Brendan Hokowhitu - The Death of Koro Paka: "Traditional" MÄori Patriarchy - The Contemporary Pacific 20:1 (original) (raw)
The death of Koro Paka: "traditional" Maori patriarchy.(Report)
The Contemporary Pacific, 2008
Deconstruction does not say there is no subject, there is no truth, there is no history. It simply questions the privileging of identity so that someone is believed to have the truth. It is not the exposure of error. It is constantly and persistently looking into how truths are produced. (Spivak 1988, 28) This paper starts from the simple question of what knowledge is produced about Mäori men and why. In Nietzschean style, I am less concerned with the misrepresentation of truths than with how such truths have come to be privileged. I do not argue that tropes such as the Mäori sportsman, manual laborer, violent criminal, or especially the Mäori patriarch, are "false," for indeed there are many Mäori men who embody these categorizations. 1 To propose such tropes are false would suggest that other forms of Mäori masculinity are "truer," "more authentic" embodiments. Alternatively, I am stimulated to uncloak the processes that produce Mäori masculine subjectivities. Specifi cally, this article deconstructs the invention, authentication, and re-authentication of "traditional" Mäori patriarchy. Here, "invention" refers to the creation of a colonial hybrid. This is not to say, however, that colonization provided the environment for the genesis of Mäori patriarchy, for it is probable that modes of Mäori patriarchy existed prior to colonization (ie, patriarchy as constructed by Mäori tribal epistemologies, focused on notions such as whakapapa [genealogy] and mana [power/prestige/respect]).
The Death of Koro Paka: "Traditional" Māori Patriarchy
The Contemporary Pacific, 2007
Deconstruction does not say there is no subject, there is no truth, there is no history. It simply questions the privileging of identity so that someone is believed to have the truth. It is not the exposure of error. It is constantly and persistently looking into how truths are produced. (Spivak 1988, 28) This paper starts from the simple question of what knowledge is produced about M ori men and why. In Nietzschean style, I am less concerned with the misrepresentation of truths than with how such truths have come to be privileged. I do not argue that the tropes such as the M ori sportsman, manual laborer, violent criminal, or especially the M ori patriarch, are "false," for indeed there are many M ori men who embody these categorizations. 1 To propose such tropes are false would suggest that other forms of M ori masculinity are "truer," "more authentic" embodiments. Alternatively, I am stimulated to uncloak the processes that produce M ori masculine subjectivities. Specifically, this article deconstructs the invention, authentication, and re-authentication of "traditional" M ori patriarchy. Here, "invention" refers to the creation of a colonial hybrid. This is not to say, however, that colonization provided the environment for the genesis of M ori patriarchy, for it is probable that modes of M ori patriarchy existed prior to colonization (ie, patriarchy as constructed by M ori tribal epistemologies, focused on notions such as whakapapa [genealogy] and mana [power/prestige/respect]).
This article theorises Mäori masculinities in terms of the notion of " space ". I suggest that through colonial social construction, the notion of Mäori masculinity has been afforded a narrow space that, in part, has led to the extremely dysfunctional Mäori masculine archetype often performed in contemporary society. Historical and sociological analyses are provided, which deconstruct this limited space through the notions of " silence " and " communication ". Throughout these analyses, I pay particular attention to two constraining discourses surrounding Mäori masculinity: the " humble Mäoriman " and the " violent Mäori man ". I suggest that these two imaginary pillars have been central to the construction of the narrow space from which the diversity of Mäori masculinities has struggled to be liberated. In doing so, I provide the groundings for an understanding of a space where Mäori masculinities can " breathe " and find ...
This article theorises Mäori masculinities in terms of the notion of "space". I suggest that through colonial social construction, the notion of Mäori masculinity has been afforded a narrow space that, in part, has led to the extremely dysfunctional Mäori masculine archetype often performed in contemporary society. Historical and sociological analyses are provided, which deconstruct this limited space through the notions of "silence" and "communication". Throughout these analyses, I pay particular attention to two constraining discourses surrounding Mäori masculinity: the "humble Mäoriman" and the "violent Mäori man". I suggest that these two imaginary pillars have been central to the construction of the narrow space from which the diversity of Mäori masculinities has struggled to be liberated. In doing so, I provide the groundings for an understanding of a space where Mäori masculinities can "breathe" and find voices that lay beyond limited colonial constructions.
‘Aristocrats of Knowledge’: Māori Anthropologists and the Survival of the ‘Race’
2018
This chapter explores the significant role played by well-educated Māori politicians in the racial and bio-political debates of early twentieth-century New Zealand. Māori leaders such as Āpirana Ngata and Peter Buck contested the idea, promulgated by some colonial intellectuals and politicians, that the Māori race was doomed to disappear before the incoming Briton. They argued instead that government policy should enable Māori to flourish alongside settlers of British descent in a bi-racial society. They did, however, express concern about and opposition to reproductive relationships between Chinese men and Māori women, echoing the concerns of politicians such as William Pember Reeves.
2017
The aim of this study is to investigate and identify the effects the Native Land Court and native land legislation had on customary Māori marriage practices from 1865 to 1909. While researchers have produced a variety of important understandings of the court's role in promoting land loss in Māori society, Māori women's involvement in the court and its effects upon them is just beginning to be examined. This thesis makes a contribution to Māori women's history by accounting for the role the Native Land Court and associated land legislation played in reshaping customary Māori marriage practices in nineteenth and early twentieth century New Zealand. Even though native land legislation was one of the key mechanisms by which the state governed Māori land as well as marriage, this connection is rarely examined within the same frame. The Native Land Court is a forum where land and marriage did interact. Focusing on a case study of Ngāti Kahungunu, I situate prominent Māori women in the Native Land Court, and use their experiences to further understandings of how Māori marriage, which is often examined in a pre-European context, was shaped by land title investigations and succession cases. This study was conducted utilising statutes, colonial newspapers and the Napier Minute Books. In the first chapter, this thesis uses ethnographic material to describe and interpret marriage customs prior to European contact, its draws upon missionary understandings of customary marriage upon arrival to Aotearoa, and also traces how colonial law managed marriage prior to the Native Land Court 1865. This provides vital contextual information for the later chapters. The next chapter discusses native land and marriage laws between 1865 and 1890 and how they affected customary Māori marriage practices. Chapter Three examines three prominent Māori I would like to thank my supervisors Associate Professor Angela Wanhalla and Dr. Mark Seymour. I am very grateful to have had two knowledgeable, patient and talented people who offered unlimited guidance throughout this process. A scholarship received as part of Angela's Rutherford Discovery Fellowship made this project possible, and I am extremely appreciative to have received this. Thank you to all those consulted in the History Department and Te Tumu School of Māori and Pacific Island and Indigenous Studies at the University of Otago. Last, but most definitely not least, I would like to thank my family and friends, in particular Mel who kindly helped with the final editing phase. My cousin Mereana Taripo, who has been the awhi rito of our family with her loving and unwavering support. Thank you for everything you have done and continue to do for us cousin. To many whānau members, who offered to babysit my kids (and husband) while I did (or did not) do thesis related work, who provided company, laughter, and kai for my belly. Thankyou for never badgering me about my studies or even knowing quite what my research was about but just being immensely proud of me. A big thank you for the financial support so that my family could attend important occasions; unveilings, weddings and birthdays. I am forever indebted to you all, and as part of giving back this thesis is a bigger part of that commitment. Thank you to Tihema Makoare whom was mostly supportive in his limited capacity, as managing his whereabouts was probably harder than the entire thesis. Lastly, my three beautiful little children, in which this thesis is essentially dedicated to, you are my motivation, light and inspiration; Te Manava, Te Uira and Te Kainuku Makoare, may you do the things in life that make you truly happy. Mauria te Pono -Believe in yourself.
[W]e came out of the shadows, we had no glory and we had no rights, and that is why we are beginning to tell of our history . . . the misfortune of ancestors, exiles, and servitude. It will enumerate not so much victories, as the defeats to which we have to submit during our long wait for the promised lands and the fulfilment of the old promises that will of course re-establish both the rights of old and the glory that has been lost. 1 W riting this essay was no easy task-a chapter simply called "Māori," with none of the academy's well-known categories to chart my way. Stricken by a nontaxonomic dreamscape, I realized that I needed to moor my waka (canoe) on some thematic thread and, as a consequence, decided to play with the notion of devolution . Devolution speaks to both the evolutionary discourses of Imperialism, and the precolonial/post-colonial binary inherent to the political capital of indigenous studies and implied in the quote above by Michel Foucault. That is, the tendency to strategically romanticize the pre-colonial past in opposition to the devolution of indigenous societies post-contact. The production of an indigenous studies contre-histoire reflects, therefore, "the discourse of those who have no glory," 2 and subsequently culturalist discourses of authenticity.
The Maori: A People of the Land, Ocean, and Sky
An amateur cultural anthropologist's brief introduction the Maori of New Zealand, emphasizing the beauty of their culture and the significance of their history guiding them forward in today's society. Written as second-year undergrad at Colorado Mountain College - Glenwood Springs in March 2016 . (Edits for cultural and historical accuracy welcome)
Colonial knowledge and the stereotyped Māori Other: Fear/desire in the interstices
Colonial discourse is duplicitous and illogical, yet retains an illusion of univocity, consistency, or truth, in the mind of the colonising authority. Bhabha's conceptualisation of stereotype as simultaneously phobia and fetish is applied to depictions of Maori in colonial-period artworks and exhibition. These polyvalent depictions add weight to Bhabha's claim that disavowal and fetishisation of the Other are mutually reinforcing. I also discuss the possibility, in the post-colonial situation, of destruction of the colonial logic through a plurivocal, hybrid dissolution of Otherness rather than a one-dimensional 'Indigeneity' as prescribed by some critics, the latter of which has the potential to reinforce the logic's definitional power.
Māori social identities in New Zealand and Hawai'i
2007
In 1985, I sat in an introductory social psychology lecture by Dr Michael Hills of the University of Waikato. I was excited by the content of the lecture. Dr Hills said something like: An identity is a good thing to have for if it were not for an identity many of us would be lost to suicide, mental illness, and not have a very positive sense of being in the world. This agreed with my thinking, but, as a first year student, Dr Hill's explanations and theories did not quite satisfy the questions spinning in my head and my yearning for concrete examples and rich detail about me as Maori, as a tribal being, as a minority being, as an indigenous being, moving forward in a modern world. I longed to attend lectures where I did not have to forever convert the lecturer's examples and explanations of behaviour to my own Maori experience. I found some relief from this in courses taught by Professors James and Jane Ritchie and David Thomas on 'working in the Maori world', 'crosscultural psychology' and 'growing up in New Zealand'. They had lived experiences that resonated with me and allowed my thoughts to fall on lines of enquiry helpful to unpacking my life and my experience of the worlds I was moving through and of others I was moving with. These early encounters with psychology spawned, for me, a continuing interest in Maori social identities, culture change and resilience. Through this PhD study, I have had the opportunity to explore how Maori conceptualise and enact their social identities in a New Zealand context and to explore how the same is achieved by Maori living in Hawai'i. These are the topics that this thesis is concerned with. Of necessity, I have broken my review of literature into five separate chapters. The first deals with social identity theories. My intent in this chapter is to demonstrate that psychological theory helps to answer some questions about Maori social identities, but also raises a whole host more. I raise some of these questions as a first step towards exploring the detail, drama and complexity of Maori social identities. The second chapter, called 'revealing Aotearoa' reviews how the inhabitants of these south sea islands were discovered and revealed to the world, why the 'world' came to New Zealand, and the responses made by its inhabitants. Differences in cultural understanding, worldviews, technologies and beliefs systems are significantly to the fore when culture groups encounter each other. From my 21st century position, reviewing the culture clashes of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries reveals much about the progression and development of Maori social identities, over time. Central to this review is the Treaty of Waitangi 1840. The signing of the Treaty marks a significant transition period in New Zealand history. Traditional leadership, community cohesion, resources and identity were to become increasingly pressurized by large numbers of migrant settlers to New Zealand, hungry for a slice of 'gods own' and expectant that they would receive. Settler arrivals were so many that, by 1858, Maori had become a minority within their own lands. No amount of resistance, active or passive, could stem the demands of the settler government, the spread of disease, or the alienation of resources and land. Tribal leadership had to make sense of these developments and negotiate what it meant to be a tribal being at a personal and collective level, and at an emerging pan-Maori level. These changes gave rise to new forms of leadership that sat alongside traditional forms. In this connection, I review the emergence of the pan-tribal movements of Kingitanga, Paimarire and Ringatu. While there were others, a selective review of these movements is enough to demonstrate the capacity of Maori leaders to merge their own worldviews with that of Christianity to effectively sustain followers in the face of severe adversity. The third chapter is called 'New leaders and Assimilation'. At the turn of the 19 th century, the Maori population was at an all time low, so low that the commonly held view was that Maori would become extinct. Assimilation was seen as the way forward and remained as the solution to the 'Maori problem' until the late 1960's when more culturally plural views began to come into vogue. Up until that time, new Maori leaders like Apirana Ngata, Maui Pomare, Peter Buck and others had to uplift a people depressed by the events of the previous century. A focus on their strategies lets us learn something of the strength of relationships within and between tribal groups, and the resilience of spirit, culture and identity during this period. 'Pakeha Maori', as Bentley (1999) terms them, who choose to, or who were captured into Maori communities were, initially, highly valued by Maori. Those Maori communities that had Pakeha Maori had an advantage over those who did not. Pakeha Maori could translate English, explain European customs and events, the meaning and use of new technologies, and act as intermediaries and "trader go-I a King at home, I a cook at Port Jackson (cited in Salmond, 1997, p.420). Travellers like Kawiti, Hongi Hika, and Ruatara, all from the North, were not simply carted off by passing ships as involuntary parties -they actively sought intelligence about these foreigners, their ways, technologies and what they valued from New Zealand. Certainly Belich (1996) identifies Ruatara, who spent a significant amount of time with Marsden at Parramatta in Australia, as responsible for the establishment of massive intensive gardening programmes in the North. These, in turn, impacted so significantly on customary food growing, harvesting and storage cycles, especially white potatoes which totally supplanted taro and nearly kumara too, that Hongi Hika and the iwi of the North were readily able to engage in long distance warfare with other iwi. They had food, they had arms, and they had time. They also had Pakeha Maori, and, now, the missionaries who served their purposes well. Marsden's purpose in sending Kendall and Hall to Aotearoa was to lay the initial foundations of the Anglican Church, and to pave the way for subsequent voyages and arrivals organised by the Church Missionary Society. Indeed, they were the advanced guard for the establishment of a British colony in Aotearoa. These early voyages, the interests of competing monarchs and nations, the search for trade goods, the desire to save the souls of the noble savages of the South Seas all increased the need for land for settlement. At the same time, this was a period of great excitement for Maori. New technologies were being mastered, trade was actively engaged in and different ways of knowing were being considered. Without doubt, Maori actively sought to discover, master and control those opportunities and knowledges that were being made known through encounters with Europeans. As much as Europeans found benefit in coming to Aotearoa, Maori at that time, saw benefit in having them here. Both were in a position to gain. Both stood to mutually benefit from a continued relationship. But there were also disadvantages. In the decades leading up to 1840, the small number of Europeans living in Aotearoa was steadily added to by arrivals from Australia and Europe, and more were soon to arrive. This created friction between the settler population and Maori, especially in the area of land sales, many of which were highly questionable. Unruly social behaviour, exploitation of women, lack of national flag, "so that New Zealand built and owned ships could be properly registered and could freely enter other ports" (King, 2003, p. 153). In October 1835, Busby persuaded the same chiefs and others to sign 'A Declaration of the Independence of the United Tribes New Zealand', a measure designed to foil the interests of the French who planned to establish an independent state in the Hokianga -a declaration that was neither widely understood by Maori nor endorsed. The flag, and Declaration, were not viewed seriously by the foreign office in London. Busby's alarmist reports and demands on both the foreign office and on the Governor of New South Wales were characterised as "whining" (King, 2003). But what was taken seriously, were the reports of, firstly, the increasing volatility between Maori and settlers resulting in numerous petitions to the foreign office for stronger intervention, and, secondly, a plan by a private firm, the New Zealand Company, to formally colonise New Zealand and establish a separate government of its own. Both King (2003) and Belich (1996) concur that it was these two influences that motivated the despatch from London of William Hobson in 1839. It was he who brokered the Treaty of Waitangi. On the 6 th February, 1840, the Treaty of Waitangi was signed by Governor Hobson, on behalf of the British Crown, and 43 northland rangatira. Over subsequent months in various parts of the country, almost 500 more rangatira signified their assent, the notion of 'consent' to the advent of Pakeha state and society taken to be the act of "agreeing to the treaty, welcoming agents of the state and selling land" (Belich, 1996, p.198-197). It needs to be noted though that for tribes south of the northland region, that the horrors of raids by northern tribes in the late 18 th century advantaged by having muskets were still considered recent history, as it still is for many today. Northern tribes were not to be completely trusted. What exactly did this treaty say? Again, Belich (1996) provides a crisp summary of the treaty and issues that I have summarized or quoted in part below. According to Belich (1996, p.198-197) rangatira were looking for a mutually understood device to ensure the protection of tino rangatiratanga, of Maori custom, lifestyles and property. At the same time they were also seeking to encourage and allow for settler control over settler behaviour. They were seeking a way to ensure a) Of half or more New Zealand Maori origin. b) As...
2004
vii through the final years of working on our doctorates. Our walks, phone calls and 'project management' meetings helped keep us both going and on-task, and her energy and enjoyment of life always made the difficult times easier. Finally, I thank Jeff Rowe who, over the time I have been writing this thesis, has given me quiet and wise support, has been at hand with sustenance-literally and, equally importantly, in the form of entertaining and relaxing diversions-and has always given me the space I needed in which to read, think and write. I wish to dedicate this thesis to my parents, Arthur and Shirley Bell, and to my daughter, Sharni Erceg. I grew up in a house where I was taught to enjoy questioning and thinking and to value social justice. Without that background, this thesis would never have been written. Nor would it have been written without Sharni. Her childhood was shaped around my need for an intellectual life and career and my debt to her for her tolerance and loving support is immense. Sharni is the inspiration for this thesis. viii
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.
Hawhekaihe: Māori Voices on the Position of 'Half-castes' in Māori Society
The essay first provides a quantitative over-view of Māori discussion of hāwhekaihe (half-castes) within the Māori-language newspaper corpus (1842-1933), and then discusses selected articles, in order to reveal a number of key points. First, hāwhekaihe were not generally viewed as a distinct racial group, and in many respects were well-integrated within Māori communities. Second, colonialism produced a number of tensions over land within Māori tribal groupings, where members at times attempted to exclude others from land rights. Divisions between Māori and hāwhekaihe over land were most apparent in the South Island. Third, the competition for mana within the parliamentary political arena at times resulted in the two groups criticizing each other from the late 1860s. This tension between Māori and hāwhekaihe over land and mana was expressed within a “discourse of blame” that emerged in the later nineteenth century in which both groups blamed each other for the ills that had befallen the Māori people. Fourth, while a number of Pākehā spoke out against “miscegenation”, there is only one article in the niupepa specifically appealing to Māori not to marry Pākehā. Unlike the Pākehā commentators, the writer is more concerned with Māori extinction through absorption, and the loss of Māori land. Most discussion about hāwhekaihe appears in the last three decades of the nineteenth century, and tensions between Māori and hāwhekaihe appear to have largely dissipated by the early twentieth century.