HISTORY, IDENTITY AND COMMUNITY:THE HUIA SETTLERS’ MUSEUM

Abstract

The ways in which local inhabitants respond to and mediate pressures upon their community reflects the resources available to them (Day and Murdoch 993). Focussed on the rural, seaside community of Huia, West Auckland, this essay examines the concepts of community, history, and identity as resources a group of older residents have mobilised to resist perceived pressures on themselves and their community. I propose that their involvement in the establishment and maintenance of the Huia Settlers’ Museum is a symbolic representation of their collective and individual identities. External pressure in the form of change, for this group of older residents, arises from a combination of ethnicity, locality and ageing that is resisted through the expression of their genealogical connections to Huia in the form of the local Museum.