Postcolonial multiplicities: indigeneity in flux

Participants and recruitment

This study involved five elderly participants of both Māori and Pākehā descent with whakapapa (genealogical ties) to the Ngāti Hei iwi (tribe). The group consisted of three females and two males in their 70s to 90s. Most had lived abroad for significant periods but only one currently resided outside New Zealand. Recruitment occurred through a combination of direct messaging on Facebook, snowball sampling through initial participants, and one participant recruited through a recommendation after tracing Ngāti Hei ancestry via DNA testing.

Data collection

Semi-structured interviews took a life-story approach to exploring experiences and perceptions of Māori identity. Interviews averaged 90 min and were conducted via Zoom, recorded, and transcribed. Questions focused on themes like cultural upbringing, biculturalism, and meaning of Māoriness. No translations from te Reo Māori were required.

Ethics

This research followed ethical guidelines, with participants giving informed consent after receiving information sheets. Confidentiality and anonymity were maintained through the use of pseudonyms and secure data storage, though the small sample introduced challenges around inadvertent identification, such as participants recommending other whānau already recruited.

Analytic approach

An interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) approach was used to discern shared patterns and themes around the individual and collective experiences of Māori identity and belonging. A two-phase coding process involved initial familiarisation through transcription, followed by phenomenological coding to identify manifest and latent themes in how participants made sense of their experiences.

Connection to the past

I was brought up with the culture from the old people. So I know exactly what they went through . . . Because I saw what they did and I learnt what they did and I practised what they did—and I still do now. (Manaaki)

Tūpuna featured significantly across the interviews. Some participants were raised by grandparents or great-grandparents, and all recounted instances of their elders being raised by tūpuna. This cyclical trend bore implications: the participants bore witness to attitudes and principles of whānau born in the late 1800s and in some cases were raised on these principles. Being raised by tūpuna meant they had a stricter, more old-fashioned upbringing in contrast to their peers—but on reflection, participants valued the experience:

I left, but the culture was bred in me . . . from a baby, from a child—and that culture and the teachings from my old people . . . they’ll never leave me, and I teach my children that culture. (Manaaki)

Amīria recounted driving her tūpuna everywhere as a teen; a responsibility prioritised over all things. What her peers saw as odd, Amīria valued as an opportunity to see the Māori side of life. An example of this was driving to another town to visit old friends. Amīria and her tūpuna would wait at the gate until they received a karanga (ceremonial welcome call) from the female host, her grandfather and the male host would exchange in whaikōrero (oration) and only then would they enter the property for a house visit which would take place entirely in te Reo Māori.

Through those things, I got the feeling of what it was to be Māori, a feeling that down here, you didn’t really get so much here because our whānau here was more European. (Amīria)

This European element was reflected by all the kaumātua, especially the censorship of te reo occurring inside and outside the home:

None of us spoke Māori . . . our uncles and aunties were persecuted . . . for speaking Māori when they went to school. So, it was drummed out of them and that generation. And so, consequently, we weren’t bought up with a Māori side to our family at all. (Pora)

It’s surprising how little we knew of Māori things from Mum. . . It wasn’t allowed in the home either, and Granny spoke no English when she married. She picked up a little English along the way . . . it must have been very difficult for them. (Mārama)

While te reo was a catalyst for cultural expression, participants did experience Māoriness in other ways:

We had a headmaster right out of Liverpool . . . He encouraged everything Māori and he got my mother . . . to come to the school and teach tītī tōrea- the [Māori] stick game as you know—and the poi [a light ball on string which is swung rhythmically], and weaving and the string games. (Hana)

Everybody younger than myself were brought up in that marae—family, I’m talking—they all did the same thing today that our elders did: when somebody’s passed away, they use the facilities, they cook, they invite people from all around the country. When someone gets married: same principle. (Manaaki)

[My great-grandmother] brought me up on the farm with other, what we call mokopuna[grandchildren]s, . . .—I wasn’t the only one . . . [she] taught them how to weave, how to make Māori design mats, Māori design kete[woven basket or bag]s, Māori design korowai[woven cloak]s . . . We still have them all. (Manaaki)

I entered [a competition] and I was very lucky. I won doing long poi . . . I find it hard to explain but I do know that a lot of people treated me a bit differently for my Māori side, and it was in a lovely way. (Amīria)

An ineffable essence within

People will never take that from you . . . If you’ve got it in here, it doesn’t matter how much European blood you have. You know, I can look round all our young people and you can tell the ones that have got it—and those that haven’t. (Hana)

Participants found articulating feelings around indigeneity difficult. When offered potential catalysts or origins for indigeneity, such as genetics, culture, or connection to the land, they were more often drawn to, almost spiritual, abstract concepts of membership—ineffable notions of Māoriness. Most participants’ notions of Māoriness can be linked to Māori concepts of mana (spiritual power or prestige) and mauri (the life principle; the essential quality and vitality of a being). These concepts are, in turn, difficult to translate outside the context of Māori knowledge, and further definition features in the “Discussion” section.

Kaumātua related to their indigeneity in the following ways:

It wasn’t just the language, or the whenua that went with it. It was something else. Not only the stories; it was a real connectedness with you. (Hana)

Māoridom will never leave a Māori. You got Māori blood in you, you got Māori instincts, you got everything about Māori in you. I don’t care who you are. I don’t care what age you are. I don’t care what tribe you come from (Manaaki).

They know what’s in my heart . . . I don’t know why, I must have something that’s Māori in there that shows to them because the old kuia[female elder]s [of other tribes] make a big fuss of me . . . they don’t do that to everybody. (Amīria)

What I relate to mana and mauri—this inner connectedness—was sometimes associated by the participants with an exposure to—or lack of—Māori cultural expression or a relationship to the whenua. One participant typified their upbringing as a Pākehā one, declaring they have never felt Māori and identified as Pākehā. Others noted that, while appearing to be Pākehā by certain metrics, they feel Māori—often due to exposure to the culture and the whenua. Mārama commented that she and her older sibling, despite living most of their lives away from the whenua, always felt it was home—their birthplace and tūrangawaewae (place of belonging). This contrasted with their younger sibling, born on the whenua but raised predominantly in the city, whom Mārama said did not feel the same connection. Another participant felt pity for whānau who relocated to urban Pākehā communities, implying the lack of exposure to the whenua could be a catalyst to diminished indigeneity and—in my analysis—mana and/or mauri. Some commented on elements of Māori cultural expression as adjacent to the ineffable essence of Māori:

To me, Māori, it’s kind of in the heart . . . it’s in you . . . it’s not something that you—you can go out and learn the reo, . . . the kawa and the tikanga and that’s all lovely. But there’s a little something that’s different, if you’ve really got Māori in your heart. (Amīria)

One kaumātua felt the resurgent popularity of moko kauae (chin tattoos) lacked the mana and significance of the past, and that te Reo Māori courses should prioritise kawa rather than teaching the language on a merely superficial level. Another was thrilled to see an increase in moko kauae and that Pākehā were taking classes in te reo—they raised no opinion on the importance of kawa in these matters. One saw cultural value in te reo living on through future generations but felt Māoriness was linked to genetics and is diminishing. Some perceived a decline in traditional values or practices in younger generations—noting that youth today would rather be on their phones than gardening, horse riding, or engaging in cultural practices—though they also reflected on how modern technology is revolutionising whānau and iwi interaction and that older generations need to adapt:

We’re sitting here having a conversation, it’s unheard of . . . Those that are sitting around the fire, Blake, have to learn: This is 2022 now, we do it by Zoom. If you haven’t got a phone and you don’t know what Zoom is, go and learn, go and get one . . . This is today’s society. (Manaaki)

While most lamented elements of a diminished relationship with indigeneity, one participant believed mana can be regained, and mauri revitalised by exercising ahikā (the burning fires of occupation). That is, diasporic whānau—or those on the whenua but disconnected from iwi activity—could reengage with their indigeneity by investing effort into the whenua through kaitiakitanga (guardianship, stewardship), kotahitanga (unity, collective action), whanaungatanga (kinship), and manaakitanga (hospitality, support). Rather than acting as a guest on holiday, by getting the soil of the whenua under the fingernails with some mahi (work), one may rekindle that ineffable essence within.

Othering

When I was young, going to primary school, we could not speak Māori. We weren’t allowed to speak Māori. If the teacher heard us speaking Māori, they’d belt you with a cane or strap, and I did on one occasion, and a Māori teacher did it, he strapped the hell out of me . . . And they did it everywhere. (Manaaki)

Feelings of Othering arose explicitly by kaumātua, and implicitly through analysis. There were many examples of when an identity of Other was prescribed upon them or they were prescribing it on others, and some examples of when Otherness may have been promoted within. That is, some promoted their felt Māoriness in relation to the Western world, potentially highlighting their position as Other in a beneficial way. For instance, Manaaki toured internationally as an entertainer—his act rebranding themselves by adding The Māori or The New Zealand Māori prefix to their group name in different countries, depending on whether it would improve their commercial attraction.

Beyond the punitive censorship of te reo, other instances of racism, bigotry, and prejudice were recalled. Hana said that housing was denied to whānau on account of having “native” names or appearances, their presence in Pākehā-dominated spaces was categorised as “the dark clouds moving into town,” Pākehā spouses were told they were “marrying beneath [their] station,” and Pākehā took issue with Māori names—coercing, or leading one participant to go by an alternative Pākehā name. Hana found sustained success in modelling, though noted her Māori features—prized by Pākehā employers—were obscured as a more acceptable European exoticness:

I wasn’t Māori . . . No way was I Māori. I was from the south of France. I could have been Italian, I was anything but Māori. [laughs] . . . No, it wasn’t spoken about . . . So I just didn’t say anything. Just [grumbles] grit your teeth and move on. (Hana)

Conversely, Pora, upon emigrating to a country with a large Indigenous population, was often mistaken as being from that Indigenous group. After being identified as a New Zealand Māori, people’s attitudes and body language would alter positively. In this instance, Māoriness was more valued, or at least more novel, than the previous association with the Indigenous group of that area. Manaaki, another emigrant, reacted to an absence of Māori cultural frameworks in his new country by leading the way for cultural expression and traditional practices to become established: “We practice our culture wherever we went. Our culture was involved in whatever we did” (Manaaki). After being called a “dirty black Māori” at primary school, Hana told her Māori mother who replied, “Anybody who said that, was a mongrel: your whakapapa tells you who you are, and you’ve got to walk tall.” Usage of the word mongrel, in association with the assurance that one’s whakapapa plays an important role in one’s integrity, relates to both the genealogical model of Māori knowledge and notions of mana and mauri.

All acknowledged a sea change in the cultural capital of Māoriness in recent decades. Where te reo was in decline during their childhood, they now see younger generations of Māori and Pākehā enthusiastically learning the language and greeting them on the street in te reo. Most attempted to learn it in adulthood, though none attained fluency. Responses to this ranged from deep regret to stoic acceptance. Amīria, who previously experienced tension regarding Pākehā difficulty or discrimination towards her Māori name now experiences it as commonplace or celebrated—if sometimes exoticized—bearing it with pride. Kaumātua who have lived overseas all commented on being shocked at how much the presence and prestige of Māori culture had risen during their absence and continued to rise on their return. Several acknowledged the efforts of one distant relative, Whatarangi Winiata, who started Te Wānanga o Raukawa, the first whare wānanga (Māori university), and those who passed through it and went on to champion Māori causes:

Oh, it took a while, this constant pushing by different Māori to bring about change. You’ve got to take your hat off to them, you really do. We wouldn’t be in the position we’re in today, if it weren’t for them. (Hana)

Whakapapa and te reo

Ko te reo te Māori te kākahu o te whakaaro

The Māori language cloaks Māori thought

—Sir James Henare

Tūpuna featured heavily in the participants’ kōrero—either having the lived experiences of tūpuna filtered through their perspective or noting the impact being raised by tūpuna had on them. In Māori art, the takarangi (a double spiral) represents whakapapa and space-time. Central to Māori culture and the organisation of Māori philosophy, whakapapa provides a model of knowing (Stewart, 2020), for which tūpuna are a notch in the takarangi between the participants and Papatūānuku, and the spiral flows to the mokopuna. Cosmogenic whakapapa narratives instil in the Māori ethos an “environmental virtue ethic” (Patterson, 2000, p. 46), as seen in concepts like whanaungatanga and kaitiakitanga—common principles in Indigenous peoples who understand themselves as literally related to all elements of the natural world (Marsden, 2003b; Patterson, 2000; Stewart, 2020). This compares to the ecological self (Næss, 2007), an ecopsychological term, which connects one to their ancient, timeless self, inhabiting a system of nested relationships (Rust, 2020).

Loss of language was linked by participants to a loss of knowledge and cultural identity. Stewart (2020) states that te Reo Māori holds the key to Māori philosophy, in that “language is an abstract idea inextricably linked with a people’s ‘soul’” (Blommaert, 1999, p. 13). This ideology rejects the notion that te Ao Māori (the Māori world) can be fully translated into English unproblematically (Stewart, 2020), and magnifies the oppressive intent behind colonial practices of banning te reo in schools (Tocker, 2017; Van Meijl, 2006). Colonisation of the Indigenous mind through pedagogical means was multi-faceted: Māori mythology, history, and culture were appropriated, homogenised, nationalised, and reattuned towards a Pākehā-positive reference frame in mass-consumed educational literature (King, 2003). This power of mass literacy, which Benedict Anderson (2016) termed print capitalism, bypassed the intimacy of whānau or iwi whakapapa kōrero in favour of the large-scale production of Romantic colonial literature. Tales of intrepid Polynesians colonising Aotearoa explicitly rallied iwi through the country to a shared aspiration while implicitly valorising European settlers for the same feat (King, 2003). This promoted an affinity for a constructed ethnicity (Appadurai, 1996) which could pave the way to a dialectically generated nationalism (Chatterjee, 1993; During, 1998). Ethnicity formation in response to Western difference resulted in the construction of Māori—an Indigenous label predicated on the positionality of Pākehā (Stewart, 2020). It unified kinship groups with similar whakapapa kōrero into a collective group self-presentation (Hobsbawm & Ranger, 1983) but risked homogenising their tribal histories and traditions into the culture of a subaltern race (Gentry, 2015; George, 2012; Shilliam, 2015; Stewart, 2020); “If you cannot divide and rule, then for tribal people all you can do is unite them and rule” (Rangihau, 1992, p. 190).

Mana and mauri

Despite these “wounds of coloniality” (Shilliam, 2015, p. 13), there resides in the psychic depths a spiritual domain harder to colonise (Rust, 2020; Shilliam, 2015). One’s ancestral capacity is accessed through a sense of “deep time” (Macy & Brown, 1998, p. 136), where “deep relation” (Shilliam, 2015, p. 66) exists outside Western models of knowledge—of commodification and human-outside-nature—in favour of the Indigenous ecological self, one interconnected and interdependent with nature, unbound from any delineation between self and world (Armstrong, 1995; Rust, 2020). When attempting to articulate feelings of Māoriness, kaumātua were often drawn to this spiritual domain and an ineffable essence within; I offer mana and mauri as two concepts related to this theme. Mana was simply defined in the previous section as spiritual power or prestige. Further translation could include, power of the gods (Barlow, 1991) and how that power influences people’s lives (Stewart, 2020), or the “lawful permission delegated by the gods to their human agents and accompanied by the endowment of spiritual power to act on their behalf and in accordance to their revealed will” (Marsden, 2003a, p. 4). When Hana’s mother assured her to “walk tall,” this was an invocation of mana in the face of racist subjugation. Her reminder that “your whakapapa tells you who you are” channels the higher realm of tūpuna at the crossroads of the manifest and spiritual domains (Shilliam, 2015). Mauri was defined above as the life principle, the essential quality and vitality of a being. Following the interconnectedness of te Ao Māori, this extends to features in the natural environment, seen as both living and supporting life (Stewart, 2020). For the individual person, mauri can also be understood as spiritual-psycho-emotional health (Stewart, 2020). Mauri was reflected in the participants’ repeated mention of a deep feeling towards Māoriness, its expression, and a strongly felt connection to the whenua; a belonging where, perhaps, they felt a heightened interconnectedness and stimulation of mauri—human-in-nature, nature-in-human.

Kawa and the local

Several kaumātua noted that, while the rise in te reo use was a positive thing, language acquisition without a philosophical framework is a potentially superficial endeavour—merely translating a Pākehā world into an Indigenous tongue. This reflects tensions found in past research surrounding Māori identity and disenfranchisement, where generations of Māori possessed neither the language nor the understanding of what a supposed good Māori should know, particularly concerning kawa or marae protocol and practices (George, 2012; Hill, 2012; Tocker, 2017; Van Meijl, 2006). This tension was characterised as anxiety around not knowing and the resultant stigmatisation by those in the know—paradoxically resulting in an intragroup Othering (Hill, 2012; Van Meijl, 2006). To several kaumātua, the ineffable essence of Māoriness precedes cultural protocol, and some guidance on transcending disenfranchisement was offered: by reengaging with the whenua—practising principles of Māoriness deemed innate in oneself—one participant believed that a Māori identity could be reclaimed. Through analysis, I linked this to mana regained and mauri revitalised. This notion of active relation to the land and place connects to the ecological self discussed in the previous section and compares to David Tacey’s (2009) description of the landscape as a source of self-understanding in the cosmology of Aboriginal peoples: “Landscape is a mythopoetic field . . . at the centre of everything: at once the source of life, the origin of the tribe, the metamorphosed body of blood-line ancestors and the intelligent force which drives the individual and creates society” (pp. 145–146).

Philosophy and agency

Manaaki was an outlier to this proposition. While his connection to the whenua is strong yet bittersweet, he has maintained mana and mauri decades after emigration, by practising Māori cultural traditions and rituals. Arjun Appadurai (1996) notes the difficulty of agenting cultural reproduction during the process of migration. Both points of departure and arrival are in cultural flux and the politics of family—and its intersection with the new locale—are complicated. The search for stable points of reference in this confluence of uncertainty results in the invention of tradition (Hobsbawm & Ranger, 1983) where “culture becomes less what Pierre Bourdieu would have called a habitus (a tacit realm of reproducible practices and dispositions) and more an arena for conscious choice, justification, and representation, the latter often to multiple and spatially dislocated audiences” (Appadurai, 1996, p. 44).

Consciously or unconsciously, Manaaki processed the trauma of deterritorialization (Appadurai, 1996) through cultural reproduction, and is proud to have carried on the ways of his tūpuna.

Polarity and synthesis

Several participants provided examples of how they utilise strengths or aspects of one culture to mediate difficulties and tensions experienced through the lens of the other culture, and vice versa. Navigation between models of knowledge in a bicultural settler-Indigenous society draws a comparison to Jung’s two spirits. Distancing my analysis from Jung’s problematic ideas around a national psychology (Williams, 2018), I attempt a Post-Jungian application of his two spirits to navigate the duality of models of knowledge without a civilised/savage prejudice. In The Red Book (2012), Jung details his lifelong journey in navigating two spirits—or personalities—within: the spirit of the times and the spirit of the depths. The spirit of the times was partially characterised by use and value, the contemporary, the scientific, and empirical investigation. The spirit of the depths is contrasted as being timeless, cosmic, numinous, and intuitive (Jung, 2012; Saban, 2019; Shamdasani, 2012). Tacey (2009) invokes Jung’s thinking when describing three stages to understanding the world. Stage 1 is a sacred land where spirits of the earth are legitimate forces in the world. Stage 2, where we currently reside, condemns such forces as irrational “projections of the mind upon inanimate phenomena” and favours the “scientific, analytic mind” (Rust, 2020, p. 60):

Stage two thinking lands us in a spiritual and emotional wasteland, in which reason and science have cleansed the world of all projections, leaving nothing left in the world for us to relate to, or form spiritual bonds with . . . No longer sacred, it becomes real estate or “natural resource” to be used to satisfy egotistical desires. (Tacey, 2009, p. 27)

Tacey cautions as we enter the third stage of thinking, warming again to the transpersonal forces of the earth, that we require cosmologies appropriate to modern times (Rust, 2020). This dialectic not only circles back to the third space (Bhabha, 2009; Stewart, 2020) but also draws on Paulo Freire’s (1996) cultural synthesis as a means for dialogical cultural action which aims to surmount the antagonistic contradictions of the social structure. The dominant alienating culture is superseded, and previously dominant actors become integrated with the newly liberated people—becoming co-authors of the action performed upon the world. Stewart (2020) and During (2000) link Bhabha’s concept of hybridity in the third space to Judith Butler’s (2010) concept of performativity and the fluidity it offers when acknowledging the agentive performance of ethnicity: “less interested in what identity is, and more interested in what identities are for, and what identities can do” (Stewart, 2020, p. 106).