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RNZ News
a day ago
- Politics
- RNZ News
Historians call for Ministry for Culture and Heritage job cuts to be reversed
The Ministry for Culture and Heritage is proposing to cut up to six historian roles. Photo: RNZ / Quin Tauetau Historians are calling on the government to reverse proposed job cuts at the Ministry for Culture and Heritage. It is proposing to cut up to six historian positions, leaving about four in place, among a total of 24 positions slated to go. In a statement, eight historian organisations said this was profoundly alarming and threatened to "dismantle decades of world-class historical scholarship, shutter vital resources for history research, and harm public education." "Our history deserves better," said the joint statement from The Professional Historians' Association, New Zealand Historical Association, History Teachers' Association, National Oral History Association, Archives and Records Association, Archaeological Association, Historic Places Aotearoa and the Society of Genealogists. The Ministry for Culture and Heritage (MCH) said in its proposal document it no longer had the focus, or the resources, to create history content or keep what it had up to date. It proposes to axe most positions working on digital content. The job of carillonist, who plays the bells in the tower of the Pukeahu war memorial in Wellington, would also go. The historian organisations said the characterisation of this work as somehow separate from the MCH's legislative mandate demonstrated a troubling narrowing of vision about what constitutes essential cultural heritage work. "Far from being peripheral activities, the creation and maintenance of historical content is essential cultural infrastructure that allows New Zealanders to better understand who we are." The ministry has been asked for comment. Its restructure last year set it up as "cultural system steward and policy adviser to government", its proposal said. With Budget 2025 cutting $8m from the ministry over four years, it would have to do less, "focused on activities that are required due to legislation, regulation or other mandate", and fewer activities in the community. Read more: How many public sector jobs have really been axed? The historian organisations said "irreplaceable" expertise would be lost in order to make only modest savings. "We call upon the government to ... ensure continuity of the oral history and research funding programmes that have supported New Zealand scholarship for over 30 years", they said, as well as preserve education outreach programmes to schools. Matt Woodbury, co-president of the Professional Historians' Association, one of eight groups, said the ministry was putting irreplaceable roles and online history resources in jeopardy. "I just wonder if they're not fully aware of the high standard and rates of use that these resources have." They were not niche, specialist online resources, but ones the likes of schools used. Getting rid of MCH historians who created and updated the content seemed to run against the work being done to introduce a new Aoteraoa histories curriculum, Woodbury said. Co-president Rebecca Lenihan said: "The impact on teachers if these resources are lost is going to be absolutely horrendous, for secondary history and social studies teachers, but for primary teachers too - how teachers are supposed to implement the new history curriculum efficiently and effectively without such resources at their fingertips is beyond me." [ Finance Minister Nicola Willis has directed public service departments to identify savings] options of either 6.5 or 7.5 percent to help reduce annual public service spending by $1.5 billion. National had campaigned on cutting back-office expenditure across 24 public agencies, as part of its "Back Pocket Boost" tax plan.
Irish Times
4 days ago
- General
- Irish Times
How Tuam, synonymous with a dark side of Irish history, can finally ‘do the right thing'
The laughter and shouts of children playing filled the air outside Trinity Primary School in Tuam, Co Galway , during break time on Monday morning. Further along the Dublin Road, just a short walk away, there is a very different playground. Under this site, it is believed that hundreds of children could be buried in a mass grave. Mother and baby homes now seem a world away but, not that long ago, they were to be found in towns across the country. In recent years, the name of Tuam has become synonymous with an Ireland of the past - a place which treated children born outside of marriage, and the women who gave birth to them, as problems that needed to be hidden. READ MORE They were often shipped off to live in mother and baby institutions , kept behind high walls. Out of sight and, largely, out of mind. 'They didn't matter in life, and they didn't matter in death,' local historian Catherine Corless said of past attitudes towards 'illegitimate' children. [ Catherine Corless: 'I was told more often than not that I was giving Tuam a bad name' Opens in new window ] Her research set off a chain of events which culminated in more 'walls' being built in Tuam this week but, this time, it is about 'doing the right thing', Ms Corless said. Access to the site of the town's former mother and baby home is being fenced off ahead of an excavation due to start in mid-July . The goal is to locate remains and, where possible, identify them so families can give their loved ones a dignified burial. It has taken a long time to get to this point. In May 2014, the Irish Daily Mail published research by Ms Corless which indicated that almost 800 babies and infants may be buried at the site. In the 11 years since, Ms Corless has become the name most associated with the site. Those years would prove she is a formidable force, but also as a naturally shy person, she initially found the level of public attention difficult. 'It was gruelling at times,' she said in Tuam on Monday. People would stop her in the supermarket and complain about what she was doing. 'I got that so many times, and it really upset me.' She was told she was 'giving Tuam a bad name' and 'tarnishing everyone' in the town. She said people would also stop her relatives and tell them 'she shouldn't be doing that, it's wrong, leave them there, it's terrible what she's doing'. While she has also received a lot of support, Ms Corless said the negative comments have not stopped. On Sunday, a man living in the US emailed her saying: 'You're about as credible as Santa Claus. You're a disgrace. I hope those nuns bring you to court.' From the beginning, she had known she was facing an uphill battle. 'My husband Aidan – he was very uneasy at the start because he said, 'You're taking on the State and you're taking on the [Catholic] Church, the biggest, the most powerful people in Ireland. And still, he backed me.' A truck delivers equipment to the site of the former Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, Co Galway, ahead of impending excavation works. Photograph: Andrew Downes/xposure Despite the setbacks, Ms Corless said the treatment of the babies and the lack of dignity in their burial was 'too horrific' for her to walk away. 'All those lovely little children and babies, that's the one thing that drove me. That's all that was in my mind – these babies are in a sewage system, they have to come out.' Siobhán Holliman, editor of the Tuam Herald newspaper, said some local people may have 'felt they were being blamed for something that they had nothing to do with', especially when international media descended on the town after the revelations were first published. However, most people are now 'supportive of what's going on', said Ms Holliman. 'Once people realised the extent of it, how many babies and infants died there, how many remains are up there – it's not a situation that can just be left. 'It's part of the town's history; you can't ignore history.' A test excavation in 2017 discovered a significant amount of human remains in what appeared to be a decommissioned sewage chamber. Ms Holliman said that while life has continued in the town since then, things felt somewhat 'on hold' while people waited for the full excavation to begin. The process is expected to take two years, but she hopes it will finally bring 'some closure for the relatives, the survivors, the town, and residents up there'. Most people in the street on Monday did not want to talk. Others said what happened at the institution was 'terrible' and they were happy the excavation work is finally set to begin. 'It's about time,' said one man, who did not wish to be named. 'The poor babies.'
New York Times
6 days ago
- General
- New York Times
I'm No Godlike Father After All
When my son was born, I got plenty of advice about his eating and sleeping, too much about which gear to buy and hardly any at all about my biggest question: what it actually meant to be a dad. It was the summer of 2017, a time of reckoning for fathers. Bill Cosby, known as America's dad, had been charged with sexual assault, and his trial played on every TV in the maternity ward. The nation had just elected as president Donald Trump, who boasted of never having changed a diaper. As #MeToo swept the country, masculinity entered a time of crisis on the left. Meanwhile, the right was embracing traditional visions of gender roles. I wanted to find a different model of paternal care, but this is not the sort of issue most parenting books address, and my own father, who had recently had a stroke, wasn't available to help guide me in the way he always had. All my life he had been a safe and solid presence, but now he was newly vulnerable and remote. I didn't want to fashion myself as infallible, as so many fathers do, so I did virtually the only thing I felt qualified to do as a historian: Whenever I could find a few free hours, I started researching the history of fatherhood, particularly in the West, in search of some lost ideal that I could emulate. Over more than six years of study, a few themes kept coming up. From the very beginning of the written historical record roughly 5,000 years ago, fatherhood has been marked by what looks to a modern reader to be masculine insecurity. Many of the oldest surviving legal and religious texts work anxiously to establish a godlike mandate: I know what's best, and if you do as I say, you will be completely protected and provided for. Ancient Sumerian inscriptions tell the story of a father, Shuruppak, eager to counsel his son Ziusudra. Shuruppak gives his son all sorts of advice, but his real concern is his own tenuous authority. 'My son,' Shuruppak pleads again and again, 'let me give you instructions: You should pay attention! The instructions of an old man are precious: You should comply with them!' In the centuries that followed, fathers would continue trying to reinforce their paternalistic authority, especially in times of crisis and social change. At a precarious moment in ancient Athens, when it seemed as if the great city might not survive, Aristotle formulated policies to increase a man's power within and beyond his household. The first Roman emperor sought to stabilize his empire after years of civil war by bolstering the patriarchal family and 'traditional' morality. Five hundred years ago, Henry VIII's anxieties about succession drove him to claw back the power to pass property and status to favored heirs. Again and again, the message has been the same: Fathers know best. Except in hindsight — whenever patriarchy ushered in war and destruction — it seemed clear that they did not. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
New York Times
13-06-2025
- General
- New York Times
She Confronted a History of Enslavers in Her Family. Here's What Happened.
This article is also a weekly newsletter. Sign up for Race/Related here. Debra Bruno used to love sharing stories about her family's deep roots in upstate New York. She often talked about her Italian ancestors who migrated to the Hudson Valley around the early 1900s and her Dutch forebears who established homesteads near Albany as far back as the 1650s. But a conversation with a friend, who is a historian, left her shaken, raising unsettling questions about her lineage. 'If you have Dutch ancestors in the Hudson Valley,' the friend told her, 'they were probably slave owners.' Enslavers in New York? In her family? It felt like 'a splash of cold water on my face,' recalled Bruno, a writer who lives in Washington, D.C. In the spring of 2018, she started digging, scrolling through archival records on Ancestry, a genealogical website. It took only a few weeks to find the will of Isaac Collier, a maternal ancestor. 'I give and bequeath to my son Joel one other feather bed,' Collier declared in 1796, and 'one Negro boy named Will.' Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Associated Press
13-06-2025
- Automotive
- Associated Press
A golf course with a 6-lane highway? Welcome to the US Open at Oakmont, where I-76 somehow blends in
OAKMONT, Pa. (AP) — For a six-lane interstate carving its way through a world-famous golf course, the Pennsylvania Turnpike at Oakmont is surprisingly unintrusive. From an overhead view, the sight is somewhat jarring — a wide expressway and railroad track dividing the course essentially in half. At ground level, however, the road is not much of a distraction. In fact, it can't be seen from much of Oakmont's layout. 'And honestly, you don't even really hear it,' Oakmont historian David Moore said. 'It's amazing how quiet it really is.' Moore is an expert on this small stretch of the Turnpike — or Interstate 76, if you prefer. Its path through the course at Oakmont — the site of the U.S. Open this week — was originally just a train track. 'One of the old history books here talks about how until diesel-powered trains came through, there'd be soot all over the first green, the ninth tee and all that,' Moore said. 'They'd be driving by and set off all the smoke and just cover the place.' This is not the Road Hole at St. Andrews. There's nothing quaint about the Turnpike at Oakmont. It also isn't — or at least, it shouldn't be — a factor in the course of play. With its slick greens and ferocious rough, Oakmont is difficult enough without adding a forced carry over a bunch of 18-wheelers. Holes Nos. 2-8 are to the east of the highway and all the rest are to the west. The first green and ninth tee, as well as the second tee and eighth green, converge on the two sides of the Turnpike, near a couple footbridges that allow fans to cross over the road. The biggest reason the roadway blends in when you're on the course is because there's an elevation change down to the highway. So the Turnpike presents largely as a gap in the middle of the course — if it's perceptible at all. There is no giant screen to prevent wayward balls from flying onto the road. The holes closest to the highway on the west side are generally perpendicular to it. Those on the east are more parallel, but it would take a pretty extraordinary miss to reach the Turnpike. That's not to say it can't happen. Moore tells the story of Cary Middlecoff hitting a ball toward the highway on No. 10 before withdrawing in disgust in 1953. Thirty years later, it was Tom Weiskopf on No. 8 working his way into Oakmont lore. 'He flared one off to the right, it landed in a passing train, and it ended up in Cleveland,' Moore said. 'The running joke around here: It was the longest tee shot ever hit.' The more realistic concern the highway creates is for fans. Even with a second footbridge added between the 1994 and 2007 U.S. Opens, there's still a potential bottleneck in that area as fans cross over the traffic below — which on Thursday included some drivers honking their horns as they passed by golf's third major of the year. Foot traffic wasn't excessively slow, but it was enough of a slog that bouncing back and forth between one side and the other wasn't advisable. Near the bridges, the highway is flanked by a wall on the west side and some fencing on the east. The wall seems to do a better job of suppressing the noise from below, but on both sides, you might hear the road before you can see it. If you're looking for a decent view without crowding onto a bridge, the area behind the 10th green has a nice vantage point of the highway as it descends north toward the Allegheny River. A grandstand at the green on No. 12 offers a view of the Turnpike going the opposite direction. For the most part, the sheer size of Oakmont turns even a major roadway — which can take cars all the way to Philadelphia in one direction and Akron, Ohio, in the other — into something of an afterthought. 'You don't really see it,' Moore said. 'Twelve is really like the only hole where you look over it.' ___ AP golf:
