Authenticating Mäori Physicality: Translations of ‘Games’ and ‘Pastimes’ by Early Travellers and Missionaries to New Zealand

This paper theorizes how knowledge of indigenous tribal epistemologies was made ‘knowable’ through Enlightenment rationalism in an early colonial context. Specifically, the paper determines how and what knowledge of Mäori tribal physical activities was interpreted and authenticated through early travellers' tales and missionaries’ accounts in New Zealand. The central thesis argues that what was established as authentic and truthful aligned with Enlightenment rationalism, while those Mäori physical practices incomprehensible to Western understandings were deemed inauthentic and, consequently, were obscured and/or discarded. Throughout, the article theorizes the translation of knowledge into meaningful Western discourses and how these translations came to be crystallized in the colonial imagination.     

‘See These Brilliant Exponents of the Game’: The England Women’s Hockey Team Tour of Australia and New Zealand, 1914

Abstract

This paper argues that the 1914 England Women’s hockey tour of Australia and New Zealand has an ambiguous place within wider progress narratives of women’s sport. It created some important sporting precedents, being the first time Australian and New Zealand women’s teams had taken the field. The media reception of the tour was mixed. While the social pages and some of match commentary focused on the appearance of the players, the majority presented the tour as a worthy sporting spectacle. Indeed in the final match the New Zealand team was billed as the ‘All Blacks’, the name normally associated with national men’s teams. Moreover, the symbolic importance of the tour was enhanced by the fact that the tourists were accorded the same rites and rituals accorded men’s touring teams to New Zealand: parliamentary and civic receptions; playing in the leading sporting venues and being linked to imperial bonding.