards to pre-treaty details I draw a blank.

I am guessing that most New Zealanders have about as much local knowledge as the new immigrants who are ready to call themselves Kiwis.

Talking briefly with some leading lights in New Zealand's history scene last week I immediately felt an unenlightened dullard as they, in the process of an informal chat, casually imparted pithy nuggets about our cultural history. How enriching it must be to live in a country you actually know about.

Trouble is, too many of us ordinary folk consider whatever happened before the treaty immaterial and refer to New Zealand as a young country, completely dismissing hundreds of years of Maori habitation and geographic history before that.

But though our historians may have been banging on about this very point, with our shabby literacy levels we cannot expect the masses to spontaneously start wading through history books heavy on words and short on pictures.

To encourage Kiwis to appreciate our immediate world, more user-friendly means must be employed. We need to present history through a medium that doesn't intimidate, and give it a simple context all can understand.

We could start literally at grass roots level with more easily recognisable historic plaques telling the story behind our landscape. Some already exist, but seem to whisper in a tasteful, unassuming way where perhaps a bolder approach is needed.

For example, armed with the new knowledge that during its journey around the country the treaty was signed at a beach not far from our home, I visited the site to reconsider that small stretch of sand and imagine the Hauraki chiefs sinking their bare feet into the same shores. There is a quiet plaque that commemorates the site, but I have passed by many times without noticing it.

My London OE began with a sketchy understanding of famous Brits, mainly of historic superstars - King Henry VIII and his six wives, Victoria and Albert, the suffragettes - all of whom I had been introduced to courtesy of BBC drama rather than the school history lessons through which I had slept.

The colossal gaps in my knowledge were filled over the following years by an engaging trail of blue plaques fixed to mansions naming the previous occupants of note.

At various times I lived close to Darwin, Thomas Hardy, John Everett Millais and other luminaries, even if our timing wasn't exactly in sync. It was reading these plaques while walking through the same streets that motivated me to want to know more.

"Oh but we couldn't do that here," I hear people cry. "We are simply not interesting enough. And whose homes would we feature - past All Blacks?"

But though we seem to demolish buildings that may over time gain a public fondness and significance, let's not ignore that we live in a country rich in history most of which we are completely unaware of. (Okay, maybe we need some "Peter Jackson woz here" plaques to get the ball rolling.)

Plaques would need to backed up by some watchable telly. And pushing aside cynicism over expensive underpants, alleged nepotism and unusually large budgets, I am welcoming the migration series to our screens.

But there is one sticking point - I struggle to see the point of telling what I am sure will be a fascinating story in Maori, so a mere 4.5 per cent of the population can fully enjoy it. I assume that somewhere along the way there will be an English translation for the other 95.5 per cent. Because it is surely not just a Maori story, but a New Zealand one that we all need and will want to experience.

In this time of uncomfortable diversity, a good starting point for unity is for all of us, Maori, European and whatever else, to consider pre-European history as belonging to all who live here, since we do share one identity globally as New Zealand citizens.

So bring it on Tuku - but at that price it had better be good, or at the very least comprehensible.