Signposts - a blog about Te Ara the Encyclopedia of New Zealand

Book cover of New Zealanders and the sea (click to see a larger image)

Just in time for New Zealand Book Month (and early Christmas shopping), Te Ara’s new book, New Zealanders and the sea, has hit the shops.

New Zealand’s 18,000-kilometre coastline is the seventh-longest of any country, and nowhere is more than 130 kilometres from the coast – so it’s not surprising that most New Zealanders have a strong relationship with the sea. The ancestors of Māori, and of most Pākehā, arrived here by sea; exports and imports are still largely dependent on sea ports.

New Zealanders and the sea looks at the ways we have engaged with the sea, using it for transport and for economic gain, as a source of food – and, of course, as a place for recreation and holidays. Based on entries from Te Ara’s Earth, Sea and Sky theme, New Zealanders and the sea takes in everything from castaways to the fishing industry to marine conservation to Tangaroa, Māori god of the sea.

There are stories of flocks of sheep driven along the beach or transported by sea; of the isolated lives of lighthouse keepers and their families; of Māori methods of fishing and storing the catch; of the appropriate attire to wear to the beach, and how that’s changed over time; of Nola and Berry Edwards and their shell-encrusted car.

And – like Te Ara – New Zealanders and the sea is beautifully illustrated, with remarkable images of whaling, of rescued castaways, lighthouses, waka and 1960s surfers – as well as these likely lads sitting outside their caravan with a few cold ones.

New Zealanders and the sea is available at all good bookstores, RRP $69.99 (ISBN 978-1-86953-681-7).

An iconic image of Mt Taranaki (Mt Egmont)

Taranaki is the next region to get its very own Te Ara Places entry. We’re currently editing the text and pulling together images and other resources, and it will be launched in early December.

And you can contribute to it by adding your pictures of Taranaki to our Flickr group pool!

We’ll be including in the entry an exhibition of photographs of the region. To have your Taranaki snaps considered for the exhibition, add them to Te Ara’s Flickr group pool in the next couple of weeks, as we’ll be making our decisions soon. Some images that have already been contributed include New Plymouth’s foreshore, the Wind Wand and Mt Taranaki (Mt Egmont).

We’ve found these exhibitions to be a great way of including more wonderful images than we otherwise could. You can look at similar exhibitions for Otago, Hawke’s Bay, Southland and the West Coast.

Another cultural organisation that is using keen Flickr photographers to help record our country’s heritage is the New Zealand Historic Places Trust. They have started an NZHPT Images Project group on Flickr, and are inviting people to contribute their images of historic places in New Zealand.

They’re posting lists of specific places they want photos for, and their latest list includes many in the Taranaki region – perhaps you might have photos you could add to both their pool and ours!

One of the images to look forward to in our Hawke's Bay Flickr exhibition

Our Flickr work has taken us to many places – with our Hawke’s Bay entry nearly complete and launching this week (Thursday), we are now starting to work on the Taranaki entry.

We love people contributing their images, and we’re now looking for images of Taranaki. It doesn’t matter what it is, we want to see it. Some possibilities are photos of people, places, towns, landscapes, beaches, animals, farms or buildings.

We’ll use images we source from Flickr either in the main entry or a Flickr exhibition, such as this one we created for Otago. Our exhibitions use a Flash slideshow called Pictobrowser to pull the Flickr images into the entry. It has been a helpful tool in allowing us to showcase other images of the regions that we haven’t been able to use in the entries.

So far we have three very successful exhibitions – for the West Coast, Southland and Otago. Hawke’s Bay will be up very soon, and our Hawke’s Bay exhibition pool will give you a taste of what’s to come in the exhibition!

We now have over 200 Flickr contacts who contribute regularly. We hope you’ll join us and start adding images to our pool: http://www.flickr.com/groups/teara/.

A family pyramid

What connects us to those we love? What words do we use for these connections – aroha, alofa, love, agapē, liefde, érōs, amour? How do we become lovers, welcome the arrival of babies and juggle paid work, parenting and community activities? Does gender make a difference and, if so, how? What spiritual beliefs and practices are important when we farewell those we love, and how are burial practices changing?

Over the next year Te Ara will develop a new set of entries on ‘social connections’. New material is being written on whānau/families, love, courtship, marriage, civil unions, sexuality, birthing practices, adoption, contraception, childhood, gay and lesbian lives, ageing, funerals and inheritance. Entries on Māori love stories, Mills & Boon romances, dance floor courtship, and internet dating will be found alongside information about state regulation of marriage/civil unions, separation and divorce.

New migrant family

People connect not only as lovers, parents and children, but also as Māori and Pākehā, Samoan and Chinese, Catholic and Protestant, Morman and Buddhist. Aotearoa New Zealand is a place where for hundreds of years tangata whenua have been interacting with waves of new settlers. Te Ara will look at connections between Māori and non-Māori, between established settlers and newcomers, and how refugees and recent migrants build new community organisations. Racism and attempts to establish connections across difference will also feature in the social connections theme.

Relationships with others make us what we are as individuals and as a nation, but they can also be painful and damaging. So there will also be entries on family violence, the neglect and abuse of children, and crimes such as aggravated robbery and assault. How have voluntary organisations, churches, communities and the state responded to the challenges of abuse, neglect, poverty, disabilities, inequality and violence? What has been the response of the state? What public debate has occurred and how has it changed over time?

For many people religion/spirituality is central to their connectedness to Atua/God/Yahweh/Allah, to people, to other living things and the environment. How has religion and spirituality connected people and what tensions and conflicts have been associated with religious difference? What was the impact of missionary activity on Māori and what is the current place of Māori within established Christian churches? How do religious institutions respond to connections and differences among those in their communities? Contributors to Te Ara are currently writing entries that look at some answers to these questions.

The Claris family in 1912

Health and well-being also depend on social connections – on our relationships with family members, others in our communities and health practitioners. Te Ara will look at the interactions between providers and users of health services, at relationships among health professionals (like doctors and midwives) and new health initiatives like marae-based healthcare.

The web is a key way in which people now connect. And you can connect to Te Ara by sending us your stories about whānau/family, community organisations/clubs/societies, religious activities or health groups. Do you have photos of family events, balls and dances, church camps, public meetings, protests or community activities that we could use? Would you like to share your account of what it was like to set up a new community organisation?

Please go to http://www.mch.govt.nz/projects/web/teara/my-story.html if you have a story you would like to contribute, or join our Flickr group: http://www.flickr.com/groups/teara/ if you have images you’d like to contribute.

We are keen to receive material between 1 August 2009 and 1 March 2010.

And only connect!

NZ nurses who served in the Spanish Civil War (click to view on NZHistory.net)

Te Ara staff are always up to something. Not content with the interesting things we do in our day jobs, we’ve usually got some other kind of project or interest on the go.

Kiwi Compañeros: New Zealand and the Spanish Civil War (Canterbury University Press, 2009), edited by Te Ara writer Mark Derby, is one such project which has recently come to fruition.

New Zealand is as far away from Spain as you can get – well, without heading into space. In the 1930s New Zealanders generally knew virtually nothing about Spain, and there had only been a handful of Spanish migrants. Nevertheless, this book tells the stories of a number of New Zealanders who cared enough about the Spanish Civil War that they volunteered as soldiers, doctors, nurses or journalists.

Some of the New Zealanders who joined up were already based overseas, while others travelled all the way from here. Mark says they were generally motivated by anti-fascist beliefs and concern about the overthrow of a legitimately elected government.

Kiwi Compañeros has contributions from leading academics and historians, but also includes a chapter by the daughter of two people who fought in the war. It grew out of a seminar in 2006 looking at New Zealander’s involvement in and attitudes to the Spanish Civil War.

Mark is pretty sure he’s tracked down all of New Zealand’s participants. One of his odder leads had the ring of an urban legend. A friend told him of a friend who had said that his primary school teacher had said he’d been in the Spanish Civil War. Mark thought it was pretty unlikely, but followed it up anyway. He found that the teacher was still alive and indeed had actually fought in the war.

In tandem with this book coming out, and all the new research it contains, NZHistory.net has published a new feature on New Zealand and the Spanish Civil War. And if that whets your appetite, come along to next week’s History Group talk by Mark and fellow-contributor Peter Clayworth about New Zealanders in the Spanish Civil War, and how studying them can provide insights into the New Zealand of the 1930s.