1769: Discovery of White Island

October 1, 2019

By AHNZ

On October 1st, 1769, Captain Cook discovered White Island and named it.

Controversial these days is to point out that we Westerners discovered anything due to the fact that many of the features were already known and named by Maoris. For example, on a recent museum visit, the curator made a point of saying that the river Cook named Thames River was officially changed to its ‘first and original name,’ the Waihou River in 1947.

It’s true, as Logan Campbell confirms¹, that another culture had a name and a fix on this river and this island and a great many other things. What was meant by ‘discovery’ all along though was that Cook had discovered it, not for the Maoris, but for his own people. Us! Right up to the 1970s New Zealanders were two people², long after Hobson is alleged to have said “we are now one people.” By design, the Crown Colony was to cohabitate alongside independent Maori tribes not amalgamate. Indeed, it was only the Native Rights Act (1865) that first resolved to make Maoris citizens of the Colony and begin to include them in its official life as insiders.

Even someone with a Maori point of view, who calls the river Waihou not Thames, can accept that another culture can and should name things in their own way. And, they can accept that from the other culture’s point of view it discovered White Island for itself, independently. For Cooks people the first names for these places were Thames and White. I didn’t push back against the museum curator but she was caught up in modern media propaganda that seeks to pronounce and name everything it can in opposition to genuine biculturalism. It’s a vicious attitude, often ethnomasochistic, that is more about shunning New Zealand’s Western side than embracing New Zealand’s Maori side. Making things still worse comes the State Geographic Board who should stay out of it and not exist.

White Island Power?

I don’t know if Cook realised white White Island is so white. However, we’ve had it’s number since 1840: It’s our very own active New Zealand volcano..

“The only volcano that was known to be in action, was one on a small island in the Bay of Plenty, on the east coast…” – Captain Wilkes, USS Vincennes visiting New Zealand in March 1840

I was just thinking out loud: Wouldn’t it be sensible to refer, one day in the future, to ‘The White Island Power Station?’

Just 50km off shore. The North/South Island cable is 600-odd. If we could engineer the harnessing of White Island’s power…we’d be set forever and impress the world.

—

1 “WE are hailing into Waiou Harbour. It was known in the long-ago days of which I now write as Waiou, because Maori prevailed so much more than English that native names tarried [carried] the day.”- Poenamo (1881)

2 I’m thinking of Prime Minister Kirk’s speech announcing the first ‘New Zealand Day’ (later Waitangi Day) before Queen Elizabeth in 1974. Kirk refers to the separate pathway Maori people are on and their great migration from being rural to urban then under way.

Image Ref. James Shook via wikipedia

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