International Council of Archives

Kia ora koutou katoa.

I’m Stefanie Lash, and I’m an archivist at Archives New Zealand’s Head Office in Wellington. I hope to eventually work in all the archival areas of our organisation, but for now I’m very happy in our Research Services team, where I’ve been for three years.

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 At the moment I’m stepping away from my usual role, as I have the opportunity to work on two exciting projects that form the first phase of Archives New Zealand’s ten-year strategic partnership with the National Library of New Zealand.

The first is a large-scale project to list and digitise 19th century records. Government recordkeeping in New Zealand began in 1840, and records from the 19th century have for a long time been accessible mainly only to those researchers who are able to visit our Wellington office in person and investigate the files, starting with the associated indexes and registers. Like most archives, we struggle with finding the resources to electronically describe historic collections, but we’ve secured funding to list about 7,000 boxes of the most frequently-used, high-value 19th century collections in a two-year project.

The Register Room at Archives New Zealand

The first series off the starting blocks will be the correspondence of the Colonial Secretary (series IA1). The Colonial Secretary’s department was the sole government department in New Zealand’s early colonial period, so this collection is central in the public record. These are fascinating records covering a huge range of topics - from the establishment of the civil service and recording major constitutional milestones, to complaints about ships full of badly-behaved child immigrants, and petitions and letters from everyday people. As interesting as it is to see the evolution of New Zealand’s government through the correspondence, I think that the social history value of this collection is what will capture people’s imaginations. It’s going to be so good to finally have these records listed online for anyone to locate and research. Their use is going to go through the roof, so we’d better get ready.

The second project I’ll be working on is the relocation of Archives New Zealand’s Constitution Room, which is the permanent exhibition of New Zealand’s most precious archives of national importance. The Constitution Room will be relocating from our current premises to a new, custom-built facility in a shared building with the National Library of New Zealand.

The heart of this exhibition is the 1840 Te Tiriti o Waitangi, the Treaty of Waitangi, New Zealand’s founding document. We also display, among other things, the 1893 Women’s Suffrage Petition, which kick-started the worldwide democratic movement of votes for women, and the 1835 Declaration of Independence of the Northern Chiefs. Both the Treaty and the Petition are on the UNESCO Memory of the World Register.

Visitors looking at the Treaty of Waitangi in the Constitution Room

 
The Treaty of Waitangi, in particular, has had a drama-filled life and a number of narrow escapes, starting with being thrown out the window of a burning Government House by a quick-thinking clerk in 1841. It’s this double aspect of being an object that has many stories to tell, as well as an extremely visible symbol of our national identity, that makes it so engaging for me to work with.

As exciting as these records are, of course they represent only a tiny fragment of the treasures we hold here. If any of you are visiting Wellington please drop into Archives New Zealand’s Head Office and I’d love to meet you and show you around!

Hei kona mai,
Stefanie Lash