Interracial Marriages and Colonial Regimes in Victoria and Aotearoa/New Zealand

Abstract

In 1895 in the Rotorua district of the British colony of New Zealand, Jane Foley, a Maori woman, moved to the fore in her local branch of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (wcTu). As secretary she became noted for speaking at meetings, organizing other local events, and writing reports in both Maori and English for the WCTU's monthly paper, the White Ribbon.' Jane Foley, also known by her Maori name, Heni Pore, was one of a number of women of mixed Maori and European descent who were prominent in the WCTU, the most influential women's organization in the colony. That same year in the country town of Bairnsdale in the British colony of Victoria, an Aboriginal woman named Bessy Cameron, married to an Aboriginal man of mixed descent, died in poverty having struggled against the odds to keep her family housed and fed.2 The WCTU was also operational in Victoria and poised to offer charitable sisterly concern to many marginalized and impoverished Aboriginal women in the colony, but the mobilization of indigenous women as fellow activists, as was occurring in New Zealand, was unthinkable.3 Recent work by such scholars as Peggy Pascoe and Martha Hodes has pointed to the enormous significance of sexuality across racial divides for historical understanding of the place of race and gender in dominant white societies.4 This essay endorses the scholarly argument that interracial sexuality and interracial marriages are significant indicators of colonizing white societies'