Elizabeth Harvey
Cambridge Museum manager Elizabeth Harvey wants to work more closely with mana whenua to better understand their story.
Elizabeth Harvey is capturing Cambridge’s stories through video interviews. Photo: Chris Gardner
Harvey, who joined the museum full time in 2022 after working for three years part time, completed a Te Wananga o Aotearoa course before embarking on a project to capture the town’s stories through video interviews.
The Voices of Cambridge project is not dissimilar to the BBC’s Domesday Project that Harvey participated in during the mid-1980s in the Midlands of the UK. She was one of thousands of British schoolchildren to capture stories in their home villages and towns to mark the 900th anniversary of the original Domesday Book compiled by William the Conqueror.
“We have started an archive, for the digital age,” Harvey said.
It will include 40 interviews from Cambridge people running from 30 minutes to four hours each.
“In the digital age having digital story telling is really important.”
The stories will be archived on site.
Telling the stories of mana whenua is also important, Harvey believes, which is why Māori have been involved in the project. For her it’s about building relationships, sitting down and listening to people’s stories.
“There’s a lot of work needs to be done with mana whenua,” Harvey said.
Particularly when it comes to the telling of the story of the settling of the town in 1864 as a military settlement for the 3rd Waikato Militia and the town becoming a major staging point and supply route for prospectors heading to the goldfields around Waihī in the 1870s.
“The history of New Zealand is all about the ownership of land and of power struggles.”
Harvey has recently started free twice weekly historical tours of the town.
“We live in a really beautiful town,” she said.
“It’s got quite a complex history, as most places do in New Zealand, from the arrival of Māori in the 1300s and 1400s, the New Zealand Land Wars and Cambridge as a planned town.”
The builders of Cambridge believed they had a future, said Harvey, building hotels, bakeries and banks.
“If you have got beer, bread and money then you have got a future.”
The tour is more a conversation where participants are encouraged to discuss the town’s history with Harvey as they go.
Harvey came to New Zealand from Edinburgh, where she lived and worked for six years for the National Museums of Scotland as a researcher and content development manager.
Elizabeth Harvey is capturing Cambridge’s stories through video interviews. Photo: Chris Gardner
