https://dx.doi.org/10.32912/bulletin/21/4
Abstract
In 2004 the remains of a First World War soldier were disinterred from the Caterpillar Valley Cemetery in France and returned to New Zealand to be reburied in the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior at the National War Memorial in Wellington. The warrior’s original resting place in the Somme was in a Commonwealth (formerly Imperial) War Graves Commission cemetery. The commission was established in 1917 to care for the graves of the empire’s Great War dead. Prior to the new tomb in Wellington, the warrior buried in Westminster Abbey in London since 1920 had served as New Zealand’s unknown.
In the 1960s, with the development of a ‘new nationalism’ in New Zealand, came the emergence of new emblems of nationhood. By the time of the fifth Labour government (1999– 2008) led by Prime Minister Helen Clark, an agenda to shape New Zealand’s national identity— including the promotion of military heritage—was well-established. At the Unknown Warrior’s funeral and interment ceremony in Wellington on 11 November 2004, both Clark and Governor- General Dame Sylvia Cartwright proposed the warrior’s return represented a coming of age for New Zealand and a shared identity for its citizens. Against the backdrop of the Imperial War Graves Commission’s founding principles, this article explores the rhetoric of the official public ceremonies on the occasion of the Unknown Warrior’s return, and his apparent mobilisation and co-option in the construction of New Zealand’s distinctive, contemporary national identity.
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Citation
Baird, Kingsley. 2020. ‘The Past We Harvest That Was Yours’: The Rhetoric of National Identity and the Legacy of the Unknown Warrior in New Zealand Memory. Bulletin of the Auckland Museum. 21: 19–26. https://dx.doi.org/10.32912/bulletin/21/4