One Land.
This weekend was the first episode of a TV series on New Zealand TV called One Land. It follows 3 families as they try to live in 1850′s New Zealand.
Its great!
The Pa (Settlement) where the Maori Families live.
I normally have no time at all for NZ TV – as its basically rubbish (which seems to be the consensus from just about everyone). Our personal taste is for Sci Fi, and we are years behind on most things – so the ability to download is pretty essential to avoid going nuts.
In this case – we missed the first episode – but caught it on TVNZ’s On Demand Service. (Hopefully this is viewable from outside New Zealand).
Of the 3 families: one is a Maori Family who are what is know as “Total Immersion” – that is they not only speak fluent Maori, but also live fully in their culture, and while they can speak English – choose not to in their daily lives. The second family has Maori roots, but does not speak Te Reo Maori or have any connection to the Maori culture or history. Both these families live together on a Pa (Settlement).
The third family are “Pakeha” – white settlers – sourced from Christchurch – and have almost no prior contact with the Maori Culture. They will be living on a separate piece of land, in a “house”.
For a start, watching it gave me a pang of homesickness for summers going to Medieval fairs – but that aside – it is a truly interesting show – and I can’t wait for the next episode. The two cultures have to learn to trade with each other and survive.
One thing that really struck me is that 160 years on – some things haven’t changed. There were some classic comments made by both the participants and the historian – which shows me that no matter where in history you are – emigrating throws up some interesting dilemmas:
“Many People came here to make some money, go home and buy land.” (From the Historian narating the show).
(Now – you leave New Zealand to make money, come home and buy land!)
“One of the inducements we used to get settlers to New Zealand, was offering them parcels of land. These were purchased in Britain or Ireland. And when Migrants came out and saw those places for the first time, they found they were very inaccessible or quite different from what they were led to believe they were.”
(Aka, come to New Zealand, the property is cheap, ( you can tell – look at it on the Internet) – and you wont need a decent wage because the cost of living is so cheap!)
And the very best quote:
“That’s not a house – it’s a shack, mate!”
(The call of many a recent immigrants on seeing the state of new Zealand housing!)
There’s also a really good explanation of what the word Pakeha means: Pa (To come upon) Ke (something strange) Ha (a presence), so the word actually means To come upon a strange presence. Hmm – I didn’t know that.
I really hope you can watch this from outside New Zealand – it’s a fascinating look at how this land became what it is today. I know very little New Zealand history – I think this is not a bad way to start.
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Comments
2 Comments on One Land.
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hubby on
Wed, 16th Dec 2009 10:21 pm
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Avalon on
Thu, 17th Dec 2009 2:59 pm
One of the odd comments I found from the historian near the start was that they selected the (NZ) family who were going to represent the English settlers by picking from South Island, and Christchurch specifically – since there is very little Maori presence there!
And yeah, not much has changed in 160 years;
Immigration policy to encourage families to come out to NZ (literally recently amended a little to try and encourage young single professionals with a job search visa)
Leaky homes. ‘nuf said.
Misleading real estate descriptions.
Heating consists of a fire (wood burner)
Limited shopping 
Limited Shopping -Rofl
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