Protests over the Vietnam War and antinuclear issues contributed strongly to New Zealand's sense of identity as an independent nation, a Wellington historian, Dr Jock Phillips, said yesterday. Dr Phillips (67) gave a keynote address, titled ‘‘lest you forget'', at an interdisciplinary conference on ‘‘War Memorialisation and the Nation'', held at the University of Otago.
In the many World War 1 memorials throughout the country, there was little that was distinctively New Zealand by way of symbolism - such as any use of emblems involving kiwis, he said in an interview.
The ‘‘level of loss'' of life among New Zealanders in World War 1 had been ‘‘incredibly wide'', but among those who had remained at home there had not been an immediate questioning of New Zealand's place in the British Empire.
It had taken ‘‘quite a while'' for New Zealanders to reconsider their role as ‘‘being the territorials of Empire''.
Subsequent protests over New Zealand's involvement in the Vietnam War in the 1970s and the later but related anti-nuclear protest movement had contributed strongly to ‘‘our growing sense'' of New Zealand having ‘‘a particular ecological, environmental identity'' and a more independent foreign policy, he said.
The conference was organised by the Otago department of anthropology and archaeology and the Historic Cemeteries Conservation Trust of New Zealand.
Dr Phillips recently retired from the Ministry for Culture and Heritage as senior editor of Te Ara - Encyclopedia of New Zealand.
Another conference participant, Australian historian Prof Joy Damousi, will give a public lecture on ‘‘mourning, memory and the politics of Anzac commemoration: war, emotions and the responsibility of historians'', at the university's St David lecture theatre, at 6.15pm today.
