“Old-Time Weapons”

Indeed, early suggestions for the statue of the Maori chief depicted him discharging his “old-time weapons” in order to reach for the civilizing possibilities introduced by colonialism Isabella Wensley. The obelisk would seem to celebrate the forces of Western culture at Indigenous expense, then. Campbell’s original proposed inscription further confirms this implication.

The phrase ‘IN MEMORIAM’ implies that the Maori, though very much alive, are a vanished people. Though it is true that these troubling proposals were negotiated out of the final product and although the emplacement of the monument was reportedly seen by at least some Maori as a symbol of respectful cooperation, the history of its disputed significance embodies the way in which naively “pure” intentions of the dominant techno-scientific culture are evidently non-neutral if they reflexively write out the cultures they purport to improve.