History in the Crossfire:

Rotorua’s Museum Clash and the Global

​Battle of Narratives

A Clash at the Museum: Rotorua’s ‘True History’ Showdown
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by Adam Rangihana

A Clash at the Museum: Rotorua’s ‘True History’ Showdown

History in the Crossfire: Rotorua’s Museum Clash and the Global Battle of Narratives

A Clash at the Museum: Rotorua’s ‘True History’ Showdown...

What began as a routine funding discussion in Rotorua’s council chambers quickly spiraled into a raw confrontation over who gets to define history. During a June meeting on budgeting exhibitions for the long-closed Rotorua Museum, Councillor Robert Lee abruptly steered the conversation to whether the city’s “true history” would be told in the redeveloped galleries. Lee – a vocal skeptic of certain bicultural initiatives – disputed a prevailing narrative that local iwi (tribe) had freely gifted land for the township, implying the museum might whitewash facts he deemed inconvenient. His line of questioning drew immediate ire. Fellow councillor Fisher Wang raised a point of order, calling Lee’s history broaching irrelevant to the funding at hand, while Deputy Mayor Sandra Kai Fong repeatedly urged Lee to rephrase or drop the tangent. “I’m sure everyone has a different recollection and view on history and events,” Kai Fong noted pointedly, highlighting how even shared local history had splintered into contested versions.
Undeterred, Lee pressed on. He claimed he’d received no “assurance” that the museum’s curators would portray the past accurately, and warned he couldn’t endorse an exhibition that sidesteps critical truths. Citing a 1948 Commission of Inquiry into Rotorua land grievances – in which iwi accepted a settlement – Lee suggested that chapter encapsulated the real story of Rotorua and should form the museum’s backbone. The planned approach, he complained, seemed geared to “enable Te Arawa storytelling in a sympathetic way” without guaranteeing factual completeness. In Lee’s view, an overly “sympathetic” iwi-led narrative might omit or gloss over aspects of Rotorua’s colonial-era agreements that he considered settled history.
Others vehemently disagreed. “If you knew the people we are working with, their integrity is unquestionable. They will tell it, warts and all,” councillor Rawiri Waru responded, defending the museum project’s historians and exhibition designers. Waru – who affiliates to Te Arawa, the iwi in question – argued that telling Rotorua’s story “warts and all” meant including indigenous perspectives that had long been marginalized. He noted that in the 1948 inquiry which Lee treats as definitive, “Ngāti Whakaue could not even choose their own representatives or have involvement in the report”. In other words, the historical account Lee championed was itself one-sided – a state-authored version in which Māori voices were constrained. “Maybe there’s some history there that would be nice to hear,” Waru added dryly, turning the tables to suggest the museum’s Te Arawa-centric approach might actually correct, rather than create, distortions.
The debate ended unresolved, but the rancor only grew afterward. Following the meeting, Wang took to social media to reveal that the argument with Lee continued in the corridors – and turned profane. Lee allegedly belittled the younger Wang as “boy” and told him “if you can’t back up your claim of misrepresentation… then you can f* off”. (Wang had earlier accused Lee of misrepresenting the exhibition plans.) Lee later denied literally saying “f off”* – claiming he “trailed off” mid-sentence – but coolly conceded that Wang “inferred his meaning correctly”. The council’s ideological divide had burst into the open, laced with personal insults and generational tension. It wasn’t the first incident, either: the same two councillors had clashed the year prior over a planned “Rainbow Storytime” event for children, which Wang supported and Lee blasted as inappropriate. In Rotorua’s small chamber, one could see the reflections of a much larger culture war at play.
Local Rifts Reflect National DebatesRotorua’s tug-of-war over historical narrative is not an isolated flare-up – it resonates with broader currents in New Zealand’s politics. The country has been grappling with how to honor the Māori version of history and uphold indigenous partnership in governance, a struggle often cleaving along left–right lines. Just months earlier, the Rotorua Lakes Council voted to establish a new iwi-council partnership committee to give Te Arawa tribes a voice (though not a vote) in local decisions. The move was hailed by Te Arawa leaders – one called it “thrilling” – yet it drew fire from familiar quarters. Councillor Lee objected that the public “won’t have the opportunity to vote these iwi representatives off”, characterizing the arrangement as a “diminishing of democracy” by including unelected Māori advisors. His criticism echoed a refrain heard across national politics: that “co-governance” with Māori (joint management of resources or institutions) undermines the one-person-one-vote principle.
Such arguments have found a receptive audience on New Zealand’s political right. A controversial activist, Julian Batchelor, has toured the country on a self-styled “Stop Co-Governance” roadshow, whipping up crowds by claiming an “elite Māori takeover” is underway. He describes indigenous partnership efforts as a “coup by stealth”, framing Māori political influence as a dire threat to democracy. These alarmist messages – dismissed by critics as racist fearmongering – have nevertheless tapped into public anxieties and even bled across borders. Batchelor’s rhetoric about an indigenous “apartheid” has been picked up by far-right commentators in Australia to rail against that country’s Indigenous Voice proposal. In online echo chambers monitored by disinformation researchers, New Zealand’s co-governance is painted as a “hostile takeover of the country” controlling “everything” – a narrative remarkably similar to tropes used by Australian Voice opponents warning of a shadowy Aboriginal elite grabbing power.
It’s no coincidence that New Zealand’s recent election (late 2023) became a referendum of sorts on these issues. The outgoing center-left government had embraced partnership measures – including integrating more Māori history into school curricula and establishing Māori health authorities – while the incoming center-right coalition campaigned on winding back many of those “divisive” policies. Co-governance, once a wonky policy term, “became a political football” in the election as conservatives lambasted it and progressives defended it. The result is a polity increasingly split on what honoring the Treaty of Waitangi (the nation’s founding agreement with Māori) should look like in practice. Should decision-making be shared with indigenous people as a form of restorative justice, or does that erode equal citizenship? Even the facts of history are caught in the crossfire of this debate. Efforts to include Māori pūrākau (stories) and colonial injustices in the national history curriculum, for example, have been praised as overdue truth-telling by the left – and derided as “rewriting history” by some on the right.
Seen in this light, the fiery Rotorua museum dispute is a microcosm of New Zealand’s struggle over narrative sovereignty. At its heart is a question: Whose story of the past will prevail in public spaces – the indigenous community’s telling, the traditional Pākehā (European settler) account, or some balanced reconciliation? And what if those accounts fundamentally diverge on key points? The friction in that council meeting, with an Asian New Zealander (Wang) and Māori representative (Waru) defending historical inclusivity against a Pākehā traditionalist (Lee) calling for “the truth” as he sees it, encapsulates a society sorting out its identity and values. It also mirrors the cultural conflicts far beyond Aotearoa’s shores.
Culture Wars Without Borders: Australia, America, Britain, New Zealand is far from alone. Across the Western world, ideological battles over history and identity have intensified, following strikingly similar scripts of provocation and backlash. In Australia, a landmark referendum in 2023 asked voters whether to amend the constitution to establish an Indigenous advisory body (the “Voice to Parliament”). What might have been a sober debate over policy instead became a maelstrom of misinformation and culture-war rhetoric. Fringe campaigners flooded social media with outrageous claims – suggesting, for instance, that the modest advisory council would “open a gateway to unending tyranny”, even likening it to Hitler’s 1933 enabling act. Such claims “bear little resemblance” to the actual proposal (which was merely a non-binding consultative body), yet they went viral online and seeded broad confusion. By the time Australians went to the polls, support for the Voice had slumped from about two-thirds to well under 40%, a collapse analysts partly attributed to the steady diet of viral falsehoods and fear-mongering narratives during the campaign. The referendum was resoundingly defeated. Many Aboriginal leaders lamented that instead of a constructive national conversation – or “truth-telling,” as they call confronting Australia’s colonial past – the Voice debate became mired in what one reporter described as “divisive and dangerous [arguments] grounded in hearsay and misinformation”. The cycle of provocation and reaction had short-circuited any hope of a shared understanding.
In the United States, the battle over public narrative often centers on schools and cultural institutions. Over the past few years, conservative activists and politicians have mobilized to restrict how topics like race, gender, and American history are taught – moves they brand as protecting children from “indoctrination.” Dozens of states have proposed or passed laws banning so-called “divisive concepts” in classrooms, frequently targeting anything associated with critical race theory or frank discussion of past injustices. From school board meetings to state legislatures, one side asserts that educators are making white students feel ashamed of their heritage, while the other side insists they are simply teaching historical facts about racism and inequality. “Many educators… insist they’re simply teaching U.S. history, and that they are victims in a culture war drummed up by conservative activists,” one report noted, even as angry parents (encouraged by partisan media) accuse schools of subverting American pride. The result has been a flurry of book bans, curriculum rewrites, and even threats against teachers. In some states, lessons on topics like slavery, civil rights, or Native American displacement have been toned down or accompanied by “opposing perspectives” mandates in an effort to appease critics. History itself has become politicized content. Much like Councillor Lee’s demands in Rotorua, American conservative lawmakers have called for more “patriotic” or “accurate” history – often code words for a version of the past that emphasizes national achievements and downplays ugly chapters. Meanwhile, progressives push back with campaigns to “Teach the Truth”, arguing that only an honest accounting (however uncomfortable) can form the basis of a just society. Each provocation invites an equal and opposite reaction, locking communities into endless contention over what the next generation should learn.
Even Britain, often seen as more genteel in its politics, has found itself convulsed by fights over historical narrative. Museums and heritage institutions in the UK have become “caught in the middle of an increasingly intense culture war” over the legacy of empire. On one flank, activists and scholars urge museums to “decolonise” – to confront the imperial origins of their collections, repatriate stolen artifacts, and rewrite exhibits that once glossed over colonial atrocities. On the other, conservative commentators and politicians accuse these institutions of disavowing Britain’s history and pandering to political correctness. Scarcely a week passes without a flashpoint: the removal (or defense) of statues celebrating colonial figures, debates over Oxford and Cambridge college legacies, or complaints that adding context about slavery and conquest in museums is akin to erasing heritage. For example, London’s venerable British Museum and others have faced pressure to acknowledge that much of their treasure was acquired through conquest and colonization. Some have responded with new labels and exhibits that explicitly call out the “loot” and coercion behind certain artifacts. The Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford even removed its famous display of shrunken heads – once treated as ghoulish curiosities – and posted signs warning visitors that the museum itself is “a footprint of colonialism” laden with derogatory and racist interpretations from the past. Such moves delight advocates of change but draw ridicule or outrage from the other side. An Oxford newspaper derided the Pitt Rivers’ reforms as “politically motivated curatorial revisionism”, and a prominent art critic sneered that “nobody will be attracted to the Pitt Rivers by the slogan: ‘It’s the museum that won’t let you see its shrunken heads’”. Prominent conservatives claim the push to reevaluate imperial history is “wokery… run amok” that relies on “baseless and simplistic assertions about our past”. Meanwhile, activists counter that failing to modernize the narrative is itself a political choice – one that perpetuates old myths of colonial glory and omits the voices of the colonized. In the UK as elsewhere, each side fears the “erasure” of history – but they differ violently on which history is at risk of being erased.
From Rotorua to London to Washington, the pattern is strikingly similar. Historical narratives – be it the story of a small New Zealand city, a nation’s founding, or a museum collection – are being squeezed in a vice of polarization. The left and right critique each other’s version of “truth” and engage in a constant cycle of provocation and rebuttal. In an age of social media amplification, these disputes don’t stay local; they feed into a transnational culture war. A provocative claim or emotionally charged anecdote (accurate or not) can ping around the world, mobilizing allies and antagonists almost instantly. What’s left in the wake of these storms is often not a clearer truth, but a deeper confusion.
Narrative Breakdown: A New Tower of Babel Observers have begun likening this phenomenon to a modern-day Tower of Babel, the Biblical story in which humanity’s shared language fractured into a cacophony of tongues. According to the Book of Genesis, humans once “had one language” until their arrogance in building a great tower prompted God to “confus[e] the language” so “they could no longer understand one another”, dispersing them across the earth. The tale is an apt metaphor for today’s fractured public discourse. On issue after issue, we see groups ostensibly speaking the same language – English words, same town or nation – yet utterly failing to communicate across an ideological chasm. Each camp has its own vernacular, its own facts and references intelligible only to its adherents. In Rotorua, when Robert Lee demands “true history,” he is speaking a language of historical absolutism that his colleagues simply do not recognize as valid – and their calls for sensitivity and “storytelling in a sympathetic way” are, in turn, anathema to him. They might as well be talking past each other in different tongues.
Around the globe, this narrative breakdown is producing what some commentators dub a “post-truth” environment. In such an environment, objective facts often matter less than the feeling of truth a narrative provides to one’s political tribe. Misinformation and spin, once seen as the occasional propaganda of fringe actors, now saturate mainstream debates to the point of exhaustion. The consequences are profound. Studies of democratic societies have found that when false or misleading narratives flood the space, it “clouds facts, heightens tensions, and drives a kind of emotional, vengeful politics” that undermines rational debate. Indeed, instead of deliberation based on shared evidence, we get performative outrage and tribal rallying cries. People retreat into information silos where their views are constantly reinforced, and opposing voices sound ever more alien – as if spoken in a foreign dialect.
This dynamic creates a “third language” of public discourse: not a consensus vernacular, but a language of confusion and distortion. In this new tongue, words don’t have agreed meanings. “Truth,” “racism,” “democracy,” “violence,” even “history” itself become weaponized terms, each side attaching its own definitions. For example, to one group “democracy” might mean pure majority rule with no special accommodations, while to another it means an inclusive power-sharing that rectifies historical exclusion. Both invoke the sanctity of democracy, yet they mean very different things – and each believes the other is twisting the word. This breakdown in shared language is both a cause and effect of growing polarization. Like the builders of Babel, we risk finding ourselves unable to build anything together, lost in mutual incomprehension.
Is this truly a new era, though, or just a high-tech replay of an old pattern? There’s a case to be made on both sides. On one hand, the speed and scale of today’s narrative fracturing is unprecedented. Digital media and global connectivity ensure that a fringe idea – say, a conspiracy theory that an indigenous advisory council is a prelude to tyranny – can leap from obscurity to millions of screens overnight. Disinformation campaigns that once took months via pamphlets or radio can now undermine a public vote in weeks or days. Furthermore, the blending of entertainment and news means provocative falsehoods often outperform nuanced truth in capturing attention, incentivizing political actors to engage in more and more performative exaggeration. The reaction cycles accelerate as each incendiary claim is met with an equally loud rebuttal, often ignoring nuance for the sake of a snappy comeback. Many analysts warn that this feedback loop, turbocharged by algorithms and partisan media, is stretching the fabric of shared reality to the breaking point. In short, the mechanics of narrative breakdown have new fuel in the 21st century.
On the other hand, humans have arguably been here before – many times. “Propaganda and disinformation are nothing new. In fact, humans have always lived in the age of post-truth,” writes historian Yuval Noah Harari, who points out that myths and fabricated stories have long bound societies together (or torn them apart). From medieval blood libel legends that incited anti-Semitic massacres, to the pamphlet wars of the Reformation, to 20th-century totalitarian propaganda, history is littered with examples of lies and legends shattering consensus and sowing chaos. In colonial contexts, one might argue, a “post-truth” era was the norm – indigenous histories were dismissed and replaced by imperial narratives, and vice versa in resistance lore. Seen through this lens, today’s conflicts over whose story to believe are less a new rupture than a continuation of humanity’s oldest battles. We have always fought over the story of who we are.
Power, Truth, and Who Owns the StoryAt the crux of these battles is power – specifically, the power to define reality. This might be termed narrative sovereignty: the right to have one’s story told and believed. For indigenous peoples, narrative sovereignty means reclaiming the telling of their history after generations of marginalization. The Rotorua Museum is pointedly named Te Whare Taonga o Te Arawa (The Treasure House of Te Arawa) – a nod to the local iwi’s authority and stake in the museum’s contents. Including Te Arawa’s own voice in exhibits is an exercise in shifting power, as much as it is about historical accuracy. Likewise, calls for “truth-telling” in Australia – such as through a proposed truth and reconciliation commission – aim to centre Aboriginal experiences of history (frontier massacres, dispossession, survival) that were long relegated to the footnotes of textbooks. To those who have never seen their truths acknowledged, any step toward narrative power feels long overdue.
But to those accustomed to holding narrative power, these efforts can feel like an attack – a usurpation of the authority they once had to shape public memory. That sense of loss often fuels the backlash. When Councillor Lee decries an iwi-focused exhibit, or when critics in Britain rail against museums “erasing” imperial glory, they are reacting to a perceived dethroning of their narrative dominance. For generations, the default storyteller – in museums, schools, halls of power – was the colonizer, the majority culture, the status quo. Now, as that default is questioned, some interpret it as an existential threat to their identity. This fear can explode in dramatic ways. In the U.S., for example, largely white school boards, egged on by political campaigns, have moved to ban books by Black or LGBTQ authors under the banner of protecting American or family values. The subtext is often that alternative perspectives on history or society are dangerous intrusions. In New Zealand, the Stop Co-Governance rallies explicitly paint Māori influence as anti-democratic oppression of everyone else. The irony is palpable: those who long controlled the narrative now cast themselves as the oppressed, even as their version of history is still often the one with institutional inertia behind it.
The struggle over narrative sovereignty also raises deeper questions about truth versus perspective. History, after all, is not a fixed set of data; it’s an interpretive story we construct from facts. Two communities can agree on a list of dates and events yet tell completely different stories about what they mean. For instance, did Ngāti Whakaue gift Rotorua’s land, or did they cede it under duress, or did they engage in a pragmatic exchange? The answer might depend on who you ask and what sources you privilege – the settler government’s records or the iwi’s oral histories. A museum exhibit (or a textbook) inevitably makes choices about emphasis and framing. Those choices can either reinforce the old hierarchy of voices or challenge it.
The current narrative battles often feature one side accusing the other of distorting truth under the guise of perspective. Progressive and indigenous advocates argue that what they seek is not bias but balance – to include all truths, especially those suppressed before. Rotorua’s Waru, for example, vowed the museum team would show the history “warts and all,” implying that previous tellings left out the warts (i.e. the uncomfortable parts). In contrast, conservatives suspect these “corrective” narratives smuggle in their own bias, replacing one skewed story with another. They fear an overcorrection, where guilt and grievances dominate and the achievements of a culture (or the nuances of context) get short shrift. This is the essence of the “theatres of atonement” concern voiced by Neil MacGregor, former director of the British Museum, who warned that great institutions risk becoming solely spaces for apologizing for past wrongs rather than places of discovery. The question of whose truth the public should hear is thus deeply entangled with whose values and interests are served by that truth.
Museums, Trust, and the Bicultural FutureInstitutions like museums find themselves on the frontlines of this conflict. A museum is meant to be a trusted repository of knowledge – a place where the public encounters a curated representation of reality, ideally above the fray of politics. But can such a neutral stance exist in times of intense polarization? The Rotorua Museum, still under redevelopment, now carries heavy expectations. To Te Arawa iwi, it must finally showcase their narratives with dignity and depth. To others in the community, it must not succumb to a perceived revisionism. The museum’s eventual exhibits will likely be scrutinized for any hint of “political spin” – a pressure that curators a generation ago (when mainstream narratives went unquestioned) did not face so explicitly. Around the world, museum professionals are wrestling with similar dilemmas. The backlash against the Pitt Rivers Museum’s decolonization efforts, or against the Smithsonian’s attempts to address uncomfortable history, suggests that even when experts strive for accuracy and inclusivity, segments of the public may see bias.
The public trust is at stake. If every museum, archive, or library becomes viewed as partisan – either captured by “woke” agendas or by nationalist nostalgia – then our last arbiters of factual consensus may crumble. We risk a future where any presentation of history is assumed to be just propaganda from one side or another. This would be a profound loss. Societies depend on some common reference points, some agreed narratives (even broad ones) to function cohesively. When disagreement becomes so total that we cannot even agree on who did what in the past, it bodes ill for cooperation in the present. The Tower of Babel metaphor extends here: in that story, once language broke down, the project at hand (building the tower) collapsed. Likewise, if our shared language of truth breaks down, collective projects – whether it’s healing racial divides or simply deciding how to run a city museum – become almost impossible.
For countries like New Zealand, which are explicitly trying to forge a bicultural future, finding a way out of the narrative maze is crucial. The Treaty of Waitangi partnership model rests on the idea of two peoples moving forward together. That, in turn, requires a degree of mutual understanding and respect for each other’s historical truths. If every attempt at power-sharing is seen through a zero-sum lens (one side’s gain is the other’s loss), the partnership frays. The Rotorua council’s establishment of an iwi committee, met with Lee’s skepticism, is one attempt to structurally embed shared narrative and decision-making. It’s a delicate experiment, not unlike the country’s broader journey since the Treaty settlement process: how to acknowledge past wrongs and present inequalities while maintaining unity. The hope is that giving Māori a real say (and say in telling their story) ultimately strengthens the community for everyone. But as we’ve seen, not everyone is on board with that hope – and some are actively stoking fear about it.
Globally, this may be a defining challenge of the coming decades: Can pluralistic societies develop a shared narrative that is honest yet unifying? Or will we drift further into parallel realities, where museums, media, and education each cater to a siloed constituency with its own “truth”? The past suggests that total consensus is unrealistic – there will always be competing narratives. However, history also shows that societies can, at times, agree on enough of a common story to move forward. Think of post-war reconciliations or truth commissions that, while not embraced by all, did establish an official record that most accepted. In the wake of the Voice referendum’s failure in Australia, some advocates are calling for renewed grassroots truth-telling efforts to rebuild common ground. In the U.S., educators and historians are banding together to defend fact-based teaching and find better ways to engage communities on difficult topics. And in New Zealand, despite the noise of the culture wars, many citizens continue to participate in Waitangi Day commemorations, local haka performances, and school kapa haka (Māori cultural groups) – small but significant threads weaving a bicultural narrative in everyday life.
Ultimately, the struggle over narrative – who gets to speak, who is heard, and who is believed – is a struggle over the soul of society. Rotorua’s museum will eventually open its doors, and visitors will walk through halls filled with stories of Te Arawa and the settlers, of conflict and resolution, of pain and growth. One can imagine Robert Lee and Fisher Wang both strolling through – perhaps on opposite sides of the room – each judging whether their vision of “true history” has won out. But one can also imagine a third scenario: that the museum presents history in a way that doesn’t “pick a side” in today’s terms but rather transcends the binary. The best historians strive to let the evidence speak, to present multiple perspectives and invite the public to understand context. If done well, the new Rotorua Museum exhibits could become a model for how to navigate narrative sovereignty: by giving space to previously silenced voices without eliminating the old ones entirely, by contextualizing legends and facts side by side. It’s a high bar to clear, especially in this charged climate.
From a wider lens, we might ask if humanity can avoid a permanent Babel. Is there a way to restore some shared language without suppressing diversity of thought? The answer may lie in rediscovering the principles of good faith dialogue and critical thinking – teaching ourselves to distinguish between factual disagreements and value disagreements, and to approach each with humility. It also lies in reaffirming the importance of institutions that, for all their flaws, earn trust by striving for fairness. Museums, schools, media – these can be bridges rather than battlefields, if we demand integrity from them and from ourselves as consumers of information.
The clashes in council chambers and cultural forums are likely to continue; they may even intensify as societies become more diverse and as economic stresses increase the temptation to find scapegoats. But the awareness of the pattern – that we are in a cycle of provocation and reaction which fractures language – is the first step to breaking it. In the Tower of Babel myth, the people were scattered because they no longer understood each other. Today we are not literally scattered, but fragmentation threatens our ability to act collectively. Recognizing that as a danger might spur efforts to rebuild common understanding. It could inspire what one might call a “narrative détente” – agreeing to rules of engagement about how we debate our history and future.
For Rotorua, for New Zealand, and for an unsettled world, the path forward likely involves a blend of courage and compromise: courage to confront the “warts and all” truths of history, and willingness to let those truths be told by multiple voices; compromise in accepting that one’s preferred narrative may not always take center stage. The alternative is to keep shouting past each other, in ever more incomprehensible tongues, until the very foundations of our shared institutions – our museums, our democracies – crack under the strain. That is a fate neither left nor right truly desires. Perhaps, then, there is hope that recognizing the narrative breakdown for what it is will galvanize a movement to overcome it. After all, the Tower of Babel was never completed – maybe our modern Babel doesn’t have to be the end of the story.