Unsettling Providential Partnership: A Critical Examination of Robert Maunsell and George Grey’s Partnership in Māori Education

This chapter reflects on the entanglements of education, Christianity, and colonialism in Aotearoa by exploring one specific friendship and partnership between the nineteenth century missionary Robert Maunsell and the influential Governor George Grey. Picard draws attention to some of the distorted theological assumptions and beliefs shared by Maunsell and Grey. He shows how these assumptions helped facilitate a civilising mission and agenda over several decades that contributed to the legacy of structural educational injustice for Māori.