2018: Pale History

June 17, 2025

By AHNZ

Today in New Zealand history, 17 June, 1843, the Wairau Massacre took place not very far from present day Blenheim. The victims were Settler officials hacked to death by Maori tribesmen and included Magistrate Thompson as pictured here (image, left.) Very graphic. Looks like the man is bleeding out.

This photo comes from an art exhibition first shown at the Suter Art Gallery in Nelson in 2018 (16 December – 24 March 2019.) This is the same government-funded gallery responsible for re-showing the Flagging the Future (2024) art exhibition by “Diane Prince Activist Artist” who had created it 30 years before. This later one invited participation in the form of visitors being told to walk on the flag of New Zealand. To have a flag touch the ground and be trodden upon is, of course, explicit denigration when it comes to flag custom. The Nelson City Council controls the Suter so here we see The State is once again taxing the public for funding that is then used to propagandise them. Ref. Invitation to walk on flag ‘disrespectful’, Nelson Mail (2025)

Free Speech is, of course, totally fine and necessary even if militant activists are behind it and using art as a Trojan horse for their racial and political agendas. Where the Libertarian Anarchist must draw the line is at the Government forcing agitprop down our throats which these “exhibitions” certainly and explicitly are.

The above image comes from Sally Burton’s work called Pale History. “The name of the exhibition was chosen to reflect that narratives told about historical events were often pale versions of the truth.” she said. In fact, you have to go back a long way to find historians who do anything other than perpetuate the same Woke White Guilt interpretation that Burton is simply repeating.

Our Woke White Savior Lady, Burton, is fairly explicit in showing that what she had done here isn’t exactly art so much as revisionist history: “The exhibition was conceived as a revisionist history painting, comprising two and three dimensional elements.” – Sally Burton, artist

The scene depicts the two factions at the flashpoint of the fight at Wairau and it’s designed to make the Maoris look good. Naturally she didn’t elect to re-create the scene of the Maoris hacking their helpless prisoners to bits with axes! The Maoris look gentle, noble, and even wise. The European men look effete and powdered like Regency era products of incest! Has much thought been put into ‘direct descendants’ of the slain Settlers and how it might offend them? Compared to the Maoris, the Whites look like Thunderbirds puppet rejects with punchable faces, just asking to be massacred.

“Pale History” is supposed to refer to how Anglo Zelandians have remembered the story of the Wairau Affray since it happened. Historians such as Pember Reeves, Keith Sinclair, Alfred Reed etc. all identified the incident as mass murder for which no justice was pursued. The irony is that ‘Pale History’ actually is a pretty good shortened name for the Woke White Liberal Women point of view!

“Who owned the Wairau Plains? New Zealand Company were sure it was theirs, and its Cook Straight Settlers were busy trying to establish themselves in Nelson and Wellington. After all, they’d purchased the place more than once and this included their holding of the Blenkinsop Indenture. Their Wairau surveys had been going on all year, and all year they were shadowed and harassed by Te Rauparaha’s Ngai Toa.” – 1843: The Wairau Affray, AHNZ

“…the day was particularly emotional as some of the guests were directly descended from the historic figures depicted in the installation.” – Marlborough Express, Stuff (19 June 2021)

“British settlers from Nelson tried to evict Māori with a fraudulent land deed, and wrongly arrest Ngāti Toa​ chiefs in Marlborough. The battle claimed 26 lives.” – Wairau Affray captured in Pale History exhibition 178 years later, Stuff (2021)

Sally’s characterisation itself is in very poor taste. She depicts a man who was decapitated brutally as a sculpture bleeding from the neck. It’s a bit like creating art showing a Wahine Disaster drowning victim as a dummy inside a fish tank. Or Captain Cook being roasted on a spit. Or a Robert Falcon Scott’s dead legs sticking out of a giant ice cream Sunday sculpture.

Sally Burton also disarmed her Maoris, making them look more innocent and unprotected. Sad. “I knew I was going to have to deal with weapons somehow and I wasn’t very keen on it.” Of course not! What would that do to her Rousseau’s Noble Savage narrative agenda? The white men, on the other hand, have pistols for hands offer shackles to the black men. Ref. Sally Burton’s rendition of the notorious Wairau Incident, RNZ (2017)

However, Burton did not stop at implicit history revisionism. She also comes down hard on the current Aotearoa Histories side of several issues and with the full and enthusiastic backing of the local tribesman. “Here is a visual interpretation of what we have tried to make public through the written word…she (Sally Burton) has captured them magnificently,” says John Mitchell, a spokesman for Te Tau Ihu iwi. Ref. Exhibition casts new light on old flashpoint, RNZ (2018)

For example, the usual revisionism is presented that the Blenkinsop Indenture was a “ridiculous” fraud: “And the whole question over the ownership of the Wairoa was absolutely ridiculous anyway. This had come about because there was a cannon, a whaler, Captain Blenkinsop had pinched this cannon, I think, it was a ship’s cannon, and he’d sold it to Te Raupera, who had thought he’d signed a deed for wood and water…the Blenkinsop cannon had actually been spiked, and it wouldn’t even fire. So actually, I’ve made a Blenkinsop cannon with dyed red blankets coming out of it.” Apparently it can fire when art needs it to even if the artist doesn’t believe it herself! Ref. Sally Burton’s rendition of the notorious Wairau Incident, RNZ (2017)

“So yes, I’ve got Te Rongo in the moment of falling, and just the moment when it all just came to grief really. I’ve got one of your images with Te Rauparaha in front of me, and such a sadness on his face.” – ibid

“A bullet rings out across a stream in the Wairau. A chief’s wife falls and a smouldering ember ignites. I chose that moment of her being shot. She’s suspended. She’s in the process of falling. And it’s just a dramatic moment before everything actually hit the fan and it really, really became a violent and horrible incident.” – Ref. Exhibition depicting first post-Treaty armed conflict (2018)

“Ironside buried the dead with the chiefs’ permission, though Te Rangihaeta advised him to “leave them to the wild pigs”. The bodies were mutilated; Wakefield was found with his skull split by one blow, insulted in death by the laying of his pistol across his throat and the placing of a piece of damper bread under his sacred head.”- NZH (1971)

“With so many, widely held views written about THE GUN and John BLENKINSOP, most based on hearsay and not on facts, the truth of the matter has largely been lost.” – Captain  John William Dundas Blenkinsop, Pat Akerblom (2012)

“One offered rationale is that one of Te Rangihaeta’s auxiliary wives, O-Rongo, had died during the battle and that this had greatly aggrieved the chief. For this, vengeance had to be extracted. However, there are some other possibilities which you can read about in a future post on AHNZ.” – 1843: The Wairau Affray, AHNZ

Sally is, of course, sticking to the mainstream view that Rauparaha was very sad and sorry about the Wairau Affray and Massacre rather than one of its chief architects.

Also, she is running with the story that O-Rongo was shot and killed by the Settler authorities over the Wairau River. It’s as if she were a precious Maori princess beloved to Te Rangihaeta and her loss might serve to justify the slaughter he unleashed. It is seldom pointed out that O-Rongo was Captain Blekinsop’s widow and inheritor. Having this woman in his pocket served as a legal claim on any land Blekinsop had title to. In fact, O-Rongo’s death might even be of benefit not only to the Wairau stand-off but also to the larger picture of the property deal. It was a deal that Rauparaha wanted torn up and burnt; He had torn up and destroyed his own copy of it.

Why not suppose that Mrs Blekinsop was shot and killed by the Maoris themselves? I’d like to investigate that further. But, of course, I don’t have arts funding or a government art gallery to back me up or propel me into the mainstream print and radio media as Sally does.

Just this website. Thanks for visiting.

 

 

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