OPINION: Old victors don’t rest easy, old trophies become dull, old injuries atrophy: the long silence of time is where corrosion sets in.
A few years back, wandering around Lower Hutt I came across a monument to something called The Battle of Boulcott Farm.
Concrete, rocks, and marble plaques commemorated brave Pakeha soldiers who in 1846 died defending Hutt land against, er, Maori invaders.
I’m just a visitor here in Te-Upoko-o-te-Ika-a-Maui – my iwi is from the Far North. But standing there with the monument radiating colonialism like a nasty whiff of mothballs and wig nets, I felt anger for all our people, erased from history.
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