Why Aotearoa/New Zealand?
Before outlining the history of New Zealand’s opposition to nuclear weapons, mention was initially made of the fact that, until the British negotiated the Treaty of Waitangi, Aotearoa had a strongly independent identity built on Maori sovereignty. It is also true that the revival of Maori culture and claims for redress about their loss of land coincided with the first organised New Zealand protests against nuclear colonialism, racism and exploitation in the South Pacific, directed at its former mother country and nuclear-armed allies. When trying to assess why New Zealand has shown leadership on this issue, it should not be forgotten that a New Zealand physicist, Ernest Rutherford, launched the nuclear era with his discoveries at the dawn of the twentieth century (with vital assistance from the equally brilliant English chemist Frederick Soddy). As New Zealand’s first Nobel Prize winner, awareness of the nature of radioactivity among the New Zealand public would probably have been prop
