A Determination to Remember: Helen Clark and New Zealand's Military Heritage

Abstract

Helen Clark has done more to promote and preserve New Zealand's military heritage than any other of her Prime Ministerial predecessors. As Minister of Arts, Culture, and Heritage from 1999 to 2008, Clark was instrumental in providing government support to military heritage projects both at home and abroad. From being the first New Zealand Prime Minister to meet with a Turkish counterpart at Gallipoli in the year 2000 to sharing with Queen Elizabeth II the opening of the New Zealand Memorial at Hyde Park Corner in London in 2006, Clark has recognized the importance of her country's part in military events on the world stage in the twentieth century. Knowing about a familial past steeped in the experiences of the First World War, Clark understands that her grandparents’ and parents’ generations were shaped by contemporary events and that the efforts and sacrifices of New Zealanders who played a part in those events should be remembered. How, then, and why, did Clark set about the task of preserving New Zealand's military heritage? It is this key question surrounding Clark's determination to see New Zealand's military heritage remembered that this article seeks to address.