Seminar Series: Abstract

Rehabilitating Assimilation: War and the Indigenous 'Other' in Canada and New Zealand, 1943-48
Scott Sheffield - History Department, University College of the Fraser Valley, Abbotsford, BC, Canada

Though they shared a common British heritage, the tone and claims of the public media in English-Canada and New Zealand during the transitional years from war to peace, 1943-48, suggested a state of relations between the dominant society and indigenous people in the two Dominions that could not have been more different. Certainly there were substantial disparities, which can be seen in the nature of Maori and First Nations contributions to the national war effort. Yet in spite of those differences, both English-Canadians and Pakeha found that indigenous involvement in the Second World War presented challenges to how they viewed First Nations and Maori, and by extension to how they viewed themselves. Moreover, Pakeha and English Canadians responded to the challenges in similar ways, something that becomes evident in the way that each settler society constructed their indigenous 'other', where we see convergence during postwar reconstruction. In the end, both English-Canadians and Pakeha managed to rehabilitate the ideology of assimilation to fit with the high minded-wartime rhetoric and nationalist ideals upon which they sought to build their post-war New Order: as the only logical and moral goal for the First Nations and Maori populations in their midst.