{"id":457,"date":"2014-02-23T21:34:40","date_gmt":"2014-02-23T08:34:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/crocc\/?p=457"},"modified":"2015-02-11T21:12:17","modified_gmt":"2015-02-11T08:12:17","slug":"cowan-symposium-cultural-go-between-colonial-man-new-perspectives-on-james-cowan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/crocc\/cowan-symposium-cultural-go-between-colonial-man-new-perspectives-on-james-cowan\/","title":{"rendered":"Cowan Symposium. Cultural Go-Between, Colonial Man: New Perspectives on James Cowan."},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Chris<\/a>

Chris Szekely of the Turnbull Library welcoming attendees.<\/p><\/div>\n

A successful one-day symposium was held at the National Library on Friday 21 February, a joint event run by Annabel Cooper of the Centre for Research on Colonial Culture and Ariana Tikao of the Alexander Turnbull Library.\u00a0 It attracted more than 65 attendees, including academics, librarians, archivists, professional and governmental historians, and other interested people.\u00a0 Chief librarian of the Alexander Turnbull Library, Chris Szekely, welcomed people to the event, and suggested that it was a good start to CROCC\u2019s relationship with the Turnbull and National Library, and hopefully the first of many events.\u00a0 Chris\u2019s welcome was followed by a mihi from the Turnbull\u2019s Curator M\u0101ori, Paul Diamond.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Chris<\/a>

Chris Hilliard, Keynote Speaker.<\/p><\/div>\n

Chris Hilliard (University of Sydney) returned to Cowan, a subject of research earlier in his career, with the keynote address \u2018Stories of an Era Not Yet So Very Remote\u2019 in which he asked us to look beyond Cowan\u2019s grand statements \u2013 ones with which he can so easily be tied to the colonial project \u2013 to his love of detail, and it was through these that we could get a better understanding of the man. \u00a0Chris stressed Cowan\u2019s love of New Zealand history, and his connection with place and people.<\/p>\n

The themes that Chris set out were picked up by the three speakers who followed.\u00a0 Paul Meredith of Ng\u0101ti Maniapoto, like Cowan, grew up in the Kihikihi area, and values the writer\u2019s work, in particular his oral history, as a means of unlocking the voices of his t\u016bpuna.\u00a0 He pointed out too that Cowan collaborated with Raureti Te Huia and the methods they used have parallels with the kaupapa M\u0101ori methodology of today.<\/p>\n

\"Te<\/a>

Te Kenehi Teira of Historic Places Trust.<\/p><\/div>\n

Te Kenehi Teira of Ng\u0101ti Raukawa, Kaihautu M\u0101ori for the Historic Places Trust, spoke about the Trust\u2019s development of interpretation and other resources for the \u014cr\u0101kau commemorations, and a smartphone driving app for the Waikato battle sites.\u00a0 As Te Kenehi said, the app was a means of bringing Cowan into the modern world. The researchers utilised Cowan\u2019s writings as a means of adding detail to the interpretations, and in the case of \u014cr\u0101kau, of pinpointing the actual site of the p\u0101.<\/p>\n

\"Ariana<\/a>

Ariana Tikao of Turnbull Library<\/p><\/div>\n

This session was closed by Ariana Tikao of K\u0101i Tahu, Research Librarian M\u0101ori, who discussed the Turnbulls\u2019 recent acquisition and description of 202 folders of Cowan manuscript material (acquired at the end of 2012) that now complements the Library\u2019s existing collection.\u00a0 Ariana also talked about putting together Borderland: The World of James Cowan<\/a>, (running to 26 April in the Alexander Turnbull Gallery), her exhibition exploring the writer\u2019s life, work and legacy.<\/p>\n

After lunch, we heard from Greg Woods who talked on Cowan\u2019s years as a journalist at the Auckland Star<\/i> (1888-1903).\u00a0 During this time Cowan wrote at least 370 feature articles, some of which he incorporated into his later books. Cowan was a \u201cM\u0101ori specialist\u201d perhaps due to his language skills, and unlike most reporters of the time, was able to add his name to these articles. While also shipping reporter Cowan met some famous writers, such as Rudyard Kipling, Mark Twain and Robert Louis Stevenson, and Greg argued that Cowan took Stevenson as a sort of literary model for his writing.\u00a0 Kathryn Parsons, Special Collections Librarian at the University of Waikato, discussed Cowan\u2019s later writing for children in The Enzed Junior<\/i>, a weekly Saturday supplement that ran from 1934 to 1941.\u00a0 Cowan wrote 255 articles for this publication, 190 of which were on M\u0101ori-related topics.\u00a0 Staying with young people, the final speaker in this session, Jim Frood, a history teacher at Kings College, Auckland spoke on the secondary schools history curriculum and the value of Cowan\u2019s work as a resource in the teaching of Year 11-13 history.<\/p>\n

Roger Blackley of VUW began the last session with a discussion on Pictures of Old New Zealand<\/i>, comprising Lindauer portraits of M\u0101ori men and women with bibliographical information supplied by Cowan.\u00a0 Roger showed how Cowan re-used text written by earlier writers, such as James Mackay, but moderating some of the sentiments for the sensibilities of his own day.\u00a0 Although Cowan\u2019s writing is about the people, rather than the art itself, Roger argued that Pictures of Old New Zealand might be considered New Zealand\u2019s first art monograph. Lydia Wevers (Stout Centre, VUW) then spoke about Cowan\u2019s travel writing, in particular his work on the Main Trunk Line written for railway tourism purposes.\u00a0 This work shows Cowan\u2019s contradictory attitudes to colonialism, on the one hand accepting the inevitable march of progress, while also lamenting the loss of the bush, and the old M\u0101ori ways of life.\u00a0 Annabel Cooper (University of Otago) and Diane Pivac from New Zealand Film Archive, looked at Cowan\u2019s influence on New Zealand films of the New Zealand Wars, from Rudall Hayward (for whom he worked as an advisor) to Geoff Murphy\u2019s Utu,<\/i> which was inspired by one of Cowan\u2019s stories, to Vincent Ward\u2019s River Queen<\/i>. We were treated to excerpts from Hayward\u2019s Te Kooti Trail<\/i>, a silent movie in which Hayward used descendants of the historical figures as actors, and his last movie, Rewi\u2019s Last Stand<\/i>.\u00a0 Tony Ballantyne (University of Otago and CROCC Director) wrapped up the day, reminding us that Cowan is a more complex personality than superficial reading of his work might suggest.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A successful one-day symposium was held at the National Library on Friday 21 February, a joint event run by Annabel Cooper of the Centre for Research on Colonial Culture and Ariana Tikao of the Alexander Turnbull Library.\u00a0 It attracted more […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15374,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17472,17444],"tags":[17505,17474,17493,17465],"class_list":["post-457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-centre-news","category-symposium","tag-colonial-writing","tag-crocc","tag-james-cowan","tag-maori-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/crocc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/crocc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/crocc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/crocc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15374"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/crocc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/crocc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/crocc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/crocc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/crocc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}