Pākehā are ‘vandal white man’

2026-02-23 - 16:07

Just before Christmas, on a summer day swept by a stiff southerly, a small group gathered on Paraparaumu Beach to commemorate a refurbished plaque to the remarkable Captain Val Sanderson. He was founder of the New Zealand Native Bird Protection Society, which later morphed into Forest & Bird. There is no doubting his incredible contribution to our wildlife and natural environment. But like most stand-out individuals, Sanderson is a study in complexity, an authoritarian and prickly figure, a patriarch who had fought in two of the Empire’s wars. “There is great anxiety about the past and how it is remembered”, as Joanna Kidman wrote in E-Tangata. “Public debates about colonial memorials highlight a jittery unease about who and what should be remembered in New Zealand.” Debates over statues and monuments commemorating colonial figures, especially those honouring old white men, have intensified in New Zealand. They reflect broader discussions on how societies confront their colonial histories. They ask questions about whether these monuments are remnants of oppression intended to confront, to dominate, to oppress. Sanderson was no bush-clearing, tree-felling coloniser. He was an early advocate of Māori ecology. In the winter 2022 edition of its magazine, Forest & Bird reported a treasure trove find of Sanderson’s papers on indigenous conservation held by the Alexander Turnbull library. Sanderson’s “campaign among the Māori” included efforts to have Forest & Bird materials translated into te reo, some by ethnographer Elsdon Best, and the promotion of Māori conservation leaders. In 1928, in a letter in te reo to Nopera Otene, one of Forest & Bird’s first Māori members, he wrote, “The Māori before the advent of the white man knew how to conserve his birds and forest and it is to be feared that Pakeha past ignorance in these matters has been much at fault.” And in a letter to Te Kūiti journalist Rore Josephs (Ngāti Maniapoto), he described Pākehā as a “vandal white man” who had little connection with Aotearoa’s natural habitat. But Sanderson’s back story is also one of reinvention and redemption. He was likely illegitimate, an accomplice to murder, and a wife deserter. In 2023, when Forest & Bird celebrated its centenary, there was an argument over a Paekākāriki track dedicated to him – should its sign reflect Sanderson’s odyssey, warts and all, or only his obvious conservation victories? The compromise was an attractive wooden board noting both his environmental efforts and his “tumultuous” past. His personal tumult included a killing in 1893 when he was 27. “Stop, or I’ll shoot you!”he shouted at his enraged, epileptic father, who climbed a ladder to reach the top floor of their Wellington home where Louis, Val’s older half-brother, had taken refuge. Sanderson yelled another command: “Stop, or I’ll put a hole through you.” His father struck him on the forearm with a baton, breaking it with the force. Brandishing a poker and a knife, he entered the first-floor window in a frenzy and advanced upon Louis yelling, “You’re a damn mean hound.” Louis seized a British Army Martini-Henry rifle and warned his stepfather to desist or he would fire. When the old man continued his attack, Louis shot him in the groin. In agony, Walter Spreat died at home that evening, on July 8, 1893 – but not before providing a deposition to Wellington Police’s Inspector Pender. He described how he was thrown out of his Mt Victoria home because of his bad temper. He was allowed to return, but only as far as the stables. That morning, Spreat asked Louis to clear a collapsed clay bank blocking the footpath. They argued, with Spreat throwing buckets of water into the house, and yelling, “I will give you something to do.” In his police statement, Spreat said, “There was no ill feeling between us until we had the quarrel this morning. It was entirely my fault ... My temper is affected through the malady from which I suffer. They never tried to make any allowance for my exhibition of temper. The house they live in they had from me. I thought the children were influenced in their conduct towards me by their mother. I thought that for a long time. I never had reason to think Louis Sanderson had any ill feeling towards me. I had an affection for him.” Spreat was no stranger to trouble. In 1881, he got into a fight with the city surveyor, a man called Baird. “Walking-sticks were used, the latter gentleman getting decidedly the worst of it. Spreat commenced the row,” reported the Wairarapa Standard. Later he was charged with cruel treatment of an animal when a spaniel broke into his property and he struck it with a reaping hook “cutting the leg so that the lower joint of it hung by the skin,” as the New Zealand Times reported in 1890. His shooting was front-page news. Spreat was a prominent figure in Wellington as a well-known lithographer and talented oboe player with the Wellington Choral Society. Louis was arrested on a charge of murder. At the coronial inquiry held at the Cambridge Hotel, the coroner ruled Spreat’s death to be “justifiable homicide”, with Louis acting in self-defence. Sanderson testified at the inquest. In most news reports, he is referred to as Val, the diminutive of his swashbuckling second name, Valentine, with the surname Sanderson. Yet on his 1866 birth certificate he is registered as Ernest Valentine Spreat, son of Walter Spreat. In his deposition Spreat stated that both Louis and Ernest were his ‘natural sons’, although their mother, publicly at least, contradicted this. Sanderson’s plaque: ‘He loved the birds’. Photo by Judith Galtry This strange part about the affair is that although the dying man swore that the children were his, they refused to believe it and were brought up from childhood in ignorance of their parentage. Their mother, Jane Sanderson, admitted to Inspector Pender that all the children (including three younger sisters) were Spreat’s. There is no evidence that Jane Sanderson was married to Spreat; also she is identified as a spinster, not a widow, in the 1896 Electoral Roll, published three years after his death. Val and Louis testified that they were unaware that Spreat had left his house and money to his family in his will written only seven months before his death. It is easy to see why the family might have wished to distance themselves from Spreat’s drinking and violent temper. Also epilepsy was commonly thought to be hereditary, a stigma, a sign of madness, even as possession by the Devil. In 1900, Val enlisted for the Boer War/South African War. He earned a distinction. He also served in WWI, and was invalided home; thereafter insisting on the title Captain. So now we see the little bastard Ernest Spreat fully emerged from his chrysalis into the dashing Captain Val Sanderson. With the money left to him by Spreat, Sanderson took up a partnership in a Wellington motorcar company, becoming the first New Zealander to import an electric car. He predicted that the motorcar would prove ruinous to ‘mankind.’ But another reputational blow was to come in 1921 when he was identified as a wife deserter on the dissolution of his marriage to Emily Cooper. She cited his abandonment nine years earlier and failure to provide for her. Around this time and in yet another about-turn, Sanderson determined to dedicate the later part of his life to conserving Aotearoa’s unique flora and fauna. Most famously he oversaw the transformation of Kapiti Island into a nature sanctuary. After witnessing ongoing damage to the island’s ecology during visits in 1914 and 1921, he launched a media campaign to fence off part of it and remove sheep and goats to let the vegetation return to its natural state. In their 2024 book Force of Nature: A conservation history of Forest & Bird 1923-2023, David Young and Naomi Arnold detail Sanderson’s conservation efforts. He was respected, as well as hated, by many politicians and conservationists alike. For the happiest and most settled period of his life, Sanderson lived in Paekākāriki, including for his time as president of Forest & Bird (1933 to 1945). Here he built his cottage (Te Kohunga) on the crest of a hill overlooking Kapiti Island and, on this bare sand dune, planted a vast variety of native trees, including poroporo, wharangi, taupata, makomako, kotukutuku, koromiko, ngutukaka (kakabeak), pukanui, taraire, karamu, rata, karaka, karo, ngaio, whau, taupata, ake-ake, pohutukawa, ti-toki, tarata, ti (cabbage-tree), mamaku, puriri, mahoe, kawakawa, manuka, whauwhi and patete. Soon after establishing his Paekākāriki nest, he married the much younger Helen (Nellie) Milne and went on to have two daughters. By now, he was in his 70s and described as a forbidding, ‘craggy’ looking man with penetrating eyes. His physical aspect matched his personality: charismatic, reserved, a formidable opponent, and a harbourer of secrets. Did the ignominy of his early history allow Sanderson to cock his snoot at convention, all for the betterment of Aotearoa’s natural habitat? This is Chris Maclean’s view in Kapiti (winner of the 2000 Montana Book Award). He hypotheses that “Val’s aggressive behaviour in later life, and his mistrust of others” was linked to his early life – or did Sanderson inherit elements of his father’s own belligerence. Through my Paekākāriki kitchen window I look out to the towering pōhutukawa trees that Sanderson planted on his property a century ago. Sanderson wrote of large puku-ed kereru and weka that ‘waxed fat’ on worms and grubs, and of a visit from a wounded red billed gull; as part of its recovery it perfected, in one quick swoop, the catching of blowflies and pieces of cheese thrown into the air. Sanderson died of pneumonia in 1945, at 79. His wife Nellie outlived him by 57 years, dying in 2002, aged 104. I recently visited Sanderson’s grave at Ōtaki cemetery. A light breeze rustled through the trees. It overlooks Kapiti Island. On his headstone the title Captain is missing, and his life’s work is reduced to his attempt “to save NZ from erosion”, an underwhelming epithet given the breadth of his vision and efforts. His beloved Nellie is buried with him. Sadly, the headstone’s inscription is almost illegible, and a weed had broken through a crack in the concrete. In honour of this great New Zealander, I yanked out this audacious yellow headed imposter, as bold and fearless as Sanderson himself. Sanderson’s grave, Ōtaki. Photo by Judith Galtry