Dialogue: Whose holocaust? That is still a good question

By DANNY KEENAN*

The Associate Minister of Maori Affairs, Tariana Turia, raised quite a storm with her use of the word "holocaust" in a speech to a gathering of psychologists. Mrs Turia likened the Maori experience of colonisation to a "holocaust."

The response Mrs Turia provoked was little short of incredible. Yet it says something about the insular and almost precious nature of New Zealand society that the use of this word should have raised the firestorm that it did, to the extent that we have had no less a person than the Prime Minister herself pronouncing the word to be inappropriate in the New Zealand context, and requiring Mrs Turia to apologise.

Many people who responded negatively to Mrs Turia's comments did so on the basis that the word holocaust now "belongs to the Jewish people," so to speak. The word can only be used, many argue, to describe the horrific Jewish experience in Europe during the 1930s and 40s. What is interesting to note, however, is that beyond these insular shores of ours, sharp debates over the use of the word holocaust are hardly new.

Not long ago a very tense argument was conducted through the correspondence columns of the Times Literary Supplement over the use of the word holocaust. Many academics in Britain have criticised Jewish scholars for seeking to appropriate the word for themselves and their own historical experience. Jewish scholars have also been criticised for their condemning of all other people who might want to point to some other passage of horrific history as a holocaust.

Many academics have argued that the word did not belong to the Jewish people. They argue that holocaust remained an appropriate term to use when describing the historical experience of many groups of people, especially indigenous peoples.

In the United States, for example, the use of holocaust by Native American scholars has produced a prolonged and quite bitter academic argument. This argument was heightened when David Stannard's book American Holocaust - the Conquest of the New World appeared in 1992. Stannard argued that Indian peoples had experienced centuries of dispossession and genocide. His book is still one of the most gut-wrenching books on this terrible topic I have ever read, and I have read a few.

With this publication, Stannard brought a firestorm on his head. He was much condemned by many ordinary Americans, who could not tolerate the use of the word holocaust to describe the long and horrific history of loss experienced by native peoples, a history which, by no coincidence, had occurred in their own backyards. Stannard was also much criticised by scholars for this and earlier works, especially those focusing on Hawaii.

More recently, Cherokee historian Ward Churchill has weighed into the debate with a remarkable resolve. Churchill is an intense and polemic writer who demonstrates an enormous command of detail; and he, too, has attracted a considerable amount of criticism.

Churchill has especially confronted those American scholars who claim that the word holocaust does not apply to the colonising history of his own Cherokee people. Churchill contends that the Cherokee history of forced removal and dispossession did constitute a holocaust, since, in a short time, the Cherokee people were left devastated.

He has further raised the stakes by comparing those who deny native people their holocaust to those who seek to deny that the Jewish Holocaust ever existed.

Other scholars have also written about holocausts that stain our histories. Seymour Drescher has written about the slave trade in the United States, and the terrible impacts that slavery had on both sides of the Atlantic.

Robert F. Melson has written of the progressive destruction of the Armenian people at the hands of the Turks earlier this century.

Barbara B. Green has pointed to the disastrous experience of the Ukrainian people during the Great Famine induced by Stalin in the early 1930s. Tragically, the length of holocaust studies is long and remains as an indictment of all mankind.

Mrs Turia concluded her speech to the psychologists by pointing out that she was aware that such an intense holocaust debate existed - "a debate, I must add, that I do not wish to enter." These were noble sentiments indeed.

She clearly did not, however, reckon upon the insular nature of our small country, and on the vehement criticism and denial which followed as to the appropriateness of linking the colonisation of Maori to the use of certain images of history and language. Yet such debates are a common feature of the historical and political landscape overseas.

As Judge Mick Brown recently observed, just when we think we are making progress, occasionally we are reminded of how far we have yet to go.

*Dr Danny Keenan is a lecturer in the history programme at Massey University, Palmerston North.