Kōrero: The New Zealanders

Certificate of attendance, New Zealand Centennial Exhibition, 1939

Certificate of attendance, New Zealand Centennial
    Exhibition, 1939

The 1940 centennial of the Treaty of Waitangi was used by the Labour government to encourage a sense of national identity. Yet as this certificate of attendance at the centennial fair at Rongotai suggests, identity still had more to do with native birds and trees, and general progress, than with any distinctive personal qualities. In this case the nation’s people are personified by the classical figure of Zealandia.

Te whakamahi i tēnei tūemi

Alexander Turnbull Library
Reference: Eph-C-EXHIBITION-1939-01
Photolithograph by Leonard Mitchell

Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any re-use of this image.

Ngā whakaahua me ngā rauemi katoa o tēnei kōrero

Te tuhi tohutoro mō tēnei whārangi:

Jock Phillips, 'The New Zealanders - ‘Where Britain goes, we go’', Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/mi/ephemera/1970/certificate-of-attendance-new-zealand-centennial-exhibition-1939 (accessed 29 March 2024)

He kōrero nā Jock Phillips, i tāngia i te 8 Feb 2005, updated 1 May 2015