New Zealand children from 1840 to 1890 were subjected to an unusual combination of agrarian existence and an industrial social philosophy in the newly formed schools. When schools became more universal in the expanding industrial society, a new emphasis on the control of children developed, and from 1920 onward, adult supervision in the form of heavily organized sports and playgrounds encroached more and more on the untrammeled freedom of the rural environment. Returning to his home country of New Zealand, Brian Sutton-Smith documents the relationship between children's play and the actual process of history. Drawing on interviews with hundreds of informants from every province and school district of New Zealand, the author illuminates for the first time the various social, cultural, historical, and psychological context in which children's play occurs. He treats both formal and informal play, as well as the play of both boys and girls.

Outline of recurring education papers in the appendices to the journals of the New Zealand House of Representatives (A-J), in pocket at back of book.

Performance embodies knowledge transfer, cultural expression, and intercultural influence. It is a method through which Indigenous people express their relations to land and continuously establish their persistent political authority. But performance is also key to the misrepresentation of Indigenous peoples in settler colonial societies. Against the Current and Into the Light challenges dominant historical narratives of the land now known as Stanley Park, exploring performances in this space from the late nineteenth century to the present. Selena Couture engages with knowledge held in an endangered Indigenous language's place names, methods of orientation in space and time, and conceptions of leadership and respectful visiting. She then critically engages with narratives of Vancouver history created by the city's first archivist, J.S. Matthews, through his interest in Lord Stanley's visit to the park in 1889. Matthews organized several public commemorative performances on this land from the 1940s to 1960, resulting in the iconic yet misleading statue of Lord Stanley situated at the park's entrance. Couture places Matthews's efforts at commemoration alongside continuous political interventions by Indigenous people and organizations such as the Native Brotherhood of British Columbia, while also responding to contemporary performances by Indigenous women in Vancouver that present alternative views of history. Using the metaphor of eddies of influence - motions that shape and are shaped by obstacles in their temporal and spatial environments - Against the Current and Into the Light reveals how histories of places have been created, and how they might be understood differently in light of Indigenous resurgence and decolonization.