Relating Maori and pakeha : the politics of indigenous and settler identities : a thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand (original) (raw)
Related papers
2004
Settler colonisation produced particular colonial subjects: indigene and settler. The specificity of the relationship between these subjects lies in the act of settlement; an act of colonial violence by which the settler physically and symbolically displaces the indigene, but never totally. While indigenes may be physically displaced from their territories, they continue to occupy a marginal location within the settler nation-state. Symbolically, as settlers set out to distinguish themselves from the metropolitan 'motherlands', indigenous cultures become a rich, 'native' source of cultural authenticity to ground settler nationalisms. The result is a complex of conflictual and ambivalent relations between settler and indigene.
Being Pākehā: White Settler Narratives of Politics, Identity, and Belonging in Aotearoa/New Zealand
PhD thesis, 2015
Since the 1970s, Aotearoa/New Zealand has undergone wide-ranging social, political and cultural transformations both with respect to the politics of settler-indigenous relations and the ethnocultural diversification of the country’s population. Indigenous rights movements and the politics of biculturalism, as well as rapid increases in immigration from non-traditional source countries have disrupted deeply entrenched settler narratives that naturalised white settler colonialism and destabilised the dominant position of the white settler majority (Pākehā), forcing Pākehā to rearticulate identities and re-imagine the nation. This thesis investigates how Pākehā experience ‘being Pākehā’ today. Taking account of several decades of living with or growing up with biculturalism and increasing ethnic diversity, it explores how Pākehā construct and manage identity and their ‘social imaginaries’ (Taylor, 2002), that is, how they conceptualise their own position in society vis-à-vis both indigenous and migrant communities as well as the normative and ideological assumptions that guide their expectations. Life story interviews with 38 Auckland-based Pākehā form the empirical basis of this study. The biographical approach produced stories of lived experience, of memories, expectations and anticipations that allowed me to analyse how Pākehā negotiate majority group identity, and the role of wider discursive repertoires in enabling and constraining participant narratives. Guided by critical whiteness and settler colonial studies, the analysis primarily aims to reveal discursive practices that consolidate and/or challenge whiteness and settler colonial practices. The empirical data demonstrates that participants discursively construct post-colonial cosmopolitan identities, as expressed in stories of personal transformation, which highlight a new recognition of and engagement with Māori culture, as well as the normality of everyday multiculturalism. However, despite genuine intentions, such narratives often remain wedded to colonial, nationalist, and racialised assumptions and thereby serve to protect the majority’s normative and privileged position. Analysing in detail the politics of naming the majority group, the role of collective ‘living memory’ in perpetuating old myths and creating new ones, and visions of a multicultural future as prime sites of Pākehā identity construction, the thesis contributes to the international literature by providing a current and empirically based analysis of Pākehā identities and imaginaries that helps to deepen our understanding of the processes that secure white settler normativity and privilege in settler societies.
Indigenous identity, 'authenticity' and the structural violence of settler colonialism
Identities: Global studies in culture and power, 2013
In many ways, the structural violence of settler colonialism continues to dominate the lived experience of Indigenous populations, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in contemporary Australia. One aspect of this structural violence concerns the regulation of Indigenous identity, today perpetuated through state monitoring of the 'authenticity' of Aboriginal people. This article argues that the contest over Indigenous identity perpetuates a form of symbolic political violence against Indigenous people. It considers the ways in which structural violence against Indigenous identity has featured in Australia's settler colonial regime and examines the particular violence faced by urban-dwelling Aboriginal people, who endure much contemporary scrutiny of the 'authenticity' of their Indigeneity. As a case study, the article examines the symbolic violence associated with a particular legal case in Australia and, in light of this analysis, concludes that settler colonies could make a decolonising gesture by legislating for the protection of Indigenous identity.
Over the past four decades in Aotearoa New Zealand, anti-colonial and postcolonial theories have been engaged to analyse the historical and contemporary conditions of the Indigenous peoples of the land. As a result, dualist and oppositional comparisons of identity, knowledge and understanding have been utilized to frame the (post)colonial experience between Mäori and Päkehä. This article applies a Foucauldian analysis of the colonial binary and the implications for Mäori and Päkehä subjectivities, cultural identity and relations today. Foucault's genealogy analyses and uncovers the historical relationship between truth, knowledge and power, and so provides a critique of conventional thinking and practices that are positioned within a traditional "Self and Other" binary of power. This article explores the possibility of reframing traditional Mäori and Päkehä oppositional cultural politics; a cultural frame that centres on the notion of the "ethical subject" and a conceptual space that seeks to operate beyond the Self-Other binary.
Dilemmas of settler belonging: roots, routes and redemption in New Zealand national identity claims1
The Sociological Review, 2009
This paper explores the identity markers and rules used in the process of national identity construction by young adult New Zealanders, drawing on empirical data from qualitative interviews with members of the majority culture of ‘Pakeha’ or ‘European’ New Zealanders. While these young New Zealanders draw on the markers of ‘birth’, ‘blood’ and ‘belonging’ identified in other studies, their claims to identity and belonging are troubled by the settler origins of their ancestors. The dilemmas these origins create for these young New Zealanders are identified along with the strategies they deploy as they seek to resolve them. The existence of these dilemmas suggests that a distinct identity rule is at work for this group that has not previously been identified in earlier studies. Thus, this analysis provides further evidence for the deployment of a common set of markers and rules as well as highlighting some of the ways in which these differ in different national contexts.
A LIAISON OF IDENTITY CRISIS WITH COLONIAL INVASION AS PERPETUATED IN POST-COLONIAL LITERATURE
Abstract The evident connotation of the term post-colonial is that it attributes to an era coming after the end of colonialism. The remnants of colonialism can still be perceived in the postcolonial period, for colonialism unleashed an immense wound on the psychology, culture and identity of the once conquered people. This congregation of completely diverse cultures in the colonial period led to a great identity crisis in the postcolonial age. The contemporary situation of the once colonized people is an amalgamation of cross-cultural influences, mingled, patch-worked, and stratified upon one another. Hence, the postcolonial era has developed into a combat zone where the indigenous and the colonizer identify fight with each other to retrieve their allocated share in the novel cultural space. Keywords: Postcolonial, Colonialism, Psychology, Indigenous
Anti-racist attempts to conceptualize Indigenous decolonial justice are preoccupied with the contested relationship between immigrant settlement and Indigenous self-determination. In the process, an ethically and politically driven practice of implicating immigrants onto the settler colonial project has emerged. Paying particular attention to the emerging concept of ‘immigrant settlerhood’ as a sign of severing of political economic considerations from theories of settler nationalism, I advocate for a comprehensive and concrete analysis that does not lose sight of the capitalist colonial project of simultaneous dispossession (of Indigenous people) and precarious incorporation/resettlement (of immigrants). Next, since notions of sovereignty primarily enact the conditions for exploitation of immigrants and impale them onto the settler project via anti-racist claims, I reflect on ‘no border’ politics as a conceptual tool for confronting settler colonialism. Finally, considering the centrality of land/place in Indigenous self-determination I reflect on the possibility of a ground between Indigenous rootedness and diasporic placelessness. This essay thus makes an attempt to conceptualize an anti-racist politics that could meaningfully respond to the settler colonial project of simultaneous recruitment/resettlement (of immigrants) and dispossession (of Indigenous people) without casting social justice demands of Indigenous peoples and migrants as inherently oppositional.