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tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-208361522017-11-15T04:16:02.222+13:00He HōakaKim Mcbreenhttps://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-20836152.post-72028025148328316312017-07-06T13:12:00.000+12:002017-07-06T13:12:47.592+12:00Racial justice meets the child welfare systemOriginally posted on The Spinoff Parents November last year, re-posting here to support the Human Rights Commission taking their open letter to parliament today (event page).

 You may have heard the Crown have had a series of bad reports for their child welfare work. Really bad reports. So bad that the Crown has set up a new ministry and is proposing changes to the Children, Young Persons and their Families Act. What they really need to do is give up and admit this isn't their thing.

 The Crown has been horrible at child welfare. The Crown has taken children from families for almost arbitrary reasons, like skipping school or being poor—that in itself is an inexcusable act of violence. It has taken those children from safe homes and put them in dangerous situations where many have been abused and neglected. Can you imagine how you would feel if this was your kid? How angry, devastated and useless you might feel, what that would do to a whānau? Māori have been especially targeted, both in who the Crown has taken and who is most likely to be abused. Two Crown reports last year showed the extent of the Crown's responsibility for the abuse of children. The Crown has blamed CYF, which is kind of like when my kid blames her foot for pushing the cat. According to the Crown, it's all CYF's fault: we need a new model, the law needs simplifying. The changes that the Crown has announced are a signal that there will be no real change—it will be the same stuff with a different name.

 Many reports have identified the problem, but the Crown doesn't get it. The problem is not the name of the ministry or that the law was too complex. The problem is that the Crown is colonising, controlling and authoritarian. That strategy has failed, it is time for a different strategy—like sharing the responsibility with the communities that are most affected. A Crown report in the 1980s identified that institutional racism was shutting Māori out of child welfare decisions, while at the same time Māori children are the majority in the child welfare system. For decades, Māori have argued that the best solution for our children is to give the responsibility to Māori.

 The Crown seems allergic to the idea of sharing power. Like so many patriarchs, the only way it knows to respond to criticism is to tighten control. But surely we all want the same thing: an actual solution. A solution means solving this mess, so we won't have endless reports on how useless and abusive our child welfare system is, so children are protected and stay out of the system, so they don't carry that trauma through their lives, so we are moving towards a future we want.

 To protect children and undo the damage that the Crown has inflicted on whānau, the enduring solution is to take that power from the Crown, and give decision making, resources and responsibility to appropriate rōpū, communities, hapū, iwi. The Crown's task then becomes supporting rōpū to prepare for that responsibility. Our task is to work out how to make it happen.

Some backstory: institutional racism and unconscious bias
 When I was born 40-odd years ago, my mother was very young and single, and so I was taken immediately for adoption. The Adoption Act 1955 was what some people would call colour-blind. It didn't refer to culture or ethnicity; all adoptions were treated the same. Other words for that are institutionally racist, or assimilationist, or colonising. In practice, it meant Māori understandings of wellbeing, adoption and whakapapa were ignored and all adoptions were according to Pākehā ideas of what was best: closed adoptions, a complete break between the birth family and the adopting family. By Māori standards, that's abuse.

 My mother was white and no attempt was made to find out the ethnicity of my father (the Adoption Act pretty much excluded fathers). I had pale skin and dark hair, so I was white enough—the social worker didn't ask about my ethnicity. Despite that, when my adopting parents asked, the social workers guaranteed that I was white.

 I was adopted and told that I was Pākehā, and that was the story I grew up with. It's a story that became harder and harder to believe, but in this monocultural society, it nevertheless stole any opportunity for me to grow up with te reo, tikanga or mātauranga Māori. I grew up with one part of my cultural heritage well-represented, and another part denigrated, so that I will never feel at home among people and in places where I belong.

 I am well aware that I was luckier than many. Being born pale skinned and female meant I was adopted as a baby, which meant I was destined to have it easier than those who were not. But my history gives me some small knowledge of what it is to be disconnected from whakapapa and shut out of belonging.

 I am sharing this story because it shows what happens when we don't require social workers to think outside their cultural context. If we do not require social workers to consider whakapapa and cultural connection, most will not. If we make our law colour-blind, in practice it will be white, assimilationist, colonising. And it will hurt children. That's why, nearly 30 years ago, Māori fought hard to have children's connections to whakapapa and culture protected in the Children, Young Persons and their Families Act. That's why, when I heard that the Minister of Social Welfare was proposing to drop those protections, I was so shocked that I thought it was a misunderstanding.

More backstory: centuries of whānau nurturing children
 Traditionally, Māori society is whānau centred, and Māori whānau are child centred. Whakapapa is at the heart of our philosophy, the relationship between tūpuna and mokopuna is especially celebrated in our literature, and our metaphors for identity and belonging are all about mothering. When Europeans arrived, some were appalled enough that they wrote about what terrible parents Māori were, especially Māori men, who were far too loving and attentive to children—not at all manly behaviour. (If you are interested in traditional Māori parenting, Mana Ririki produced a fantastic report.)

 Over the next several decades, Europeans got stuck in, teaching Māori parents good Christian spare-the-rod-spoil-the-child parenting, and teaching Māori men patriarchal family values. At the same time that the Crown took Māori wealth and resources, it imposed capitalism. The combined effect was impoverishment and chasing wages for survival (when my iwi, Ngāi Tahu, signed Te Tiriti they were responsible for almost all of Te Waipounamu, Rakiura and surrounding islands; between 1844 and 1860, they were forced to sell effectively all that land for less than £9000. In that short time, thousands of people who had been collectively self-supporting and self-determining became politically and financially dependent on the Europeans who had taken everything. Can you imagine how that felt?).

 Europeans introduced diseases that killed thousands (in the first 100 years of contact with Europeans, the Māori population fell from around 200,000 to 42,000). The Crown dismantled Māori law and systems that kept whānau safe and healthy, criminalised tikanga, locked people up for trying to hold on to their land, banned te reo Māori from schools to stamp out not just te reo, but all the knowledge that it carries. And Māori were still expected to fight for Britain in two horrific world wars.

 After a hundred years of this, Māori were still resilient. In the 1940s, research on Māori mental health focused on why Māori were so much healthier than Europeans (one third the incidence of mental disorder)1. Pākehā researchers' explanation was that the whānau was such a nurturing mechanism that it was protecting Māori mental health from even the ongoing violence of colonisation. They predicted that as whānau structures were dismantled, Māori mental disease would increase to Pākehā rates. This could have been a turning point for Māori and Pākehā—where would we be if Pākehā had paid attention to their own researchers saying whānau are a healthier institution than nuclear families? Instead, the Crown has continued with policies to dismantle whānau, and privilege small family units that provide a dependent, mobile workforce.

 Colonisation has treated generations of Māori to continuous violence, trauma after trauma after trauma. At the same time, the Crown has been dismantling our mechanisms of well-being—disconnecting us from our whenua, our whakapapa, our whānau. These experiences have created the situation we are in now, where some Māori whānau aren't coping. They need support to heal. Instead, the Crown steps in, taking children from communities that it has attacked, and takes away those communities' futures. Unjust, immoral, abusive—I don't have words that adequately express how obscene this is.

Last backstory: decades of Crown endangering Māori children
 That problem for Māori was clearly described in the 1987 report Puao-te-ata-tu, commissioned by the Minister of Social Welfare. Already, Māori made up the majority of Social Welfare institutions' clientele. Puao-te-ata-tu reported that institutional racism in the Department of Social Welfare, the Children and Young Persons Act and the courts made it impossible for those institutions to achieve their goals. They defined institutional racism as "monocultural institutions which simply ignore and freeze out the cultures of those who do not belong to the majority. National structures are evolved which are rooted in the values, systems and viewpoints of one culture only." Whenever people talk about one law for all, this is what they mean: one law based entirely on Pākehā values and priorities, applied to all of us.

 The solution Puao-te-ata-tu recommended was biculturalism. Not the token biculturalism we think of now, where all the values and goals of our institutions and laws are Pākehā, but we are allowed the occasional pōwhiri or karakia so everyone can feel culturally enriched. But real biculturalism, where the values, cultures and beliefs of Māori are as central as those of Pākehā in all aspects of governance; where power is re-invested in Māori institutions—whānau, hapū and iwi. Puao-te-ata-tu identified that Māori succeed when rangatiratanga is recognised and supported, and therefore recommended that Māori should be resourced to solve the problems Māori are facing. The report's recommendations would have transformed social welfare institutions from their philosophical foundations to their practices. The advice could have turned this crisis around 30 years ago. Thousands of children could have been spared the CYF experience. And the reality of that experience is only now becoming fully known.

 Last year the Confidential Listening and Assistance Service completed their final report on experiences of abuse and neglect in state care up to 1992. The Service described their findings as "horrifying"—if anything, that's an understatement. For decades, children were removed from homes, sometimes for little reason, and placed in situations where they would endure neglect, physical, sexual and psychological abuse, with nowhere to complain, no-one who would help. Thousands of children. And as bad as it was generally, Māori had it hardest—Māori children were more likely to be put in care, for more trivial reasons, and to be treated more harshly. I challenge anyone to read that report and not be outraged (the report is only public because the Otago Daily Times made an OIA request).

 There are predictable outcomes. The report states: "It has become clear to us that the neglect and abuse of children and the previously frequent practice of locking children up in institutions has contributed to a dark legacy of suffering and crime in this country." Principal Youth Court Judge Andrew Becroft also commented last year on the link between state care and crime—83 percent of prison inmates under 20 have been in CYF care. State 'care' has been creating enduring problems that will only grow.

 The Crown's response shows the level of compassion and empathy we can expect. There is no denying that children and their families suffered, so the Crown cannot avoid paying some compensation. But it will not apologise.

 Another report from last year, this time from the Crown appointed Children's Commission, looked at the recent performance of Child, Youth and Family. It wasn't encouraging. They say "We don't know if children are better off as a result of state intervention… the limited data we do have about health, education, and justice outcomes is concerning." Again, although the majority of children referred to CYF and in care are Māori, CYF does not have and does not value the knowledge, skills and experience to work with Māori. Again, they recommended transforming CYF, including focusing on building cultural capacity and partnering with iwi.

 Report after report is telling the Crown that it cannot care for children, that Māori children are especially endangered by the Crown, and that the Crown needs to be partnering with Māori to ensure good outcomes for Māori children. With Māori children representing around 60 percent of children in care, it is obvious that the Crown should be doing all it can to work with Māori to turn this around.

 Instead, the Crown blames its terrible record on CYF. It's not the State treating children terribly, it's CYF and all its predecessors (seriously—are we supposed to not understand that CYF is the State?). The State has got this under control. It's getting good advice.

 What is this whole new model? The Crown will re-brand child protection work under a Ministry of Vulnerable Children. It is immediately clear that the Crown is not taking advice from people you might expect, like its own Children's Commissioner, who said the new name is "stigmatising and labelling". Other places it is not taking advice from include all the aforementioned reports that demonstrated the need for a new model. Because instead of strengthening its relationship with Māori, the Crown is doing the opposite. In the legislative overhaul for their new model, the Crown is removing two important clauses for Māori: one that prioritises Māori children staying within their hapū and iwi, and another that considers the effect of decisions on the stability of Māori children's whānau, hapū and iwi.

 Labour supports the changes, with their spokesperson Jacinda Adern saying the moves are justified because of abuses of children in care of extended family. That was a sadly ignorant response. It is tragic whenever CYF places children in unsafe situations, including with unsafe whānau. It is an example of CYF making bad decisions for children, and why Māori want to be making those decisions ourselves. CYF's bad practice is no excuse for removing provisions to protect children in the context of whānau. To make that argument is transparently racist—Māori cannot be blamed for the Crown's bad decisions. Likewise, it is unbelievable that social workers cannot find safe and loving whānau within a child's whakapapa. As Tariana Turia has said of her iwi "You can't tell me that within 8000 people connected by our river, you cannot find someone to care for a child." This is true of all our whānau and hapū.

Tweaking an abusive model: What's wrong with the proposed changes?
 The clauses the Crown is removing from the Children, Young Persons and their Families Act consider the effects of decisions on whānau, and prioritise placing a child within their hapū or iwi. These clauses came from the Puao-te-ata-tu report I mentioned earlier, which found that the Crown would continue to fail Māori if it did not overcome institutional racism. The report made many recommendations, most of which have not been met, but two findings are particularly relevant.

 Firstly, in the context of institutional racism, social workers need to be directed to recognise children as members of whānau and hapū, whose wellbeing is necessarily linked to the child's wellbeing. Without that direction, social workers were taking away the ability of whānau, hapū and iwi to take responsibility and care for their children. They were contributing to problems in whānau. Secondly, in the context of institutional racism, social workers need to be directed to recognise that the well-being of Māori children includes their sense of belonging to whakapapa and whānau, and that prioritising their wellbeing includes prioritising those connections. Without that direction, social workers were not prioritising whakapapa, and children were being isolated from their whakapapa and culture. Māori fought hard to have these directions included in the CYP&F Act; removing them takes away protection for connections to whakapapa.

 We need to return to the historical context of whānau, which has been deliberately de-stabilised by Crown policies for decades, where trauma from the violence of colonisation has created problems that means a few whānau are not currently safe, and where for decades the Crown has taken Māori children and put them in less safe situations. At this point, the only just response for the Crown would be to ask Māori how whānau can best be supported to care for children. Removing those particular clauses signals to Māori that the Crown isn't listening and doesn't care what we think.

 The proposed changes to legislation also breach New Zealand's international obligations. There are two relevant statements in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, to which New Zealand is a signatory. Firstly, the declaration recognises "the right of indigenous families and communities to retain shared responsibility for the upbringing, training, education and well-being of their children, consistent with the rights of the child." Secondly, the declaration recognises "the collective right to live in freedom, peace and security as distinct peoples and shall not be subjected to any act of genocide or any other act of violence, including forcibly removing children of the group to another group." The UN is critical of the State's new model, and like so many of the State's own reports, recommends more engagement with Māori.

Is there another vision?
 The Crown's vision for child welfare seems to be to create a model that isn't as horrifying as the one we had before. Or perhaps it is to draw a line under last year, and start with a clean slate. Either way, it's not a vision I can buy into, and it stems from the Crown's failure to recognise itself as the problem. Until it gets that, it will miss the point. The fundamental flaw that reproduces bad outcomes for children is that the state is colonising, authoritarian and paternalistic, especially when it comes to Māori. That will always end in abuse.

 My vision, which I hope is consistent with yours, is one where communities are supported to heal, and empowered to nurture and protect their children. If that is the end goal then the tasks in the meantime are clear.

 For the Crown, instead of twisting itself in knots to stop itself abusing children, the task is to support communities to prepare. This was the solution that Puao-te-ata-tu proposed. For decades, Whatarangi Winiata has argued that the only enduring and fair solution is a reallocation of resources, from the Crown to Māori. If all the resources that the Crown takes and uses in failing to protect our children were instead given to Māori, returning all responsibility to care for our children, history and experience suggests our children would be better off.

 For Māori and other communities who want to take responsibility for their children, the task is to identify what is needed, and how to re-build capacity so that our children are nurtured and safe. Many of our communities are well underway with that work.

 Right now, our task is to stop the Crown from abusing another generation of children. We need to stop the changes to the Children, Young Persons and their Families Act, and we need to push for a holistic, enduring solution. Puao-te-ata-tu called it biculturalism, Whatarangi Winiata calls it rangatiratanga, I'm going to call it justice.

 Hands off our tamariki.

 1 Beaglehole, E and P Beaglehole 1947 Some Modern Maoris, New Zealand Council for Educational Research Series (Whitcombe and Tombs, Auckland)Kim Mcbreenhttps://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-20836152.post-16962420395667631232016-10-26T14:24:00.001+13:002016-10-26T14:24:38.128+13:00Open letter from Hands off our tamariki Ōtaki hui

The following letter was sent to all Māori Members of Parliament from the Hands off our tamariki Ōtaki hui, held 12 October at Te Wānanga o Raukawa.

 Re: Proposed changes to the Children, Young Persons and their Families Act

 Tēnā koutou i ngā tini āhuatanga o te ao,

 On Wednesday, October 12, a hui in Ōtaki discussed the changes Anne Tolley has proposed to the Children, Young Persons and their Families Act, removing the clauses that consider the effects of decisions on whānau, and that prioritise placing a child within their hapū or iwi.

 Those clauses came out of the 1988 report Puao-te-ata-tu. After extensive research around the nation, Puao-te-ata-tu found that 'institutional racism' was at the root of Māori social welfare problems, and predicted that the Crown would continue to fail Māori unless this was fixed. The report found that Māori succeed when rangatiratanga is recognised and supported, and recommended that Māori should be resourced to solve the problems Māori are facing.

 Two findings of Puao-te-ata-tu are particularly related to the proposed changes. Firstly, children are members of whānau and hapū, and the wellbeing of those units needs to be considered. At the time, legislation regarded the welfare of the child as the first and paramount consideration (the proposed changes will re-instate this). The report found that in the context of institutional racism, this took away the ability of whānau, hapū and iwi to take responsibility for their children. Secondly, the well-being of Māori children includes their sense of belonging to whakapapa and whānau, prioritising their wellbeing includes prioritising those connections. In the context of institutional racism, not specifically prioritising whakapapa means children are isolated from their whakapapa and culture. This is dangerous.

 Puao-te-ata-tu made many recommendations, most of which have not been met. The two clauses that Anne Tolley is proposing to remove were hard won. Removing them from legislation takes away all protection for connections to whakapapa.

 It is unbelievable that social workers cannot find safe and loving whānau within a child's whakapapa. As Tariana Turia has said of her iwi "You can't tell me that within 8000 people connected by our river, you cannot find someone to care for a child."

 It is tragic whenever CYF places children in unsafe situations, including unsafe whānau. It is an example of CYF making bad decisions for our children, and why we want to make those decisions ourselves. CYF's bad practice cannot be used as an excuse to remove provisions to protect children in the context of whānau. To make that argument is transparently racist—Māori cannot be blamed for the Crown's bad decisions.

 Removing the clauses from legislation is simply another colonising act of control. The proposed changes are inconsistent with the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, to which New Zealand is a signatory. In particular, the changes are inconsistent with article 7.2 which recognises "the collective right to live in freedom, peace and security as distinct peoples and shall not be subjected to any act of genocide or any other act of violence, including forcibly removing children of the group to another group."

 It is apt that this hui was held at Te Wānanga o Raukawa. From the Wānanga, for decades Whatarangi Winiata has argued for an enduring and fair solution to the many problems that Māori face as a result of colonisation, including the number of children in state care. The solution he proposes is a reallocation of resources, from the Crown to Māori. If all the resources that the Crown takes and uses to protect our children were instead given to Māori, returning all responsibility to care for our children, history and experience suggests our children would be better off. This is the long-term solution we support.

 We are asking you as a Member of Parliament to do all that you can to reverse the changes to the CYPF Act that Anne Tolley is proposing. These changes come from a monocultural understanding of child welfare. They will result in dislocating Māori children from their whakapapa and all the negative outcomes that stem from that disconnection. There has been no credible reason given for the changes. They breach the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and meet the Declaration's definition of genocide. We would expect the Crown to be moving towards honouring Te Tiriti, but these changes are a dangerous step away from rangatiratanga. They are assimilationist, racist and colonising.

 We hope that you will be brave, energetic and outspoken in protecting our tamariki from these moves.

 Ngā mihi,

 Attendees of the Hands off our tamariki hui in Ōtaki, 12 October 2016 Kim Mcbreenhttps://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-20836152.post-88075086016389170672016-10-08T19:46:00.000+13:002016-10-18T14:28:19.670+13:00The NZ state, making children vulnerable since way backI'm going to talk about the proposed changes to the Children, Young Persons and their Families Act, but before I do, I want to give a quick background. The context is necessary for understanding why the changes are so upsetting.

Traditionally, Māori society is whānau centred, and Māori whānau are child centred. Whakapapa is at the heart of our philosophy, the relationship between tūpuna and mokopuna is especially celebrated in our literature, and our metaphors for identity and belonging are all about mothering. When Europeans arrived, some were appalled enough that they wrote about what terrible parents Māori were, especially Māori men, who were far too loving and attentive to children, not at all manly behaviour. (If you are interested in traditional Māori parenting, Mana Ririki produced a fantastic report)

Over the next several decades, Europeans got stuck-in, teaching Māori parents good Christian spare-the-rod-spoil-the-child parenting, and teaching Māori men patriarchal family values. At the same time that the Crown took Māori wealth and resources, it imposed capitalism—the combined effect was impoverishment and chasing wages for survival (when my iwi, Ngāi Tahu, signed Te Tiriti they were responsible for almost all of Te Waipounamu, Rakiura and surrounding islands; between 1844 and 1860, they were forced to sell effectively all that land for less than £9000. In that short time, thousands of people who had been collectively self-supporting and self-determining became politically and financially dependent on the Europeans who had taken everything. Can you imagine how that felt?). Europeans introduced diseases that killed thousands (in the first 100 years of contact with Europeans, the Māori population fell from around 200 000 to 42 000. Can you imagine that—losing 80% of the population? How did whānau function?). The Crown dismantled Māori law and systems that kept whānau safe and healthy, criminalised tikanga, locked people up for trying to hold on to their land, banned te reo Māori from schools to stamp out not just te reo, but all the mātauranga that it carries. And Māori were still expected to fight for Britain in two horrific world wars.

After a hundred years of this, Māori were still resilient. In the 1940s, research on Māori mental health focused on why Māori were so much healthier than Europeans (one third the incidence of mental disorder).1 Pākehā researchers' explanation was that the whānau was such a nurturing mechanism that it was protecting Māori mental health from even the ongoing violence of colonisation. They predicted that as whānau structures were dismantled, Māori mental disease would increase to Pākehā rates. This could have been a turning point for Māori and Pākehā—where would we be if Pākehā had paid attention to their own researchers saying whānau are a healthier institution than nuclear families? Instead, the Crown has continued with policies to dismantle whānau, and privilege small family units that provide a dependent, mobile workforce.

What I'm trying to show is that colonisation has treated generations of Māori to continuous violence, trauma after trauma after trauma. At the same time, the Crown has been dismantling our mechanisms of wellbeing—disconnecting us from our whenua, our whakapapa, our whānau. These experiences have created the situation we are in now, where some Māori whānau aren't coping. That problem was clearly described in the 1987 report Puao-te-ata-tu commissioned by the Minister of Social Welfare. Already, Māori made up the majority of Social Welfare institutions' clientele. Puao-te-ata-tu reported that institutional racism in the Department of Social Welfare, the Children and Young Persons Act and the courts made it impossible for those institutions to achieve their goals, and made recommendations that would have transformed those institutions from their philosophical foundations to their practices. Their recommendations included incorporating Māori values in all policies, and working with whānau, hapū and iwi for good outcomes. 30 years ago, Puao-te-ata-tu gave the Crown advice that could have turned this crisis around. One of the few recommendations that survived into practice was the priority in the CYPF Act 1989 for Māori children to stay within hapū or iwi. This is based on a Māori understanding of well-being, which recognises connectedness to whānau, whakapapa and culture as sources of wellness. It needs to be understood in the context of generations of Māori exposed to Crown policies and practices breaking those connections.

Last year, the Crown appointed Children's Commission published a report, State of Care 2015, looking at the performance of Child, Youth and Family. They say "We don't know if children are better off as a result of state intervention. . . . the limited data we do have about health, education, and justice outcomes is concerning." As bad as it is for many children in their care, Māori children are worse off. Again, although the majority of children referred to CYF and in care are Māori, CYF does not have and does not value the knowledge, skills and experience to work with Māori. Again, they recommended transforming CYF, including focusing on building cultural capacity and partnering with iwi.

Since then, Anne Tolley has announced that CYF is broken, which I will come back to, and that it will be replaced by a Ministry for Vulnerable Children. From the moment she announced the name of the Ministry, it was clear she was not taking advice from people you might expect her to, like the Children's Commissioner, who said the name was 'stigmatising and labelling' (Vulnerable Children's Minister Anne Tolley: 'I'll call it, 'my ministry'). Given that the State of Care 2015 report found CYF's ability to provide for Māori children such a concern and recommended working with iwi, you might expect that would be prioritised. Given that we know the importance of culture and connectedness for well-being, you might expect that whānau would be prioritised. Instead, one of the first legislative changes is to remove two clauses, one that prioritises Māori children staying within their hapū and iwi, and another that considers the effect of decisions on the stability of Māori children's whānau, hapū and iwi (Turia blasts 'racist' children's law). These two changes together take away all protection for connections to whakapapa. It's as if Tolley is trying to alienate Māori. When I heard, I was so shocked I thought it was a mistake.

I don't understand it. CYF are bad at caring for children, and particularly bad at caring for Māori children. The majority of children in their 'care' are Māori. Two reports tell them to work with iwi, one tells them to ditch the monocultural approach and include Māori values at their heart. I would expect that to be the direction the Minister would move towards, even if glacially and superficially. Instead, she seems intent on pushing Māori away. Is this assimilationist step just monocultural arrogance (which Puao-te-ata-tu called institutional racism) and incompetence—importing models from overseas and ignoring history?

The other possibility is that it is ideological.

Tolley reacted strongly to the State of Care 2015 report—the system was broken and we needed to start again (eg, CYF system is 'broken', 'It's time for a clean break – CYF is gone' says Tolley, 'Horrifying' outcomes for CYF kids warrant 'a whole new model' – Tolley). We don't usually see ministers so scathing about their departments, even after bad reports. It's uncommon enough that it reminded me of the time 5 years ago when we were told that ACC was broken, just before the announcement that private companies could compete for its work. Is it possible that this government is using the State of Care 2015 report as an excuse to remodel so private companies can contract to care for our children? Remember last year when Anne Tolley said she'd be happy for Serco to run social services for children (Anne Tolley still happy for Serco to run social services for children)? Or when she denied that Serco visited CYF facilities and had to apologise (Anne Tolley apologises over Serco link to Child, Youth and Family)? She then stated that "I'm not talking about putting any part of CYF's statutory responsibilities over to a private company" (Tolley: 'No way' Serco would run CYF), but something is going on.

I don't know why Tolley is proposing something so divisive and counter-productive. What makes it even stranger to me, is that the clauses she wants to remove are so weak. Social workers have told me that the clauses are largely ignored, but that they are important because they are the only tool whānau can use to fight bad decisions.

I want to be clear, removing children from their whānau is violence. Sometimes, children's parents aren't coping, and children need to be protected. But the state has shown that it is not qualified to care for Māori. Iwi are putting their hands up (Iwi Leaders first to sign NZ covenant for children, Vulnerable kids win iwi, CYF pact), and have been for a long time. The authors of Puao-te-ata-tu argued that iwi should be making decisions for Māori children. Instead of setting up this strange new monocultural model, Tolley could be working out how to support iwi to take on that role. Whatever her reason for what she's doing, whether it's stupidity or ideology, the consequences are appalling—if we continue to fail Māori children in state care, we will continue generations of horrible outcomes. The thought of it makes me sick.

 (for more information, check out the Hands Off Our Tamariki facebook page)

 1 Beaglehole, E and P Beaglehole 1947 Some Modern Maoris, New Zealand Council for Educational Research Series (Whitcombe and Tombs, Auckland) Kim Mcbreenhttps://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-20836152.post-64220401616424252702016-08-27T10:41:00.000+12:002016-08-27T10:41:27.564+12:00Accepting violenceAround 2000 I was at a party in someone's flat in Germany. We were probably all in our 20s, students or postdocs at the university, and there was a lot of alcohol. A guy (I'll call him Guy1) was talking to me, he asked me to have lunch with him, I said no, in that joking inoffensive way that we do. He tried again a couple of times, I laughed him off. It was all very light, it probably lasted a couple of minutes and was completely forgettable, except for what happened next. Another guy came over and started talking to Guy1, he moved Guy1 away from me. In the next few minutes several people, men and women, apologised to me for Guy1's behaviour and assured me that he would leave me alone. It was so beyond my experience of life that all I could do was laugh.

I was reminded of this the other day when I was thinking about how hard it is to explain what rape culture is, and why it's bad. If, like me, you can't stop yourself from reading comments on articles about violence against women, you will know that many people are outraged by the term rape culture. I get that no-one likes jargon, and lots of people are scared of feminism, so we could use different words to talk about the same stuff. But when people don't use the term rape culture, it's clear that the words aren't the problem. The problem is that many people accept that violence (especially violence against women) is inevitable, and for whatever reason, they are offended when anyone acts like it's not. They are offended when people don't accept violence as an inevitable consequence of a woman being drunk, or alone, or out at night, or with a man, or wearing whatever, or working, or taking drugs, or having an opinion, or using public transport, or not standing up for herself, or blahblahblah. Those people talk about how women need to be responsible for avoiding this ever-present threat of violence, and are upset by anyone who wants to talk about how to remove the threat. They have accepted that violence against women is inevitable, so we all need to accept it. To be clear, whenever anyone says or implies that violence is inevitable, when they ask us to accept that violence is inevitable, they ask us to accept violence—violence is acceptable. And if violence is acceptable, then the victim is the problem that we need to focus on. If violence is inevitable, then there is no point trying to stop people being violent, instead we need to control potential victims.

How do you shift them from that point to reveal violence as a choice that some people are making? To reveal that we can be safer and more free by focusing on that choice, whether or not to be violent. Whereas, whenever we focus on the choices that victims or potential victims of violence make, we make the world more dangerous and less free.

My experience of parties and pubs has ingrained rules in me—don't make eye contact with men I don't know, don't smile, don't make conversation, stay in the bubble; smile and laugh if a man approaches, have a polite excuse to get away; always be aware; be nice/ likeable even if it takes forever to get away. I expect men who will not accept a polite excuse, I expect to have to argue, gently, carefully, and that it might take minutes or hours, I know some of those men will be dangerous even if they don't know it. I expect men who will choose not to respect my decisions about my body. At times, it has taken hours of gently, carefully, saying no to men; at times, those men have been close friends who care about me.

My partner (a woman) had a conversation with my dad a few weeks ago. My dad was worried that I was abusing her, and it turned out that the problem was that I had said no to him—I had refused to continue an email argument, and when Dad wouldn't stop, I told him I needed a break from him until he controlled himself. The only way my dad could make sense of this was that I am an abusive person, hence his concern for my partner. My partner explained the concept of personal boundaries to him (that we each can choose how we want people to behave towards us and what happens if they won't), but the idea was new and foreign to him. I'm sure he still sees me saying no to him as a character flaw.

How do we keep ourselves safe if we are taught that it is wrong to say no to someone who doesn't behave towards us in the way that we want?

I was wondering what the absence of rape culture would be like. What would it be like if people were free to say yes or no whenever they wanted without constant vigilance and fear for their safety? Would I recognise it? It feels beyond my comprehension. And then I remembered that night at the party in Germany—the concern of the other party goers was beyond my comprehension. It felt weird. I was even uncomfortable with them talking to the guy—was it controlling, oppressive? I've heard enough people talk about anything like that as repressive—how can we even have fun? It's policing normal behaviour, you'd lock up all teenagers next, etc. It's tragic that respecting each other is so foreign and terrifying.

The idea that it is reasonable for women to have personal boundaries was not something I was raised with, and it's not consistent with my experience. My experience of parties and pubs comes from at least some people struggling to respect other people's boundaries, and no-one telling them they need to. There are no repercussions for a guy being obnoxious, there are often no repercussions for a guy being violent. When guys ask for the same thing over and over, and ignore polite requests to stop and to leave, whether or not they are threatening us, they are using the existence of the threat of violence. It is treated as normal and acceptable, and no-one tells them they are being abusive.

I hope it is a generational thing. I hope my experience is incomprehensible to my daughter. I want her to go to parties like the one I went to in Germany, I want it to be normal. If someone behaves badly, I want it to be unacceptable, to her and everyone else. I want her to be free, to say yes or no to whatever she likes, to give and expect respect. I want a future where, when people talk about what's inevitable, that's what they're talking about—mana, manaaki, care, respect.

For that to happen, we need to get better at how we talk about and what we do about violence. It's not inevitable, it's a choice. We need to stop accepting that choice. We need to support people to stop using violence, to get away from violence. We need to get better at recognising when violence and the threat of violence are being used to control—whether it's by individuals, groups or the state. Violence is unacceptable. We need to keep saying that.Kim Mcbreenhttps://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-20836152.post-80057972435107438912015-11-20T09:43:00.000+13:002015-11-20T09:43:32.559+13:00Students, universities and white supremacy
Students of colour organising is getting serious media attention in the US at the moment. Concerned Student 1950 at the University of Missouri forced the University president to resign, holding him responsible for failing to address racism on campus ("Racial climate at MU", "Mizzou hunger strike is what happens when universities disregard black lives", "Concerned student 1950 demands"). Since then, we've heard about organising on countless campuses (article on 22 campuses with comments section naming other campuses, demands from students on a growing number of campuses).

One article that caught my attention was about Georgetown University. Georgetown's history makes the link between white supremacy and its success clear—slaves were sold to pay off debt.

"American universities have only recently begun to publicly grapple with the fact that these elite institutions, like the United States, were literally built on the exploitation of black bodies. Beginning with Brown University's Committee on Slavery and Justice in 2003, universities around the country have unearthed disturbing truths about how their schools profited from human bondage. For many universities, Georgetown included, slavery made the difference between a viable institution and a shuttered one."

"In addition to the renaming of Mulledy Hall, Georgetown activists are asking for plaques to identify the unmarked graves of slaves on campus, an annual program to explore Georgetown's history of slavery, the inclusion of information about black people's contributions to Georgetown in campus tours, mandatory diversity training for professors, and the rechristening of McSherry Hall, a campus building named for the Georgetown president who presided over the 1838 slave sale.

"But the demand that could have the biggest effect on Georgetown's future, if the university complies, comes down to money. The student activists have proposed a new endowment fund, equal to the present value of the profit garnered from the 272 slaves, for the purpose of recruiting black professors. It's a brilliant example of how universities could enact something in the vein of reparations—a tangible admission of the link between the horrific acts of generations past and today's racial injustice, one that would provide an equally tangible benefit to current and future students of color." (Georgetown students protest hall named for slave selling Jesuit)
 And they've had early success (Georgetown renames building).

By clearly founding their campaign on the school's history, demanding actions to explore how Georgetown benefits from white supremacy and ways to put it right now, the students are offering the school an opportunity for learning and leadership. By grounding their argument in justice, rather than human rights, they invite deeper reflection and relationship building—they invite the school to take responsibility for finding solutions, rather than either denying the issue, or simply reacting to external pressure and doing the least possible.

I hope the school takes this opportunity, and I've included two ways they can build from it.

To explore how white supremacy not only allows them to be successful, but has also made it harder for other projects to survive. Actions like recruiting more black professors will ultimately help Georgetown remain successful at the expense of institutions with less money and prestige—institutions that have been committed to teaching about white supremacy long before it was politically safe. Not just recognised historically black and tribal colleges and university, but the many organisations teaching about justice. Reparations shouldn't just mean finding ways to make yourself better and more powerful, it should mean dismantling that power in ways that support those most affected by your actions. In this case, supporting oppressed and exploited communities on their own terms.

To look at white supremacy more broadly, including how the school (like every colonial state) was built on the exploitation of native bodies and lands, and exploring how the school benefits from ongoing imperialism.

To explore and end ways the school contributes to white supremacy, and prioritise ending white supremacy

Of course I'm not writing about this because I think anyone at Georgetown or any other US university care what I think. I'm thinking about what needs to be done in Aotearoa, and how much I would love if the institutions that the State supported to uphold cultural imperialism took responsibility for dismantling it, instead of playing neutral or pretending they aren't advantaged by it (I'm reminded of this cartoon).

Leonie Pihama reviews some of the colonial history of New Zealand universities in her PhD thesis (Pihama, "Tīhei Mauri Ora, Honouring our voices: Mana Wahine as a Kaupapa Māori theoretical framework", PhD (Education) thesis Auckland University, 2001: 49-52). It's very easy to see that the older universities have benefited from colonisation, because they were developed when colonisation was brutally obvious, but all universities benefit from white supremacy. For example, the three Wānanga have claims to the Waitangi Tribunal showing how they are disadvantaged by the State education system, which prioritises universities.

I'd like to see all the universities examine their past and current practices for ways they have exploited and harmed (and are exploiting and harming) tāngata whenua and peoples of colour and their ways of being. I'd like to see them examine the sources of their power and prestige—at whose expense have they succeeded, how are they benefiting from and contributing to white supremacy/ cultural imperialism? And then, I want them to work with tāngata whenua and communities of colour to put it right.

How do we make that happen?

(note: I use white supremacy to describe the historic and ongoing systems of oppression of indigenous peoples and peoples of colour, including their ways of being. Bell hooks explores the term in her chapter "Overcoming white supremacy: a comment" in Talking back: thinking feminist, thinking black.)
Kim Mcbreenhttps://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-20836152.post-84802252700289015962015-08-02T14:18:00.001+12:002015-11-13T08:06:05.052+13:00Mātauranga Māori, tino rangatiratanga and the future of New Zealand scienceOn a completely different topic, last year my mate Debbie and I wrote an opinion piece on the future of New Zealand science (what we lack in knowledge of New Zealand science, we make up for in opinions). You can access it here: Mātauranga Māori, tino rangatiratanga and the future of New Zealand science. Kim Mcbreenhttps://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-20836152.post-63351938247333352242015-07-30T11:17:00.000+12:002015-07-30T11:17:30.656+12:00Colonisation and belonging
For about a week, my inbox was full of links to blog posts about Andrea Smith and whether she is or isn't Cherokee. I've read all of those posts, and most of them make me really uncomfortable. I want to explore my discomfort in a series of short (for me) posts over the next few weeks. I don't know where this will go. I don't plan to critique anything that anyone is saying, and I won't presume to give any solutions—I know it's not my place. But there are a number of reasons that my reaction is complicated, and I think it's important to talk about those reasons.

First of all, I should re-introduce myself. I am from Waitaha, Kāti Mamoe and Ngāi Tahu on my birth father's side, and European on my birth mother's side. I was adopted at birth by a Pākehā family, back in the days of closed adoptions, and grew up in Whangārei. My parents were assured that I am completely white, and I am light-skinned enough that this is marginally believable. So I was raised in ignorance of tikanga, and without any knowledge of my Māori whakapapa. I didn't find my father until I was in my 30s, and with that I found out my iwi. At the time, I hadn't even visited the area that we're from. Since then, my birth father's family have been incredibly welcoming, and have taken the time to teach me a lot. It has taken me a long time to learn some of the things that I should already have known. There are many things I will never learn. I will always be in-between, both Pākehā and Māori, and not quite either (I will write more about this in another post).

I have been lucky. There are many parts of my story that could have been different, that could have resulted in my never discovering my whakapapa, or that could have resulted in my knowing the connections, but never able to prove them:

 I needed to find my mother

 She needed to remember my father's name

 She needed to know that he was in another country

 I needed to find him

 He needed to acknowledge me.

 It would have been easy to be caught in a situation of knowing who I belong to, but with no way of proving it. Whether I knew it or not, whether I could prove it or not, I have always been Ngāi Tahu. That is part of my whakapapa.

This sort of story, of complete disconnection, is colonisation. I was going to say it's an important part of colonisation, but it's more than that. Colonisation is breaking connections. Whakapapa is the ultimate threat to colonisation; it guarantees that colonisation will eventually fail. Whakapapa means we care for each other—we are responsible to each other and our ancestors. We are a force. This means that every link in whakapapa, every connection, is a threat to colonisation. It's only by breaking indigenous connections to place, by forcing tangata whenua from their place, that colonisers can take the land and try to keep it. It's only by breaking indigenous connections to each other, imposing their culture and values in the gaps that are created, that colonisers can feel safe and superior. As individuals, we are much more likely to succumb, to assimilate, to disappear.

For many Māori, the knowledge of whakapapa died a generation or two ago, the connections are forgotten. When that knowledge is taken, what can we do? Should we admit defeat, and say the whakapapa is gone, we are no longer Māori? Should we shut people out if they can't prove their relationships? Or are there better solutions? What are the risks in accepting people who, for whatever reason, seem to belong? What are the opportunities? Are we more likely to realise tino rangatiratanga through strict rules of exclusion, or through flexibility and inclusion?

Clearly, I am affected by these questions. My identity as Māori, tangata whenua, Ngāi Tahu feels vulnerable. It's hard for me to remember that this is true for lots of us. Many of us feel vulnerable, not Māori enough. Which project does that insecurity serve—colonisation or tino rangatiratanga? What are our political goals, and what actions move us towards them, or away from them? These are questions I think it is important to continue talking about.

I'll write more soon.
Kim Mcbreenhttps://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-20836152.post-87991768089281674062015-04-17T14:26:00.000+12:002015-04-17T14:26:57.424+12:00talk from GLITCH 2015
This is tidied up notes from a talk I gave at the GLITCH Youth Decolonisation Hui for Sexuality and Gender Minorities at Te Puea marae in Auckland last month. I really struggled to come up with anything to say in 10 minutes. To make it harder, I was on a panel with people who have been working for our communities for decades, and I was much more interested in what they had to say. In hindsight, I wish I'd taken more time to talk about liberalism, recognition and assimilation, and our responsibilities to our tūpuna and mokopuna, and how we take control of the stories, and a bunch of other things that would never fit into 10 minutes.

I'm going to talk about stories, and the different ways of telling stories, because the stories we hear about ourselves, and the stories we choose to tell about ourselves, have a big effect on how we understand who we are, and on the futures that we can imagine ourselves contributing to. Every story has an agenda and an effect, and I think it's important to always be thinking about that.

I want to start with the way we talk about our history. In school I got taught that history was pretty much men doing stuff, mostly conquering or fighting wars. The way Māori history is talked about still seems mostly in that style. We are allowed to be proud of our tūpuna as fierce warriors, but when we try to publicly remember them as great parents, or lovers, or kaitiaki and rangatira in its true sense, the media are quick to find historians like Paul Moon to 'balance' that story and bring it back to violence.

There's the story of our tūpuna Māori as primitive, lawless, barbaric cannibals who were struggling when Europeans arrived, and probably wouldn't have survived without European technology. It's a self-serving story invented by European colonisers to justify stealing land. It can't possibly be true, or our people wouldn't have survived as long as we have. You need laws and a system to grow and retain knowledge to survive. Māori have an academic tradition as long as anyone else's, and that tradition should be the basis of the stories we tell about ourselves.

So instead of talking about the violent warrior history of the Māori that got fed to me at school, I'm going to talk about our academic history.

I want you to imagine a line in front of me, this continuous line stretches past the arrivals of my European ancestors to these lands, past the arrivals of my tūpuna Māori from their Pacific homelands, it extends all the way into the infinity of creation. And it carries on through and behind me into the future that we can't see.

This line represents the accumulated experiences, knowledge and wisdom of generations. It is our academic tradition. Whatarangi Winiata called it the mātauranga continuum. We are part of it, and we can have a huge effect on how it grows into the future. In fact, our specific experiences are really important for making sense of what's happened and how to put it right.

The foundation of our academic tradition is the stories our tūpuna crafted for us. Many of us grew up on the common patriarchal versions of those stories where for example Rangi looks down on Papa, desires her and takes her and they have a bunch of sons, who eventually feel cramped and conspire to push them apart and let light in, then fight amongst each other before dividing up the world amongst them. Or Tāne goes looking for the female element, and eventually makes her out of dirt, brings her to life and impregnates her, then when his daughter grows up he takes her for his wife and she gives birth to mankind before realising her husband is her father, and then fleeing in shame to the underworld. Or the Māui cycle which is like a boys own adventure. In all these stories, males are the centre, they are active and creative heroes, while the females are passive. The only time they get to act is to flee in shame. Those versions have very clearly been selected and shaped by exposure to Pākehā patriarchal values and ideas about what a good story looks like. They have nothing to offer me, or to anyone else who wants more out of life than a patriarchal rape fantasy.

There are other versions of creation that are far more interesting.

There's my people's tradition where Rakinui and Papatūānuku each have other partners, so the primary relationship is bigger than Raki and Papa—there is no nuclear family. Or there's Pei Te Hurinui writing about a Tainui creation tradition, where Ranginui had partners other than Papatūānuku, both were bi-sexual, and both gave birth to children.

There would have been heaps of creation stories showing that our tūpuna had interesting understandings of gender and sexuality. Our tūpuna needed to understand their environment, where sex comes in pretty much every form you can imagine. Plants can produce both pollen and seed, or just one, they can be self-fertile or reproduce without sex. Animals can be male or female or both, or switch depending on what's needed, or be sterile, or reproduce asexually. Why would we expect atua to be confined to male or female bodies? or defined by their sex? Or to be monogamous?

I don't want to dwell on how so many of our stories have been distorted or taken from us altogether. What I want to talk about is our responsibility to give those stories back. Who understands the silencing of colonisation better than us? Our bodies, our sexualities, our genders, our relationships have been erased. I know what it means to limit our stories to heterosexual, monogamous patriarchy, because I am expected to fit myself into those limits too.

And now there's new stories to explain our current situation.

There's the feel-good one-people-into-the-future-together story. It starts with recognition that some bad stuff happened to tangata whenua during colonisation. It sometimes includes an apology, like the Australian Prime minister gave to their indigenous peoples. But it never involves colonisers conceding any power. Nothing changes.

There's the story of white liberalism. It says that pretty much wherever we come from, if we're not white, our culture is conservative and backwards compared to Pākehā culture, and Pākehā values will liberate us. That story conveniently ignores that what we most need liberation from is western imperialism, and that for example, sexual and gender liberation on these lands has pretty much always been led by Māori and Pasifika.

That story is based on recent moves towards tolerance of deviant genders and sexualities—the state, progressive corporations and nice, liberal people are finally ready to recognise that we exist, and even to share some of their rights with us. We get included in their marketing campaigns, they let us choose the gender on our passports, and even marry one other person of any gender. Some of that stuff is helpful, but what does this neoliberal story of tolerance mean? People with power look like they are being nice to us marginalised queers, we can be out and still successfully participate in capitalism and colonisation. But nothing is being conceded. They aren't changing, they are letting us change to fit in, to assimilate.

What is the world I want, if it's not this one? That's a hard question to answer, especially when someone else controls the stories. This is why our own academic traditions are so important—they help us see outside Western culture and values. When we think about the stories our tūpuna left for us, when we strip out the misogyny and white supremacy that got laid on them, we can see that they are all focused on building relationships and the responsibilities that come with those relationships.

What would society look like if it had relationships and responsibilities at its center?

It suggests a future where, as Moana Jackson has said, we are all recognised as mokopuna, who will become tūpuna, where we remember that we all come from atua, that we can all create and contribute.

This is a world I could get excited about. Focusing on relationships and responsibilities doesn't ignore the specific oppressions we face within our own cultures, but it is guide to help untangle the shit we currently face.

That's the dream our tūpuna had for us. How we do that, how we imagine that, those are the stories I want to hear. And if you don't agree with me, if this doesn't sound like you, and you have other visions, then I want to hear stories that lead you to the future you dream of.
 Kim Mcbreenhttps://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-20836152.post-40744840982235389662015-03-06T17:35:00.000+13:002015-03-06T20:01:34.081+13:00Our tūpuna dreamed the future for all of us: re-building healthy relationships is at the heart of decolonisation
Okay, I'm finally posting this, which is the last draft of this piece. After the second draft, I realised I had dropped things from the first draft that were really important, so they've gone back in, and I've made the structure a bit clearer. Thank you to all the people who have helped me with this.

A few years ago, I spoke about sexuality at a conference on <dfn title = "Māori laws, values and philosophies"> tikanga</dfn> (Kei Tua o te Pae Hui Proceedings, 2012). At the time, many Māori were debating sexuality and tikanga in the media and social networks, sparked by a bill introducing marriage equality. Tikanga was spoken about as if it is unchanging doctrine, rather than an infinitely adaptable system for living well. I wanted to change the debate, to show that homophobia is not just analogous to the colonisers' cultural imperialism, but that it is a result of it.

I am increasingly uncomfortable with my argument—not because I think it is incorrect, but because it is insufficient. Living according to tikanga isn't trying to behave as our <dfn title = "ancestors">tūpuna</dfn> behaved, it is being inspired by our ancestors to be the best we can. My goal is not only equality, acceptance, or even celebration of all sexualities or genders. I want us to do more than put aside our homophobia, I want us to re-think all our relationships. Decolonisation requires eradicating heteropatriarchy in all its forms from our communities. What would it mean to live on this land without trying to fit everyone into rigid boxes of men and women, gay and straight? What would it mean to think beyond categories like gender and sexuality? Where would we start?

These are central questions to decolonisation. Our tūpuna had answers, and we still have access to some of their words. We have their language, creation traditions, proverbs, and songs as guides. After a couple of centuries of colonisation, including selective re-writing of our ancestors' words, we need to consider how best to use those guides. This chapter encourages us to claim our ancestors' dreams, and own their words. We know what was important to them, and we know what is important to Western colonisers. We can think critically about the stories we have, and ask whose values they reflect. Our ancestors can inspire us to re-align their stories using our own words, and to imagine stories to replace those taken from us. They can show us how to honour all our relationships again.

He tōtara wāhi rua he kai nā te toki (a tree split in two is food for the fire)

The above proverb uses a tree as a metaphor for a group of people, who are easily defeated when they are divided. Many indigenous writers have commented that enforcing patriarchy and heteronormativity is a key tactic of colonisation, not simply a by-product (eg, Mikaere 2011; Simpson 2014; Smith 2005). As Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, an activist of Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg ancestry, explains, the colonisers' attacks on gender and sexuality destroy our relationships with each other, weakening our resistance to colonisation. If <dfn title = "the web of relationships connecting everything">whakapapa</dfn> is a foundation of Māori philosophy, then the many ways that heteropatriarchy attacks our understanding of whakapapa means that it has the potential to destroy what it means to be Māori (Mikaere 2011). If heteropatriarchy is an important tool in colonisation, then eradicating it is surely an important stage of our decolonisation.

While our ancestors clearly understood sexual differences, and had a few roles that were limited to certain men or certain women, those distinctions weren't about relative power, and gender and sexuality were not important categories in the same way as in Western discourses. There are no comparable Māori terms for gender or sexuality (Pihama). This suggests that they are colonial concepts. Gender and sexuality are also political terms, whose meanings are an ongoing source of argument. I therefore want to start with some definitions.

Gender is most often used to mean the socially understood categories of men (and masculinity) and women (and femininity) (contrasted against sex, the biologically defined categories of male and female). Sexuality in its most restricted understanding means sexual preference—who we want to have sex with—and may include how we desire. But as Māori academic Leonie Pihama has said, it also has a much broader meaning, encompassing how we live, relate to each other, and understand ourselves. Understanding who we are through gender and sexuality is central to heteropatriarchy.

Heteropatriarchy is another word that has no comparable Māori term, because it describes relationships between gender, sexuality and power that are recently introduced. It is a powerful concept for understanding those relationships, and so for decolonisation (Smith 2006). It explains a culture with a specific type of male dominance, one that privileges masculinity and heterosexuality within an understanding of gender as a male/female dichotomy. In short, it looks like Western culture, like Christian family values—it is all the things we've been told are normal and good. It is all the implications from believing that men are better than and opposite to women—the expectation that you can know who someone is and what they are capable of based on the shape of their genitals. It is contempt for women, and therefore for anyone who behaves like a woman. It requires strict policing of behaviour to keep these boundaries distinct. I want to unpack this further, by giving everyday examples of the ways we teach and enforce heteropatriarchy, which may also suggest ways to unteach it.

Heteropatriarchy is expecting girls to wear pink and play quietly, while expecting boys to wear blue and love rough-and-tumble play. It is shaming children who can't conform to masculine and feminine stereotypes. It is encouraging boys to be sexually aggressive, while punishing girls for being sexual at all. It's allowing boys to learn about sex from pornography that humiliates women, and then blaming them for treating girls as sexual objects rather than equals. It's teaching leadership, traditional martial arts, and spiritual roles only to boys. It's shaming culturally feminine qualities and honouring very specific masculine-identified qualities, so competition, single-mindedness and rationality are valued, while co-operation, emotions and care are not. It is the nuclear family—a man as the head of the household, with his wife and children. It is judging women who choose not to have children, while financially punishing women who do have children. It is expecting men not to care for their children. It is expecting women to look after men, to do all the emotional work in relationships, and blaming them if they are attacked by their partners, or by strangers. It is expecting men to be emotionally pathetic, unable to cope with jealousy, anger or loss in healthy ways, unable to behave with integrity with sexual partners. It's making excuses for violent men and accepting that women should be afraid. It's paying more for 'men's work', and not valuing 'domestic' or caring work. It's women filling the kitchens and committees at marae, while men are recognised as our leaders. It's the high-powered meetings where men are the only invited speakers, and the other meetings where people complain if there are 'too many' women speakers. It's setting men and women against each other. It's treating people who can't work within this structure as the problem.

Heteropatriarchy is a colonial weapon, and we have been teaching it in our schools and inviting it into our own homes.

Hoki atū ki tou maunga kia purea ai i ngā hau o Tāwhirimātea (return to your mountain to be purified by the winds)

The above proverb tells us to look to the teachings of our ancestors to nourish and heal our spirits. Researchers of Māori sexuality have found historical evidence of a range of sexualities and gender expressions, despite the efforts of colonisers to erase anything outside their heteropatriarchal comfort zone (Aspin & Hutchings 2006; Te Awekotuku 2005). However, this evidence doesn't tell us much about how our tūpuna understood sexuality and gender—despite the heteropatriarchy of colonial culture, there are still a range of sexual and gender expressions in their history too. By looking at our creation traditions, we may get a better picture of what our ancestors thought. Creation traditions hold the imaginings of ancestors, the explanations that made sense to them for the ongoing process of creation, and their dreams for how their descendants might live into the future. They contain their philosophies and their ethics. They are an enduring haven to which we can return.

However, even with our own creation traditions we must be cautious and critical, because much of our oral history has been infiltrated by colonial thinking, or re-written by colonists. The most widely known version of our creation stories is an example of this. It starts with Te Kore, Te Pō and Rangi and Papa. Rangi saw Papa's naked body below him, he desired her and took her; they had lots of male children who became cramped and bored; Tāne separated the parents; the brothers fought; they searched for the female element; Tāne made her out of earth, breathed life into her, then had sex with her and she gave birth to the first woman; Tāne took the woman as his wife; they had children; she discovered Tāne is her father and fled in shame to the underworld. Etc.

This narrative says a lot about gender and sexuality. There are males and females, and they are different. Males make the decisions that create our world, they interact with each other, they compete for dominance, they shape their environment—they are always doing something. Females (passively) bear the consequences of those actions—they are taken, they are impregnated, they are shamed, they are always disappearing (after giving birth to all her sons, Papatūānuku becomes the passive earth from which Tāne makes Hineahuone; after giving birth to Hinetītama, Hineahuone is never heard of again; Hinetītama leaves the world of light). It is a colonised narrative, cobbled together from bits and pieces of many stories with inconsistent details removed and laid out into a single linear story that made sense to the colonial writer. But it has become the most common version of 'Maori' creation: it is on children's radio shows and in children's books, it is taught in Māori language classes, and I hear or read people referring to it more often than to the many iwi narratives. It is heteropatriarchy. It is not the way my people talk about creation. Below are three stories that say something very different about gender and sexuality.

In Kāi Tahu traditions (eg, Tau 2003), Rakinui had several partners, and Papatūānuku was with Takaroa before Papa and Rakinui got together. Takaroa went away, Raki and Papa got together, Takaroa came back, fought with Raki, injured him, and went away again. I like this tradition, because it reflects the world of my tūpuna—the going away and coming back of Takaroa, the red of Rakinui's blood at sunrise and sunset. You can see why they recognised Papatūānuku as having a relationship with both Rakinui and Takaroa, because that's how the land sits, surrounded by sea and sky. When we look to the horizon, we can see that Raki and Takaroa are also intimately entwined. What is their relationship? Are they forever embracing in their fight? It looks more like they are spooning. What is going on?

There is another explanation of creation from Tainui. According to Tainui scholar and translator Pei te Hurinui (Jones 2010), Ranginui and Papatūānuku are both <q>bi-sexual or a-sexual</q> (p 241), and each gave birth to several children before getting together. Tāne-mahuta had sex with another male, Kahukura, who gave birth (referred to as a <q>bi-sexual conception</q>, p 244). This narrative belongs to Tainui, and is not mine to analyse, but it is clearly very different from the popularised narrative referred to earlier.

Another intriguing tradition is that of Māui and Rohe (Tregear 1891; unfortunately, I can't find a record of whose tradition this is). Māui was ugly, and Rohe was so beautiful that Māui was jealous of her. He asked to swap faces with her, but she refused. One night while she was asleep, he swapped their faces. When she woke and discovered what he had done, she left him to live in the underworld. This story contains very interesting messages. Māui wanted to look like a woman, and Rohe did not want to look like a man. Rohe had the power to refuse Māui, and now has an important role in looking after us after death. Māui continued to live with a woman's face. What was this story about before it was recorded by Pākehā?

What do these narratives say about gender and sexuality? They show that monogamy is not privileged. They show that males and masculinity are not especially privileged. They show that heterosexuality isn't necessarily privileged. The more attention we give them and question what they mean, the more they reveal that neither gender nor sexuality are fixed, and that our tūpuna had a complex understanding of gender and sexuality. This isn't surprising, because our tūpuna were great observers of their environment, and nature contains endless sexual variety.

This is how our ancestors talked about what is now called gender and sexuality. Not by naming it, not by drawing boxes around these parts of ourselves—but by not naming it, by not calling attention to it at all. By letting us simply be. There is evidence of flexibility, an absence of hierarchy, and combined with lack of categories in our language that align with Western categories, that gives a strong message that gender and sexuality were not defining characteristics.

 It appears to me that heteropatriarchy is completely foreign. This presents a challenge to all of us—how do we eradicate heteropatriarchy? How do we make these categories less important again? How much needs to change so that we no longer need labels like gay, bisexual, or even takatāpui to organise and understand ourselves? What must change so that we can say with honesty that, where there are specific roles for men and women, they are equally important and respected? How do we create the conditions for our liberation? The answers to these questions will describe much of the path to decolonisation.

After 200 years of colonisation, the dreams of our tūpuna are waiting to be recovered. We just need to be bold enough to see all that isn't being said, and ask the hard questions.

Ma pango ma whero ka oti ai te mahi (By black and by red the work will be completed)

This proverb tells us that our communities will thrive when everyone works together, and everyone's work is valued.

Ani Mikaere (2011) has explored what it means to understand the world through whakapapa, her conclusions include lack of hierarchy, inclusiveness, and the importance of relationships. If whakapapa is the foundation of tikanga, any fixed hierarchy, such as heteropatriarchy, makes no sense. We all come from ancestors, and we will all be ancestors. Heteropatriarchy is a corruption of our tikanga so that women become less valued than men, and men's value is measured by a limited heterosexual masculinity. It reshapes all our relationships with our living relatives, as well as with our ancestors. It is reproduced through the nuclear family, and it is for these reasons that Leonie Pihama (1998: 187) suggests <q>The imposition of the western nuclear family is perhaps one of the key acts that undermined Māori societal structures.</q>

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson challenges us to <q>take on gender violence as a core resurgence project, a core decolonization project, a core of any Indigenous mobilization.</q> By focusing on the violence of heteropatriarchy, we can see all that must change for us to realise <dfn title = "self-determination">tino rangatiratanga</dfn>. There is no quick fix that will end gender violence, because it is at the core of colonisation. It is a virus bred in the colonisers that invades our tikanga, replicating itself wherever we are not actively resisting, until hierarchy and power over seem a natural part of all that we do. With an understanding that heteropatriarchy is colonisation, we can see that attempts to end gender violence through Christianity, the nuclear family or building male leadership, are not decolonisation. They will not lead to tino rangatiratanga.

How do we stop reproducing heteropatriarchy? How do we challenge it? How do we stop it being taught to our children? How do we ensure that all gender violence is taken seriously? How do we make ourselves and our work useful where it is wanted and needed? This is the challenge to decolonising educators.

We must have faith in our ancestors. After 200 years of colonial interference, many of their stories have been distorted. By treating those stories with playfulness, creativity and generosity, we can revive them, and find meanings that are worthy of our ancestors. We need not be scared by the sacredness of their words. They had faith in us, they left these stories for us, and we must trust ourselves.

Our communities need our work. Parents, families and schools need resources that encourage them to think outside the Western boxes of masculine and feminine, that encourage us to be playful in our thinking. We need to be designing and teaching courses, talking with our people, and learning from each other. We all need to be thinking strategically and long term about how our work can contribute to our physical and cultural survival.

I am inspired by organisations like Native Youth Sexual Health Network (US and Canada), INCITE! (US), and Mana Ririki (NZ) and by organisers and educators like Harsha Walia, Jessica Danforth and Ngāhuia Murphy. Their work builds on that of decolonising pioneers. A decolonisation project with relationships at its heart challenges all systems of domination—it has the potential to change everything, to decolonise us profoundly. This decolonisation will involve remembering, re-imagining and re-inventing ways of being that reflect the values we want for our future.

Our ancestors had generations to learn how to live with these lands, and they wove all they learnt into their stories of creation. These were always stories about whakapapa, stories that could only be understood by focusing on the relationships. This was their ethics. For our survival as Māori, we must return to these stories. We must face their dreams, however challenging they now seem. For it to be meaningful, we must define decolonisation on their terms, with whakapapa as our guide. And we must take risks. Eradicating heteropatriarchy is a bold goal, but so too is decolonisation. We will not free ourselves from colonisation by being timid. Our ancestors dreamed the future for all of us. We hold those dreams, and for them to live, we need to be bold enough to speak them from our hearts and our guts—just like all those who have done this work before us.

references

Kei Tua o Te Pae Hui Proceedings. Te Wānanga o Raukawa, Ōtaki, 4-5 September 2012

Aspin, Clive and Jessica Hutchings 2006 'Māori sexuality' State of the Māori Nation: Twenty-first-century Issues in Aotearoa Edited by Malcolm Mulholland (Reed, Auckland)

Jones, Pei Te Hurinui 2010 King Pōtatau: An Account of the Life of Pōtatau Te Wherowhero the First Māori King (Huia Publishers and the Polynesian Society, Wellington and Auckland),

Mikaere, Ani 2011 Colonising Myths—Māori Realities: He Rukuruku Whakaaro (Huia Publishers, Wellington and Te Tākupu, Ōtaki)

Mikaere, Ani 2011 'Patriarchy as the ultimate divide and rule tactic: The assault on tikanga Māori by Pākehā law' Mai i Te Ata Hāpara conference, Te Wānanga o Raukawa, Ōtaki, 11-13 August 2000

Pihama, Leonie 1998 'Reconstructing meanings of family: lesbian/gay whānau and families in Aotearoa' The Family in Aotearoa New Zealand Edited by Vivienne Adair (Longman, Auckland)

Simpson, Leanne Betasamosake http://nationsrising.org/not-murdered-and-not-missing/, accessed 6 March, 2014

Smith, Andrea 2005 Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide (South End Press, Cambridge, MA, US)

Smith, Andrea 2006 'Heteropatriarchy and the Three Pillars of White Supremacy: Rethinking Women of Color Organizing' in Incite! Women of Color Against Violence, Color of Violence: The Incite! Anthology (South End Press, Cambridge MA, US)

Tau, Rawiri Te Maire 2003 Ngā Pikitūroa o Ngai Tahu: The Oral Traditions of Ngāi Tahu (University of Otago Press, Dunedin)

Te Awekotuku, Ngāhuia 2005 'He reka anō – same-sex lust and loving in the ancient Māori world' Outlines: Lesbian & Gay Histories of Aotearoa Edited by Alison J Laurie & Linda Evans (LAGANZ, Wellington)

Tregear, Edward 1891 Maori-Polynesian Comparative Dictionary (Lyon and Blair, Wellington)
Kim Mcbreenhttps://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-20836152.post-86440487536891787252014-05-07T17:31:00.000+12:002014-05-07T17:33:31.499+12:00Our tūpuna dreamed the future for all of us This is the second draft of "reclaiming gender and sexuality". You can see that it's taken a different direction from that first draft. After writing the previous draft, the point I wanted to make started to become clear. I was able to take out lots of the stuff I really wanted to include, the quotes and work that inspired me, but that wasn't contributing to my point. I'll post the final version in a few weeks.

Draft 2
A few years ago I gave a talk on sexuality and whanau at a conference on tikanga (McBreen 2012). I argued that whenever Māori excluded people because of their sexuality, they were enacting the same cultural imperialism as colonisation—that their homophobia could not only be seen as analogous to our colonisers' cultural imperialism, but that it was a result of it. I argued that the violence of homophobia, whether through anti-gay jokes, or insults or physical attacks, was traumatising whanaunga, including all children. I am increasingly uncomfortable with my argument. Not because I think it is incorrect, but because it was insufficient. I reduced my demands to appeal to people who I didn't trust to respond to what I think is really important. I should have trusted them, and this is the argument I should have made. Decolonisation does not mean asking that Māori communities accept those of us whose sexualities or genders don't conform, it requires eradicating heteropatriarchy from those communities. I don't want people to put aside their homophobia, I want them to rethink all they know about what it means to be a man or woman living on this land. I don't want them to do it to protect their kids, I want us to do it because it will protect us all, because our survival as Māori depends on it, because it is the path to tino rangatiratanga.

He tōtara wāhi rua he kai nā te toki
Many indigenous writers have commented that enforcing patriarchy and heteronormativity is a key tactic of colonisation, that it is not simply a by-product. As Cherokee activist Andrea Smith has written, introducing the hierarchy of patriarchy and binary gender prepares us for being ruled over by colonisers (and works to the goal of destroying us as people) (Smith 2005). Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, an activist of Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg ancestry, explains that the colonisers' attacks on gender and sexuality destroy our relationships with each other, weakening our resistance to colonisation. If whakapapa is a foundational Māori philosophy, then the many ways that heteropatriarchy attacks our understanding of whakapapa means that it has the potential to destroy what it means to be Māori (Mikaere 2000).

 I want to start with some definitions. 'Gender', 'sexuality' and heteropatriarchy are colonial ideas, and cannot easily be translated into te Reo—they do not have comparable Māori terms (eg, Pihama). 'Gender' and 'sexuality' are political terms, whose meanings are an ongoing source of argument. To oversimplify, gender is often used to mean the socially understood categories of men and women (contrasted against sex, the biologically defined categories of male and female). Sexuality in its most restricted understanding means sexual preference, and may include desire. But as Leonie Pihama has said, it also has a much broader meaning, encompassing how we live, relate to each other, and understand ourselves. These ideas are central to heteropatriarchy.

 Heteropatriarchy is a useful concept (which I am treating as synonymous with heteronormative). It describes a culture with a specific type of male dominance, a culture that privileges masculinity and heterosexuality within an understanding of gender as a male/female dichotomy. In short, it looks like Western culture.

Heteropatriarchy is all the things we've been told are normal. It is all the implications from believing that men are better than and opposite to women—the expectation that you can know who someone is and what they are capable of based on the shape of their genitals. It is contempt for women, and therefore for anyone who behaves like a woman. It requires strict policing of behaviour to keep these boundaries distinct. I want to unpack this further, by giving everyday examples of the ways we teach and enforce heteropatriarchy.

Heteropatriarchy is expecting girls to wear pink and play quietly, while expecting boys to wear blue and love rough-and-tumble play. It is shaming children who can't conform to masculine and feminine stereotypes. It is encouraging boys to be sexually aggressive, while punishing girls for being sexual at all. It's allowing boys to learn about sex from pornography that humiliates women, and then blaming them for treating girls as sexual objects rather than equals. It's shaming culturally feminine qualities and honouring very specific masculine-identified qualities, so competition, singlemindedness and rationality are valued, while co-operation, emotions and care are not. It is judging women who choose not to have children, while financially punishing women who do have children. It is expecting men not to care for their children. It is expecting women to look after men, to do all the emotional work in relationships, and blaming them if their partner is violent or controlling. It is expecting men to be emotionally pathetic, unable to cope with jealousy, anger or loss in healthy ways, unable to behave with integrity with sexual partners. It's blaming women when they are attacked by their partners or by strangers. It's making excuses for violent men and accepting that women should be afraid. It's paying more for 'men's work', and not valuing 'domestic' or caring work. It's women filling the kitchens and committees at marae, while men are recognised as our leaders. It's the high-powered hui where men are the only invited speakers, and the other hui where people complain if there are 'too many' women speakers. It's setting men and women against each other. It's treating people who can't work within this structure as the problem.

 Heteropatriarchy is a colonial weapon that we are inviting into our own homes.

Hoki atu ki tōu maunga kia purea ai i ngā hau o Tāwhirimātea
Despite efforts to erase it, researchers of Māori sexuality have provided historical evidence for a range of sexualities and gender expressions (eg, Aspin & Hutchings 2006, Te Awekotuku 2005). Of course, there are a range of sexual and gender expressions in colonial culture also, in spite of heteropatriarchy. What is more interesting to me is that when we look at our creation traditions, there is also evidence of the way our tūpuna thought about gender and sexuality, and it is very different to heteropatriarchy.

 A people's creation traditions are important. They hold the imaginings of tūpuna, the explanations that made sense to them for the ongoing process of creation, and their dreams for how their uri might live into the future. They are an enduring haven to which we can return.

We still need to be cautious and critical. Much of our oral history has been infiltrated by colonial thinking. There is a common narrative of creation that is widely known. I heard versions of it on children's radio shows when I was a child, I read versions of it in children's books, I was taught a version of it in Te Ātaarangi, and I hear or read people referring to it more often than to the many iwi narratives. It is a Pākehā narrative, cobbled together from bits and pieces of many stories with inconsistent details removed and laid out into a linear story, intelligible to the writers. You know it: it starts with Te Kore, Te Pō and Rangi and Papa. Rangi saw Papa's naked body below him, he desired her and took her; they had lots of male children who became cramped and bored; Tāne separated the parents; the brothers fought; the brothers search for the female element, Tāne makes her out of earth, breathes life into her, then has sex with her and she gives birth to the first woman; Tāne takes her as his wife, they have children, she discovers Tāne is her father and flees in shame to the underworld. Etc.

This narrative says a lot about gender and sexuality. It tells us that there are males and females, and that they are different. Males make the decisions that create our world, they interact with each other, they compete for dominance, they shape their environment—they are always doing something. Females (passively) bear the consequences of those actions—they are taken, they are impregnated, they are shamed, they are always disappearing (after giving birth to all her sons, Papatūānuku becomes the passive earth from which Tāne makes Hineahuone; after giving birth, Hineahuone is never heard of again; Hinetitama leaves the world of light). This is heteropatriarchy. It is not the way my people talk about creation.

In Kāi Tahu traditions (eg, Tau 2003), Rakinui has several partners, and Papatūānuku is with Takaroa before Papa and Rakinui get together. Takaroa goes away, Raki and Papa get together, Takaroa comes back, fights with Raki, injures him, and goes away again.

I like this tradition, because it so reflects the world of our tūpuna—the going away and coming back of Takaroa, the red of Rakinui's blood at sunrise or sunset. You can see why they recognised Papatūānuku as having a relationship with both Rakinui and Takaroa, because that's how the whenua sits, surrounded by sea and sky. When we look to the horizon, we can see that Raki and Takaroa are also intimately entwined. What is their relationship? Are they forever embracing in their fight? It looks more like spooning. What is going on?

Tainui have another explanation of creation. Pei Te Hurinui Jones (2010) talks about how Ranginui and Papatūānuku are both <q>bi-sexual or a-sexual</q> (p241), and each gives birth to several children before getting together. Tāne-mahuta has sex with a male atua, Kahukura, who gives birth (referred to as a <q>bi-sexual conception</q>, p244). I am not from Tainui, so I will not speculate on the meaning of their traditions, but it is easy to see that this says something very different from the narrative constructed by Pākehā men.

An intriguing tradition that was recorded by a Pākehā man tells of Māui and Rohe (Tregear 1891; unfortunately, I can't find a record of whose tradition this is). Māui is ugly and Rohe is so beautiful that Māui is jealous of her. He asks to swap faces with her, but she refuses. One night when she is asleep, he swaps faces. When she wakes she leaves to live in the underworld.

Helen Harte directed me to this tradition because it raises such interesting questions. Māui wanted to look like a woman, Rohe did not want to look like a man. Rohe had the mana to refuse Māui, and now has an important role in looking after us after death. Māui continued to live with a woman's face. What was this story about before it was recorded by Pākehā?

What do these three examples say about gender and sexuality? They show that monogamy is not privileged. They show that males and masculinity are not especially privileged. They show that heterosexuality isn't necessarily privileged. The more attention we give them and question what they mean, the more they reveal that neither gender nor sexuality are fixed, and that our tūpuna had a complex understanding of gender and sexuality. This isn't surprising, because our tūpuna were great observers of their environment, and nature contains endless gender and sexual variety.

There is evidence of flexibility, an absence of hierarchy, and combined with lack of categories in te Reo that align with Western categories, that gives a strong message that gender and sexuality were not as important to our tūpuna. Heteropatriarchy is completely foreign. This presents a challenge to all of us—how do we eradicate heteropatriarchy? How do we make these categories less important again? How much needs to change so that we no longer need labels like gay, bisexual, or even takatāpui to organise ourselves under? What must change so that we can say with honesty that, where there are specific roles for tāne and wāhine, they are equally important and respected? How do we create the conditions for our liberation? We must undo all the ways that domination is controlling us.

After 200 years of colonisation, the dreams of our tūpuna are waiting to be recovered. We just need to be bold enough to see all that isn't being said, and ask the hard questions.

Mā pango mā whero ka oti ai te mahi
If whakapapa is the foundation of tikanga, heteropatriarchy makes no sense. Ani Mikaere (2011) has explored what it means to understand the world through whakapapa, her conclusions include lack of hierarchy, the importance of relationships, and inclusiveness. Heteropatriarchy is a corruption of our tikanga so that mana wahine becomes less than mana tāne, and mana tāne is itself defined as a limited heterosexual masculinity. It reshapes all our relationships with our living whanaunga, as well as with our tūpuna and atua. It is for these reasons that Leonie Pihama (1998, p184) suggests <q>The imposition of the western nuclear family is perhaps one of the key acts that undermined Māori societal structures.</q>

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson challenges us to <q>take on gender violence as a core resurgence project, a core decolonization project, a core of any Indigenous mobilization.</q> By focusing on the violence of heteropatriarchy, we can see all that must change for us to realise tino rangatiratanga. There is no quick fix that will end gender violence, because it is at the core of colonisation. It is a virus bred in the colonisers that invades our tikanga, replicating itself wherever we are not actively resisting, until hierarchy seems a natural part of all that we do. By focusing on heteropatriarchy, we can see that Christianity, the nuclear family and projects focused only on building mana tāne will not lead to tino rangatiratanga.

By making hierarchy seem natural, heteropatriarchy reframes our understanding of the world as hierarchy—not only does tāne become more than wahine, but tuakana becomes more than teina, tūpuna becomes more than uri, rangatira becomes more than people. The point is to break our relationships to each other and land, so we can be dominated. The pathway is to teach us to dominate each other, the land, and all our environment, to cultivate relationships of domination. Hierarchy is incompatible with whakapapa—it focuses on difference in order to separate and dominate, whereas whakapapa focuses on relationships and linking together. Domination is violence, but when hierarchy has become natural to us, the violence is harder to see. Rejecting hierarchy is not only essential to decolonisation, it is a foundation on which decolonisation will be built, and will be a measure of our progress. As Andrea Smith (2006, p72) has said, <q>Any liberation struggle that does not challenge heteronormativity cannot substantially challenge colonialism or white supremacy. Rather, as Cathy Cohen contends, such struggles will maintain colonialism based on a politics of secondary marginalization where the most elite class of these groups will further their aspirations on the backs of those most marginalized within the community.</q>

 Too often, decolonisation projects mirror or incorporate colonial systems of oppression. If the pathway to tino rangatiratanga looks the same as that of colonisation, then it will probably lead to the same place. Let's not choose that path. Capitalism and the nation-state both rely on domination. It is only because we have become naturalised to hierarchy that we can imagine a decolonised future within the structures of capitalism or the nation-state. A decolonisation project with whakapapa at its foundation will challenge all systems of domination. The editors of Queer Indigenous Studies argue that those most marginalised by heteropatriarchy have a special role in this work <q>by disrupting colonially imposed and internalized systems of gender and sexuality, Indigenous queer and Two-spirit critiques can move decolonizing movements outside dominant logics and narratives of 'nation'</q> (Driskill, Finley, Gilley & Morgensen 2011, p17). Tino rangatiratanga will involve remembering, re-imagining and re-inventing structures that reflect the values we want for our future.

 It is always tempting in arguing for decolonisation to start by exposing the violence of colonisation. Listing the effects of colonisation, on women, on men, on our children, on our relationships with each other, on those not considered normal, shows one reason why decolonisation is important and urgent—our colonial reality is literally killing us. There is another reason, which is also important—this colonial reality is killing the dreams our tūpuna made for us and the lands to which we belong. It is killing our culture. Our tūpuna had generations to learn how to live in these lands, they developed ethics for relationships with each other and their environment that sustained them. They wove these ethics and all they learnt into stories of creation. This was their method of passing on all that they knew to be true, all that they dreamed and aspired to. These were always stories about whakapapa, always stories that could only be understood by focusing on the relationships. For our survival as Māori, we must return to these stories. We must face their dreams, however challenging they now seem. For it to be meaningful, we must define decolonisation on their terms, and with whakapapa as our guide.

 References
Aspin, Clive and Jessica Hutchings 2006 'Māori sexuality' State of the Māori Nation: Twenty-first-century Issues in Aotearoa Edited by Malcolm Mulholland (Reed, Auckland)
Driskill, Qwo-Li, Chris Finley, Brian Joseph Gilley, Scott Lauria Morgensen 2011 'Introduction' Queer Indigenous Studies: Critical Interventions in Theory, Politics, and Literature Edited by Qwo-Li Driskill, Chris Finley, Brian Joseph Gilley & Scott Lauria Morgensen (University of Arizona Press, Tuscon, AZ, US)
Harte, Helen Interview with the author 21 February, 2014
Jones, Pei Te Hurinui 2010 King Pōtatau: An Account of the Life of Pōtatau Te Wherowhero the First Māori King (Huia Publishers and the Polynesian Society, Wellington and Auckland)
McBreen, Kim 'It's about whānau—oppression, sexuality and mana' Kei Tua o Te Pae Hui Proceedings. Te Wānanga o Raukawa, Ōtaki, 4-5 September 2012: 55-64
Mikaere, Ani 2011 Colonising Myths—Māori Realities: He Rukuruku Whakaaro (Huia Publishers, Wellington and Te Tākupu, Ōtaki)
Mikaere, Ani 2011 'Patriarchy as the ultimate divide and rule tactic: The assault on tikanga Māori by Pākehā law' Mai i Te Ata Hāpara conference, Te Wānanga o Raukawa, Ōtaki, 11-13 August 2000
Pihama, Leonie http://www.rangahau.co.nz/exemplar/143/#, accessed 17 April, 2014
Pihama, Leonie 'Reconstructing meanings of family: lesbian/gay whānau and families in Aotearoa' The Family in Aotearoa New Zealand Edited by Vivienne Adair (Longman, Auckland 1998)
Simpson, Leanne Betasamosake http://nationsrising.org/not-murdered-and-not-missing/, accessed 6 March, 2014
Smith, Andrea 2005 Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide (South End Press, Cambridge, MA, US)
Smith, A 2006 'Heteropatriarchy and the three pillars of white supremacy: rethinking women of color organizing' Color of Violence: The Incite! Anthology Edited by Incite! Women of Color Against Violence (South End Press, Cambridge MA, US)
Tau, Rawiri Te Maire 2003 Ngā Pikitūroa o Ngai Tahu: The Oral Traditions of Ngāi Tahu (University of Otago Press, Dunedin)
Te Awekotuku, Ngāhuia 2005 'He reka anō – same-sex lust and loving in the ancient Māori world' Outlines: Lesbian & Gay Histories of Aotearoa Edited by Alison J Laurie & Linda Evans (LAGANZ, Wellington)
Tregear, Edward 1891 Maori-Polynesian Comparative Dictionary (Lyon and Blair, Wellington) Kim Mcbreenhttps://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-20836152.post-35080353930288217442014-05-04T11:11:00.000+12:002014-05-07T11:39:51.674+12:00Draft 1: Reclaiming gender and sexuality One of the things I've read about novel writing is you start by writing your novel. At the end you have an idea of what your novel is about, and then you can start writing it. All my writing seems to benefit from this process. Write a first draft. Throw it away. Write the proper first draft.

I want to show this in a progression of some writing I've been doing. I'll put up another draft in the next couple of weeks.

Draft 1: reclaiming gender and sexuality

"White supremacy, rape culture, and the real and symbolic attack on gender, sexual identity and agency are very powerful tools of colonialism, settler colonialism and capitalism ... These forces have the intergenerational staying power to destroy generations of families, as they work to prevent us from intimately connecting to each other. They work to prevent mobilization because communities coping with epidemics of gender violence don't have the physical or emotional capital to organize. They destroy the base of our nations and our political systems because they destroy our relationships to the land and to each other by fostering epidemic levels of anxiety, hopelessness, apathy, distrust and suicide. They work to destroy the fabric of Indigenous nationhoods … by making it difficult to form sustainable, strong relationships with each other.

"This is why I think it's in all of our best interests to take on gender violence as a core resurgence project, a core decolonization project, a core of any Indigenous mobilization. And by gender violence I don't just mean violence against women, I mean all gender violence." Leanne Betasamosake Simpson

I have been asked to write a chapter on sexuality. I feel tempted to rush to read up on queer theory, to fill my head with the words that don't speak to me but are supposedly about the world that I live in. Sentences that I don't understand, that make me feel inadequate and unqualified, that say to me that my knowledge and experiences don't count.

Colonisation has left many of us doubting our ability to theorise. We begin to understand our world through the colonisers' theories. Their frameworks start to seem natural. Just as colonisers surveyed and divided up our land, they survey and divide up our knowledge. They categorise and theorise, and we compete with western-trained academics to explain our oppressions with their theories, to them. It is all so irrelevant.

Fortunately, I have other words that tell me to trust myself, that what I need to know and say is too important to be hidden in obscure poorly written academic jargon.

"i don't need trans/gender/queer/feminist discourse to understand the ways that my gender/sexuality marks me as a target for violence. every screamed slur and threat informs me of this.

"i have nothing to learn from my oppressors that they haven't already taught me in their every deed and action...

"i have so little time on this planet. and i refuse to spend anymore of it reading tedious tomes written by crusty dead white men or even a tweet from a vibrant, young white activist.

 "the time i've already spent learning all this shit only adds another resentment to the pile. the time i'm spending unlearning all of it is part of my hate. i could have been learning my own language, instead of my colonizers.

 "i could have been learning the history and customs of my own people, instead of the nonsense of white people."  b.binaohan

Sexuality is a giant topic. I can't say exactly what it includes or excludes. I see it as part of gender. It clearly includes how we understand sex, how we understand relationships, and how we understand ourselves. It includes how we relate to others, how we have sex and with whom, how we raise children, how power works. I can't think of anything unaffected by gender and sexuality.

Which is why, as Simpson says, <q>gendered colonial violence has been the cornerstone of colonialism, occupation and dispossession</q>. The gender violence that she talks of is about all of this. It is the violence of heteropatriarchy, which broke apart the safety of our communities and our ways of being.

Heteropatriarchy
Heteropatriarchy is a useful concept. It describes a culture with a specific type of male dominance, a culture that privileges masculinity and heterosexuality within an understanding of gender as a male/female dichotomy. In short, it looks like Western culture.

Heteropatriarchy is all the things we've been told are normal. It is all the implications from believing that men are better than and opposite to women. It is contempt for women, and therefore for anyone who behaves like a woman. It requires strict policing of behaviour to keep these boundaries distinct.

Simpson explains how it has become part of North American indigenous communities:
"I see the expression of heteropatriarchy in our communities all the time – with the perpetuation of rigid (colonial) gender roles, pressuring women to wear certain articles of clothing to ceremonies, the exclusion of LGBQ2 individuals from communities and ceremonies, the dominance of male-centred narratives regarding Indigenous experience, the lack of recognition for women and LGBQ2's voices, experiences, contributions and leadership, and narrow interpretations of tradition used to control the contributions of women in ceremony, politics and leadership, to name just a few."
 Does this sound familiar?

Heteropatriarchy includes the expectation that you can know who someone is and what they are capable of based on the shape of their genitals. It is expecting girls to wear pink and play quietly, while expecting boys to wear blue and love rough-and-tumble play. It is teaching children to be ashamed if they can't conform to masculine and feminine stereotypes. It is encouraging boys to be sexually aggressive, while punishing girls for being sexual at all. It's allowing boys to learn about sex from pornography that humiliates women, and then blaming them for treating girls as sexual objects rather than equals. It's expecting men to be 'masculine' and women to be 'feminine'. It's shaming femininity—using culturally feminine qualities or body parts as insults, men acting like women for laughs, and treating emotions as signs of weakness. It's honouring very specific masculine-identified qualities—strength, drive, rationality, ignoring emotions. It is punishing women for having children, taking away their income, or shaming them as 'solo mums'. It is expecting men to not have time for their children. It's rewarding parents who work outside the home, but not those who stay home. It is expecting women to look after men, to do all the emotional work in relationships, and blaming them if their partner is violent or controlling. It is expecting men to be emotionally pathetic, unable to cope with jealousy, anger or loss in healthy ways, unable to behave with integrity with sexual partners. It's blaming women when they are attacked by their partners or by strangers. It's making excuses for violent men. It's accepting that women should be afraid. It's paying more for 'men's work', and not valuing 'domestic' or caring work. It's women filling the kitchens and committees at marae, and men being recognised as our leaders. It's the high-powered hui where men are the only invited speakers, and the other hui where people complain if there are 'too many' women speakers. It's setting men and women against each other. It's treating people who can't work within this structure as the problem.

It's all the things that tell us that men are more important than women. It's all the things that try to limit what is recognised as normal, and what it means to be a person. It is violent and deadly, and it is not Māori.

None so queer as heteropatriarchy
When the British colonise land, they bring their laws with them—they expect their laws to supplant indigenous laws. And so it was here. While international law, Māori laws and the treaties that they signed all agree that tangata whenua would retain their own legal systems, the colonisers quickly behaved as if British law was the only real law. British constricted their sexuality and gender, and so imposed this constriction onto Māori bodies. Māori gender and sexuality became regulated by the state, as much through forcing Māori children to learn British morality in schools as through other legal routes. At the same time, 'modern sexualities' emerged from the West. We are now in the perverse situation that the sexually repressed settlers look more liberated than tangata whenua. Māori are portrayed as 'conservative' and homophobic, having adopted Victorian 'morality'. Pākehā liberals bemoan the conservatism of Māori. This ignores both the violence of colonisation outlawing Māori ways of being, and the obvious fact that, policed as Māori communities are, and non-conforming Māori communities in particular, Māori have still been the ones driving homosexual liberation and law reform in this country. Where would we be without people like Ngāhuia Te Awekotuku (Te Arawa, Tūhoe, Waikato), Carmen Rupe (Ngāti Maniapoto), Georgina Beyer (Te Āti Awa, Ngāti Mutunga, Ngāti Raukawa, Ngāti Porou), and Louisa Wall (Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Waikato)?

Ahunga Tikanga as decolonising methodology
Ahunga tikanga is a discipline taught at Te Wānanga o Raukawa. Like other indigenous theories, it is a reclamation and celebration of indigenous ways of being in and understanding the world. It uses critical thinking as a tool for whakatupu mātauranga—extending the mātauranga continuum. Ahunga Tikanga is centered on Māori academic traditions. While its primary focus is critically examining and extending our mātauranga, it is also a method for decolonisation—for examining and undoing the damage of colonisation on our mātauranga.

Six statements guide us:

We have faith in our tūpuna. What they did, they did intentionally, and with integrity.

We have faith in our mātauranga. Our tūpuna had generations in which to understand their rohe, to experiment and to learn the important skills and values in making and maintaining the relationships they need. They embedded that knowledge in the oral traditions that inform our mātauranga.

Tikanga is the only legitimate law of Aotearoa. It is the first law, and it has never been ceded.

Whakapapa is the philosophical framework of tikanga. It is the heart of our mātauranga.

Colonisation has led to imposter tikanga. This acknowledges the effect of colonisation on how we understand ourselves and our world.

Decolonisation means reclamation. It is not enough to grow the mātauranga, we must make it accessible and usable.

What does this mean in practice? Ani Mikaere and Moana Jackson say it's important to start with the mātauranga continuum.

I want you to imagine a line in front of you. This line stretches forward, past your birth and your parents' births, past the arrival of Europeans to these motu, past the arrival of your tūpuna Māori, all the way to the time of creation. It also stretches behind you to eternity. This line represents the knowledge and wisdom of all the generations of our tūpuna, our intellectual tradition. Whatarangi Winiata calls this line the mātauranga continuum.

Now imagine just in front of you, there's an intersecting line. That line represents colonisation. It's like a knife trying to cut through the continuum—it is western cultural imperialism, which is the denial of anyone else's knowledge or tikanga. It seeks to cut our knowledge off from our past, by denying we had laws, let alone philosophies or an intellectual tradition. And it seeks to cut off the possibility of the continuum carrying on, by replacing our mātauranga with Western understandings. Our colonisers would have us believe that our knowledge is exactly what Europeans recorded when they arrived, nothing more. We are supposed to believe that the Western academic tradition can better understand and represent mātauranga Māori than a Māori academic tradition can. Whether we're talking about Western trained researchers 200 years ago, or now, somehow they're supposed to have a better take on the truth than anyone else. Finally, we are supposed to believe that authentic mātauranga is fixed in time at that point when the colonisers arrived. It didn't develop from anything before then, and it can never develop beyond that point.

Those distorted views of our mātauranga have endured since the colonisers started their project, but our traditions have also endured. As Ani Mikaere (2009) has said, <q>"While our experience of colonisation has been devastating, its impact should not blind us to the fact that it has occupied a mere moment in time on the continuum of our history."</q> We can use our traditions to ensure that colonisation is just a tiny dent on our continuum.

Decolonising means destabilising heteropatriarchy
<q>Colonialism … quickly co-opted Indigenous individuals into colonial gender roles in order to replicate the heteropatriarchy of colonial society</q> (Simpson). As Andrea Smith (2005) has said, the point was to more easily colonise us. We can expect that our tikanga around gender and sexuality will have been targeted first. Gender and sexuality are at the heart of who we are, and after 200 years of attack, we can expect to be affected. How do we use Ahunga Tikanga to decolonise our sexuality and gender?

We start by trusting our tūpuna. How did they think about sexuality? We do that by looking at what they had to say about te orokohanga o te ao. What does our mātauranga say about gender and sexuality?

There is a common pan-Māori narrative of creation that is widely known. I heard versions of it on children's radio shows when I was a child, I read versions of it in children's books, I was taught a version of it in Te Ātaarangi, and I hear or read people referring to it more often than to the many iwi narratives. It is a Pākehā narrative, cobbled together from bits and pieces of many stories with inconsistent details removed and laid out in a linear story. You know it: it starts with Te Kore, Te Pō and Rangi and Papa. Rangi saw Papa's naked body below him, he desired her and took her; they had lots of male children who became cramped and bored; Tāne separated the parents; the brothers fought; the brothers search for the female element, Tāne makes her out of earth, breathes life into her, then has sex with her and she gives birth to the first woman; Tāne takes her as his wife, they have children, she discovers Tāne is her father and flees in shame to the underworld. Etc.

This narrative says a lot about gender and sexuality. It tells us that there are males and females, and that they are different. Males make the decisions that create our world, they interact with each other, they compete for dominance, they shape their environment—they are always doing something. Females (passively) bear the consequences of those actions—they are taken, they are impregnated, they are shamed, they are always disappearing (after giving birth to all her sons, Papatūānuku becomes the passive earth from which Tāne makes Hineahuone; after giving birth, Hineahuone is never heard of again; Hinetitama leaves the world of light). This is heteropatriarchy.

But if whakapapa is the foundation of tikanga, none of this makes sense. Ani Mikaere (2011) has explored what it means to understand the world through whakapapa, her conclusions include lack of hierarchy, the importance of relationships, and inclusiveness. It is clear that the narrative above is not consistent with these values. It is not a narrative that comes from a Māori philosophy. It is a corruption that justifies the corruption of our tikanga so that mana wahine becomes less than mana tāne, and mana tāne is itself defined as a limited heterosexual masculinity. It is not the way my people talk about creation.

In Kāi Tahu traditions (eg Tau 2003), Rakinui has several partners, and Papatūānuku is with Takaroa before Papa and Rakinui get together. Takaroa goes away, Raki and Papa get together, Takaroa comes back, fights with Raki, injures him, and goes away again.

I like this tradition, because it so reflects the world of our tūpuna—the going away and coming back of Takaroa, the red of Rakinui's blood at sunrise or sunset. You can see why they recognised Papatūānuku as having a relationship with both Rakinui and Takaroa, because that's how the whenua sits, surrounded by sea and sky. When we look to the horizon, we can see that Raki and Takaroa are also intimately entwined. What is their relationship? Are they forever embracing in their fight? It looks more like spooning. What is going on?

Tainui also describe creation differently. Pei te Hurinui Jones (2010) talks about how Ranginui and Papatūānuku are both <q>bi-sexual or a-sexual</q> (p241), and each gives birth to several children before getting together. Tāne-mahuta has sex with a male atua, Kahukura, who gives birth (referred to as a <q>bi-sexual conception</q>, p244). I am not from Tainui, so I will not speculate on the meaning of their traditions, but it is easy to see that this says something very different from the narrative constructed by Pākehā men.

An intriguing tradition that was recorded by a Pākehā man tells of Māui and Rohe (Tregear 1891; unfortunately, I can't find a record of whose tradition this is). Māui is ugly and Rohe is so beautiful that Māui is jealous of her. He asks to swap faces with her, but she refuses. One night when she is asleep, he swaps faces. When she wakes she leaves to live in the underworld.

Helen Harte (2014) directed me to this tradition because it raises such interesting questions. Māui wanted to look like a woman, Rohe did not want to look like a man. Rohe had the mana to refuse Māui, and now has an important role in looking after us after death. Māui continued to live with a woman's face. What was this story about before it was recorded by Pākehā?

What do these three examples say about gender and sexuality? They show that monogamy is not privileged. They show that males and masculinity are not especially privileged. They show that heterosexuality isn't necessarily privileged. The more attention we give them and question what they mean, the more they reveal that neither gender nor sexuality are fixed, and that our tūpuna had a complex understanding of gender and sexuality. This isn't surprising, because our tūpuna were great observers of their environment, and nature contains endless gender and sexual variety.

After 200 years of colonisation, the information we need is still there for us. We just need to be bold enough to see what isn't being said, and ask the questions.

Decolonisation is community work
All of this is irrelevant if it doesn't lead to change. We must measure our success not in numbers of academic papers, committees or conference talks, but by how much the community uses us and our work, by the change that it makes. How do we make ourselves and our work accessible where it is needed?

For example, how do we enable our communities to stop reproducing heteropatriarchy? How do we stop it being taught to our children? How do we ensure that all gender violence is taken seriously?

This is the challenge to academics. I am inspired by organisations like Native Youth Sexual Health Network (US and Canada), INCITE! (US), and Mana Ririki (NZ) and by organisers and educators like Harsha Walia, Jessica Danforth and Ngāhuia Murphy. We need to be reaching out to the communities who most need our work. We need to be producing and using culturally appropriate resources for parents, communities, kohanga and kura. We need to be designing, teaching and enrolling in workshops and courses. We need to be thinking strategically and long term about how our work can contribute to our physical and cultural survival.

 For 200 years, colonisation has attacked who we are and how we understand ourselves. Through religion, education and law, it has tried to destroy our ways of relating, and forced Western ways on us. Heteropatriarchy is a result of colonisation, and so is the lack of faith that many of us have in our mātauranga. But the solutions will not be found in Western theories and practices. We have a long academic tradition, with our own critical theories and tikanga to guide us. Ahunga Tikanga is a tool for decolonisation—by showing faith in our tūpuna, we will build faith in the mātauranga they developed.

 References (not linked to in body)

Harte, Helen Interview with the author 21 February, 2014

Jones, Pei Te Hurinui 2010 King Pōtatau: an account of the life of Pōtatau Te Wherowhero the first Māori king (Huia Publishers and the Polynesian Society, Wellington and Auckland)

Mikaere, Ani 2011 Colonising Myths—Māori Realities: He Rukuruku Whakaaro (Huia Publishers, Wellington and Te Tākupu, Ōtaki)

Mikaere, Ani 2009 'How will future generations judge us?' Mā te rango te waka ka rere: Exploring a kaupapa Māori organisational framework (Te Wānanga o Raukawa, Ōtaki)

Smith, Andrea 2005 Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide (South End Press, Cambridge, MA)

Tau, Rawiri Te Maire 2003 Ngā Pikitūroa o Ngai Tahu: The Oral Traditions of Ngāi Tahu (University of Otago Press, Dunedin)

Tregear, Edward 1891 Maori-Polynesian Comparative Dictionary (Lyon and Blair, Wellington)

Kim Mcbreenhttps://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-20836152.post-27227792058501804752013-10-31T17:40:00.000+13:002013-10-31T17:40:04.101+13:00Things I wish I'd known 6 years ago—talk from Never forget: October 15th solidarity tour (Wellington)These are my notes from a talk I gave at the Wellington leg of the Never Forget: October 15th Solidarity Tour on Oct 19th.

I want to start by remembering the violence of the state on and around October 15th, 2007. I know many whānau were hurt and are still carrying that pain. That's not the focus of my talk, but it is what brings me here. I need to thank the organisers of this event. I think it's a great idea, and I'm really stoked to be invited to contribute today. It's really good to have an opportunity to reflect on all of the bullshit that has happened since that day in 2007, when so many people were fucked with, and so many people were hurt.

I also want to acknowledge the people who have agreed to be part of today—there's some amazing speakers after me, and I'm looking forward to hearing them. Because I'm first up, I figure I can be a bit more personal and reflective than later speakers. So I want to start by reflecting on the immediate aftermath of Operation8 on the political scene in Wellington that I was involved in. I want to talk about things I wish I had known six or so years ago, and how that might have changed how I behaved. Then I want to talk about tino rangatiratanga, and finally about my understanding of solidarity now.

Six years ago, I wish I had been clear on the boundaries between being a friend, and the political work of solidarity. There is a difference between loving and caring for my friends, and being in solidarity with them. Not being clear on those boundaries between friendship and politics made a messy and painful time more stressful than it needed to be. And more importantly, it meant that I wasn't as good a friend or as good an activist as I could have been. To support my friends, I thought I had to defend them as having done nothing illegal. I was terrified that anything I said could be used against them, because of my closeness to them, so what I said in their support was completely apolitical. If I couldn't say anything politically useful, just concentrating on being a friend would have been a more effective use of my energy. And not having the inevitable fights that working together under stress brings would have allowed me to be a better friend.

I wish I had been clearer about the connections between Operation 8 and my political beliefs. Not making those connections clear contributed to not knowing how to respond politically.

I wish I had made more time to talk with people about all the different questions and feelings we had, and maybe continue to have.

I wish I had taken more time to talk with people about our politics and what had happened.

All of the silence around what happened, for fear of making things worse, meant that it was really hard to untangle all this stuff. It fed the stress and frustration and made it harder for me to work with people, and to do anything that felt effective. I needed to wānanga, to work stuff out with people who shared some of my values and beliefs. Instead it felt like we were working as a bunch of individuals together, making statements that many of us probably didn't understand, or had quite different understandings of, or actually didn't agree with.

I need to know where my values differ from those of the people I am working with, so we aren't just guessing and censoring ourselves. For example, the group in Wellington that I was involved with that was doing political response to Operation 8 included people from a mix of political backgrounds, but we didn't talk about our politics, because it felt like there wasn't time. But it felt important to organise, and try to get more people on board. Instead of taking time to find out where we all agreed, or educating ourselves together so we could make stronger statements, we watered down our politics to make it more palatable to more people. So a lot of the statements we made as a group ended up being really liberal and not consistent with my beliefs—and possibly not consistent with the beliefs of most of the people in the group. It was a wasted opportunity for doing something real.

I wish I had been more self aware and more humble. Our voices weren't the most important or the most informed. Our skills and contacts could have been put to different uses. There were other people who could have used the attention better than us, and I wish I had put my energy into supporting that to happen.

It wasn't until years later that I realised we were trying to make lots of different arguments or stories about what Operation 8 meant all at the same time. We needed to untangle those arguments, which would have taken time. Because the strand that was being lost in the confusion, is the one that is the most important, most challenging and most compelling argument—that Operation 8 was an act of colonisation. To make that argument, we need to make colonisation and tino rangatiratanga front and centre. Instead, it was getting overwhelmed by arguments that seemed easier to sell. I think it's really important to think about the stories we put more energy into telling and why they are easier—what are they challenging, or more importantly, what aren't they challenging?

I reckon there were 4 main arguments that we were using—which I've written about before. I think it's important to untangle them and think about these separately whenever we are potentially talking about colonisation, because otherwise things seems to fall to a liberal human rights argument. So I'll briefly talk about each of them here.

There's the keystone cops argument—Operation 8 didn't really mean anything, police are just fucking idiots. This argument is tempting, because, for one, it's usually true that police act like idiots, and it also feels good to name that and mock them when they've been violent arseholes. What this argument neglects is that police are acting for the Crown, and it's no accident that their ineptness is only ever violent when it suits the Crown. Those patterns aren't hard to see.

There's the liberal argument, that the state is over-reaching its legitimate power—it's using the war on terror to expand its power and encroach on our civil liberties, police and anti-terror units need to justify their existence, etc. Again, this is compelling, because it's true, and it's easy to sell. But what if I don't believe the state has any legitimate power? This argument doesn't challenge the state at all, it doesn't challenge the status quo.

There's the anarchist argument, which does challenge the status quo—it starts from a recognition that the state is inherently abusive, it is all about controlling us, and it will use any tool it needs to keep us in line, whether creating fear through propaganda or through physical violence, or whatever. And it will demonise anyone who questions its legitimacy. This argument tends to ignore the importance of culture and history. It tends to overlook that some peoples have more legitimate claims to power than others. It doesn't challenge us to think about where we are and how we got here.

The final argument, the one that I think got most lost, is the colonialism argument. That, as Moana Jackson has said, whenever indigenous peoples question their dispossession, they are defined as a threat and met with violence. It's not that we weren't mentioning colonisation, it's that we weren't saying anything beyond mentioning it.

When you look at what happened with Operation 8, when you look at where it happened, at which communities were targeted in which ways, and how liberal politicians positioned themselves—it's really clear that racism, and fear of tangata whenua rising up, were absolutely central. For example, Helen Clark's media statement about activists training to use napalm is all about that fear. Operation 8 was a colonial act. To respond to that, it's really important that we know where we stand on colonisation, and legitimate responses to it, whether by tangata whenua or manuhiri.

On that note, I want to explain where I've got to with thinking about colonisation and tino rangatiratanga, or mana. The rest of my talk has nothing to do with Operation 8, but is more general.

 Lots of really on to it people have made some simple statements about tino rangatiratanga or justice that speak to me. Patricia Monture-Angus is a Mohican woman, and she talks about justice as being the ability to live as a responsible person in her territory, as a Mohican woman. That's really similar to Whatarangi Winiata's definition, which is being able to survive as Māori. These are statements about the ability for tangata whenua to live according to their laws on their lands.

And this leads to my favourite statement about tino rangatiratanga, Ani Mikaere puts it simply that tikanga is the first law here and it's the only legitimate law here. That's because law comes from whakapapa—we can't remain Māori and cede the responsibilities of our whakapapa.

If you can accept that, then questions of solidarity become simple too. I support tangata whenua making decisions that are right for them. It is their decision what they do in their rohe. That's tikanga. Likewise I have no problem with tangata whenua defending their people, or whenua, or moana from the violence of colonisation, which comes in many forms.

The most inspiring talk I've heard in years was Dayle Takitimu talking about Te Whānau-ā-Apanui's defense of their rohe from deep sea oil drilling. It's not hard to support that. But the way these actions are portrayed in the media sometimes makes it hard to understand what's going on. I don't know if you all have been following the Mi'kmaq defence of their territory from gas exploration which was all over indigenous media yesterday—I was really distracted by it (background information here). The Reuters headline was "Police arrest 40 as Canada shale gas protest turns violent" and their article starts by talking about protestors setting police cars on fire, and throwing molotovs at police. The story could have been about indigenous people defending their whenua from exploitation, and the Canadian state's violence against them. I didn't look it up, but I imagine Canadian media were even more slanted. We know the media generally focus on the 'violence of protestors' and hardly ever talk about the real issues, which in this case, is the violence of colonisation and the ability of indigenous people to make decisions about their land.

The state has done a great job of making sure most people don't understand colonisation. Our education system is pretty shocking when it comes to our colonial history and critical analysis. And our media don't fill that gap. This means that some of the most important solidarity work that needs to be done is education and changing the conversation. The more people, from more diverse backgrounds that bring colonisation into the conversation, the harder it is to ignore.

So I want to finish by saying a few words about solidarity.

My understanding of solidarity now requires that I know myself—I need to be clear of my beliefs. Because solidarity is about interdependence, it's about connections and relationships. It's not charity—it's about my relationship with you, and it's about the relationship between my struggles and yours. So that also means I don't have to completely agree with you and all your choices to be in solidarity with you. If I believe in your liberty, your self-determination, then by definition, I don't get to determine what that means, or how you get there. We all need to understand that solidarity with any indigenous people requires accepting the legitimacy of those people's decisions. And solidarity certainly doesn't mean I have to claim to be you—we are not all Zapatistas or Ngāi Tūhoe. My struggles are not the same as yours. But they are connected.

My solidarity may mean simply making those connections clear, whatever they are—it might be western cultural imperialism, or colonisation, or capitalism. Understanding how your cause contributes to my cause. It may mean using whatever privilege I have, to open a space for you to talk about your oppression. By making those connections, we come to know the systems of oppression better, we expose them to more people, and eventually, we win together.

On that note, I'll finish, thanks again for the opportunity to speak. Kim Mcbreenhttps://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-20836152.post-86627878996109362602013-10-14T09:38:00.000+13:002013-10-14T09:48:28.254+13:00Takatāpui and invisible whiteness—talk from Beyond conferenceThese are my notes from a talk I gave on a panel called Takataapui Perspectives at Beyond: Discussion and action on gender and sexual diversity. This was a conference organised by Queer Avengers and held in Wellington this weekend.

 Everything I'm talking about today is kind of a follow on from a talk I gave at clitfest a couple of months ago, so if you weren't there, and you want to know how this starts, you can look at the post of that talk.

I was born a few years back, and I was given out for adoption. My mother is Pākehā, and my father is from Kāi Tahu. But my adoptive parents, who are Pākehā, were guaranteed that I am fully white. That meant I had no access to part of who I am and how I relate to this land. I've met my birth father, and he is undeniably not white. So I asked my birth mother if she knew he was Māori, and she said no, she hadn't thought about it. As we talked, it became clear that it was because she saw my father as normal, and when you grow up in a culture that doesn't talk about culture, and whiteness is normal, even though visibly he is clearly not white—he is undeniably brown—that meant she thought of him as white. Just like all the other non-white people she knew. That's not her fault—that's white culture.

White culture makes whiteness normal and invisible, and it means we understand everything that is not obviously different and exotic as normal, and therefore also white. This really hurts people, because we feel like we have to perform to be recognised as who we are. It pushes us into extremes on a spectrum, and for Māori especially, that's dangerous, because we always get the shitty end of any dichotomy. My father would have been recognised as Māori if he behaved angrily, or like he was poor and uneducated, but he was a smart well-spoken, nice young man—clearly white.

I'm sure you know all this, intellectually, especially in relation to heterosexism and queerness. Unless we announce our sexuality in some way, everyone assumes we're straight. It's the same thing. So why am I talking about this?

I was asked to speak on this panel called Takatāpui perspectives, and the first thing I noticed is that there is no panel called white queer perspectives. There is pretty much never a panel on white perspectives about anything, and that's because the word we often use to describe white perspectives is 'reality'. I have an opinion on a lot of what is in the programme, or of other things I would have liked to see on the programme. I'm sure the other people on this panel do too. Today I could be talking about gender binaries, or queer parenting, or marriage, or homophobia, but instead I'm talking about Takatāpui perspectives. I don't even know what that means.

I wanted to take this opportunity to remind you about whiteness and Pākehā culture. Just because you don't notice it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It exists, we are soaking in it, it isn't 'just the way things are', and the invisibility of it is damaging. This siloing of Māori, and sidelining our realities into perspectives, is a safe way for you to learn about our lives, but it isn't safe for us.

I want to talk about this word takatāpui.

This panel is called takatāpui perspectives, so for the record, I should say that I don't identify as takatāpui. It's a word I've become interested in, but I'm yet to be convinced I need. It's a label that seems to resonate more with city-folk, than provincial or rural folk. And on another day, I'd love to talk to people about whether they identify as takatāpui, and what it means to them.

The reason I don't identify as takatāpui, is the same reason I don't like talking about queering Māori communities, which is a phrase I hear every now and then. I've talked before about how our creation traditions include gender and sexual diversity, reflecting that our tūpuna considered that diversity to be normal. I talked about how colonisation brought homophobia and fixed binary gender roles. In a culture based on whakapapa, I don't think we need a word for people who aren't heterosexual. I don't need to set myself apart from my heterosexual whanaunga. The usefulness I see in the term takatāpui is in acknowledging that the queer scene is otherwise dominated by pākehā. And I wonder if that's why it tends to be used more by people living in cities, where there is a queer scene.

How does that relate to talking about queering Māori communities?

The reason the queer community started using the term queer is partly about taking away an insult, but also because of the meaning of queer as in 'queering the pitch', meaning to spoil or disrupt. If tikanga is already inclusive of gender and sexual diversity, then it doesn't need 'queering'. Any 'queering', in the sense of disruption, happened with colonisation and the introduction of western hang-ups. If there are Māori communities that are not inclusive, and we know that there are, they don't need queering, me tōtika—they need straightening, they need putting right.

 Some of you probably think this is just playing with language, but it's important—the strategies we use in Māori communities where homophobia has become normal, should be really different from those in homophobic Pākehā communities. The problem in Pākehā communities is that sexual repression is part of Pākehā culture, so that culture needs to be messed with or queered. Whereas the problem in Māori communities is that our culture has been messed with by colonisation, and we need to return to Māori philosophies.

So queer as a term works for Pākehā, but when we use it for Māori communities, we're making colonisation invisible. And when we use it for everyone irrespective of culture, we're again privileging Pākehā as normal and Pākehā culture as invisible.

So I guess that's what this talk is about—visibility and invisibility.

On that note, I put this challenge at clitfest—to support tangata whenua and to prioritise indigenous culture. The solution to including Māori in conferences without us feeling token starts with Māori organisers and advisors. You don't put together a programme and then look for Māori (or anyone) to speak on those topics, but you make a programme that reflects what Māori want to speak or hear about.

I appreciate the visibility and centrality of trans people and issues in this programme. I assume that that's come out of connections and relationships. That's what it needs to make it safe for people from marginalised communities to participate and contribute—commitment. What do I mean by commitment—I mean building genuine reciprocal relationships—not just asking people to get involved in your projects. Support their projects. Māori, for example, have a long history of generosity, of giving our time and knowledge to other people's stuff. Many of us here are stretched really thin on all the projects we've been asked to support. This country is literally built out of Māori generosity. How are you paying it back? If you don't have relationships and connections with Māori communities, then make that your priority. You have all the time in the world to show us that you are genuinely interested in supporting us on things that matter to us. And I look forward to seeing you have my back. Kim Mcbreenhttps://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-20836152.post-79794079994250232262013-08-08T17:44:00.001+12:002013-08-08T18:09:27.488+12:00Proceedings from Kei Tua o te Pae 2012The proceedings from Kei Tua o te Pae 2012 have been published. They are available from Te Tākupu (email email@example.com or call 0800 WANANGA) or free online (Kei Tua o te Pae Hui Proceedings 2012).

Shameless self-promotion aside, I found this to be a pretty inspiring conference, with some amazing talks. This is how Te Wāhanga describe the proceedings:

"This proceedings build on the 2011 Kei Tua o te Pae hui, which called together a community of kaupapa Māori researchers and explored the challenges of undertaking kaupapa Māori reserch in the 21st Century.

This second set of proceedings explores the impact that colonisation has had on tikanga Māori, and encourages people to think about how tikanga has been shaped by history, and to consider what we take with us into the future. The proceedings include presentations and a series of reflections from participants.

Contributors include: Moana Jackson, Whatarangi Winiata, Ani Mikaere, Ngāhuia Murphy, Mereana Pitman, Leonie Pihama, Kim McBreen, Naomi Simmonds, Caleb Royal, Mere Penehira, Meihana K. Durie and Jessica Hutchings."
Enjoy. Kim Mcbreenhttps://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-20836152.post-39637512582003233012013-06-28T17:56:00.000+12:002013-06-28T18:05:47.696+12:00The mātauranga continuum, gender and sexuality—talk from C.L.I.T. fest 2013This is my first post since my pēpi was born, and it isn't the start of regular blogging. At the start of this month, I was fortunate to be on a panel with Fetu-ole-moana Tamapeau and Maihi Makiha on "Takataapui, Pasifika ways and beyond queer theory" at the C.L.I.T. fest in Wellington. This is the text of my contribution.

 Ani Mikaere and Moana Jackson say it's important to start from the beginning, so I'll start somewhere near where they tend to start.

I want you to imagine a line in front of me. This line stretches out past the arrival of my European ancestors, past the arrival of my tūpuna Māori, all the way to creation. It also stretches out behind me all the way to eternity with no milestones because we can't see into the future. This line represents the knowledge and wisdom of generations, what Whatarangi Winiata calls the mātauranga continuum.

Imagine just in front of me, there's an intersecting line. That line represents colonisation. When you imagine this line, I think it's helpful to remember the scene from Psycho with the knife—because colonisation brings with it western cultural imperialism, which is the denial of anyone else's knowledge or tikanga. Colonisation is trying to break the continuum. It seeks to cut our knowledge off from our past, by denying we had laws, let alone philosophies or an intellectual tradition. And it seeks to cut off the possibility of the continuum carrying on, by replacing our mātauranga with Western understandings. Our colonisers would have us believe that our knowledge is exactly what Europeans recorded when they arrived, no more and no less. We are supposed to believe that the Western academic tradition can better understand and represent mātauranga Māori than a Māori academic tradition can. Whether we're talking about Western trained researchers 200 years ago, or now, somehow they're supposed to have a better take on the truth than anyone else. And finally, we are supposed to believe that authentic mātauranga is fixed in time at that point when the colonisers arrived. It didn't develop from anything before then, and it can never develop beyond that point.

Those distorted views of our mātauranga have endured since the colonisers started their project, but our traditions have also endured. We can use them to ensure that instead of cutting us off from our knowledge, colonisation is just a tiny blip on our continuum. As Ani Mikaere has said "While our experience of colonisation has been devastating, its impact should not blind us to the fact that it has occupied a mere moment in time on the continuum of our history" (Mikaere, 2009). And that's where Ahunga Tikanga comes in.

Ahunga tikanga is about ensuring the integrity of the mātauranga continuum, fixing up the damage of colonisation and allowing our mātauranga to continue to develop.

There are five statements that sum up what we believe:

We have faith in our tūpuna. Faith that they did things intentionally, and that those intentions were good

We have faith in our mātauranga—our oral traditions: creation stories, whakataukī, and mōteatea. Our tūpuna had generations in which to understand their rohe. They experimented, and learnt the important skills and values in making and maintaining the relationships that they needed, and they embedded that knowledge in those oral traditions

tikanga is the first law here, and it is the only legitimate law here

Whakapapa is the philosophical framework of tikanga

Colonisation has led to imposter tikanga through cultural imperialism

This last statement is acknowledging that because of colonisation, some of the stuff we think of as tikanga mai rā anō is actually of recent origin, and doesn't reflect our mātauranga. It may actually reflect the values of our colonisers, or the stories they told about us. This is especially true of issues like gender and sexuality, where the cultures of the colonisers and the tangata whenua were really different.

So if we look to our oral traditions, our mātauranga, what does it tell us about gender and sexuality?

First of all, there's a heap of different creation traditions we could talk about. If you look at the stories lots of us grew up with, based on Pākehā writers like George Grey, it looks like our tūpuna were as revoltingly patriarchal as Pākehā. For example, Ranginui and Papatūānuku's romance sounds like a rape scenario, she gives birth to a bunch of male children, the males make a female out of dirt, tāne has sex with her, she gives birth to a daughter who becomes the first woman, tāne has sex with her, she finds out he's her father, flees in shame to the underworld, etc. This is a typical playing out of a western male-female dichotomy. Most Pākehā writers wrote stuff like this, and theirs are often the most commonly known versions.

But that's not how my people talk about creation. In Kāi Tahu traditions (for example, in Te Maire Tau, 2003), Rakinui has other partners, and Papatūānuku is with Takaroa before Papa gets together with Rakinui. Takaroa goes away, Raki and Papa hook up, Takaroa comes back, fights with Raki, Takaroa wins, and goes away again. I like this tradition, because it so reflects the world of our tūpuna—the going away and coming back of Takaroa. You can see why they understood Papatūānuku as having a relationship with both Rakinui and Takaroa, because that's how the land sits, surrounded by sea and sky. I'm interested in whether Rakinui and Takaroa have more of a relationship than rivalry—because if Raki and Papa look intimate, Raki and Takaroa look even moreso.

And then you have the creation traditions of Tainui waka. Pei te Hurinui Jones (2010) talks about how Ranginui had partners other than Papatūānuku, that they were both bi-sexual, and that Ranginui gave birth to several children. Tāne-mahuta also has sex with another male atua, Kahukura, who gives birth.

There's lots there to think about, but it's not my tradition to speculate on. I just want to show you that the traditions as tangata whenua know them, show complex understandings of both gender and sexuality.

You can see that monogamy is not privileged. You can see that males are not especially privileged, you can see that heterosexuality isn't necessarily privileged, and the more you look at them, the more you can see that neither gender nor sexuality are fixed.

I'm going to stop here, because I don't want to use up any more time, but I have a couple challenges to you. The first is explore your indigenous creation traditions, wherever you're from. Find out what your tūpuna had to say about the world before their traditions were swallowed up and reinterpreted through a narrow-minded patriarchy.

The second is, wherever you live now, support tangata whenua. Support their organisations, support tikanga solutions. Don't try to be an expert on them. Be prepared to learn from tangata whenua instead of critiquing or trying to teach them. For example, if you want to learn about tangata whenua, if you want to learn te reo, or Māori law, don't go to a colonial institution where our mātauranga is understood within a western tradition, at best relegated to an offshoot of anthropology. Instead, support your wānanga where mātauranga is central. Think about whose culture you privilege when you are organising. When you're doing things like setting up safer spaces policies, think what it would mean to prioritise indigenous culture. What does a Māori safer spaces policy look like?—is it something you can do? What would you have to change to make it possible in the future? At the very least, it's going to mean making sure you've got meaningful relationships with tangata whenua.

There's a heap of really valuable stuff in our traditions, they hold generations of knowledge and solutions to problems that the west is only just starting to recognise—like hetero-patriarchy. The less energy tangata whenua have to put into defending our right to cultural survival, the more we can put into invigorating our traditions, exploring them for their diverse and unique solutions to problems we are facing. That's something we should all be supporting.

References
Jones, Pei Te Hurinui 2010 King Pōtatau: an account of the life of Pōtatau Te Wherowhero the first Māori king (Huia Publishers and the Polynesian Society, Wellington and Auckland)
 Mikaere, Ani 2009 'How will future generations judge us?' Mā te rango te waka ka rere: Exploring a kaupapa Māori organisational framework (Te Wānanga o Raukawa, Ōtaki)
 Tau, Rawiri Te Maire 2003 Ngā Pikitūroa o Ngai Tahu: The Oral Traditions of Ngāi Tahu (University of Otago Press, Dunedin)
 Kim Mcbreenhttps://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-20836152.post-79714750170250878602012-11-02T22:28:00.000+13:002012-11-02T22:28:25.289+13:00Break from bloggingI'm taking a break from writing for the next couple of months. My daughter was born nearly a month ago, and that's where all my attention will be for quite some time.Kim Mcbreenhttps://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-20836152.post-6227387588771500542012-10-01T11:48:00.000+13:002012-10-01T11:53:37.117+13:00Superstition, spiritualism, religion, philosophyA couple of years ago, I wrote an essay about reaction to a pānui from Te Papa about visiting the taonga Māori collection that they host (The tapu of taonga and wāhine in a colonised land). I finished by saying:
". . . but of course none of this can really be understood without already understanding a Māori worldview. And this is the real issue, while Māori must understand a European worldview and law to survive in this land, colonisation has meant that very few people have any understanding of mātauranga Māori, or, in fact, of colonisation. Whenever an issue requires some understanding, whether it be the significance of te reo Māori, or kaitiakitanga, or whatever, the ignorance of most New Zealanders makes dialogue impossible. And thanks again to colonisation, this creates a problem not for those who are ignorant, but for Māori. Māori must repeatedly start from the beginning and attempt to explain their whole culture—this occurs in conversations, the media, court hearings, tribunal hearings. At some point, tauiwi need to take some responsibility for understanding the indigenous culture, and for understanding how their ignorance contributes to cultural imperialism, to Māori perspectives being marginalised and foreign in their own land."
 I want to come back to this to talk about the way Māori realities are often sidelined by people who have made little effort to understand anything beyond Western philosophical frameworks. I encounter this often, (and disappointingly for me) especially in socialist/ libertarian/ anarchist circles, where an analysis of power and imperialism seems especially crucial. I've written a lot about this in other posts (eg, Defining Māori), so this is only a summary.

When Europeans arrived here, they unselfconsciously slotted tangata whenua into the same orientalist framework they put all indigenous peoples—primitive, barbaric, native (meaning aligned with nature rather than culture), and superstitious. I say unselfconsciously, because Europeans took no time to consider how many of their practices would look to an outsider— unawareness of their place in nature, unthinking cruelty to children and women, inflexible codes of law, an obsession with covering (but not cleaning) the body, uncritical Eurocentric cultural imperialism (the expectation that the European way of thinking and doing is always right, even taken completely away from a European context where other people might know better). Any differences between tangata whenua understandings and actions, and Western understandings and actions, were seen as simply the result of the primitive, superstitious nature of the natives. Europeans certainly did not consider themselves superstitious—although they often did things for religious or cultural reasons that made little sense to anyone not raised within that religious or cultural framework, they were always rational.

As many have observed and written, the West tends to frame things in dichotomies, where Othering is used to strengthen one's own righteous identity. One of the biggest contrasts at the time of European arrival here, was between European religion (inherently righteous) and Others' superstitions or spirituality (irrational and childish at best). (It's interesting to think about the work of Elsdon Best and Percy Smith in this context. They were fascinated by and sympathetic to Māori philosophies and beliefs, and when they wanted to show that tangata whenua were not as primitive as many of their peers thought, they tirelessly sought evidence for Māori belief in a single, supreme god. When they eventually found an informant who spoke of such a god, they then argued that this meant Māori were well on their way to developing a proper religion.)

As the values of the Enlightenment (which elevated intellect and reason above religious adherence) became more widespread, secularism became the righteous stronghold. This meant that our understandings and actions were only valid if they were based on rational (scientific) reasoning—although what is considered rational and relevant would continue to be defined by Western values. This is pretty much where the dominant culture in New Zealand is at now. For whatever reason (I blame cultural imperialism), it is not widely understood that any reasoning is based on values and a cultural framework (as Skyler, from Reading the maps discusses).

Because Western values and cultural frameworks are so pervasive, it is easy to dismiss anything outside those frameworks as not reasonable in some way. It is now common to hear Māori frameworks being dismissed as 'religious' and 'spiritual'—when they are actually legitimate philosophies. They have a basis in a belief system and morality, just as Western philosophical frameworks do (much as many now try to deny it). They also have a basis in a very long association with this land, which Western frameworks do not.

The sort of understanding that comes from a long association with a place is so often dismissed as spiritual, and therefore unreasonable. For example, understanding that a river is a living entity, that it has a life-force that must be sustained, and that the wellbeing of my community is intertwined with the wellbeing of that life-force. This can be, and for a long time has been, written off as spiritual, animistic nonsense. But of course, it is true, and Western science (in this case ecology) has been playing catch-up for decades, when we could have just paid attention to tangata whenua (I say 'we' because I trained and briefly practised as an ecologist, and never learnt anything of indigenous understandings of relationships with the environment). The knowledge that comes from generations of interdependence with an environment is more legitimate than imported ideas about the way the world works.

The point of this post is that those of us who have been raised within exclusively Western philosophical frameworks need to be open to the limitations of those frameworks. Others understand the world differently, they may understand the world better. They may express that understanding in ways that sound irrational or strange to us. If we dismiss it as nonsense, or incorporate it into our superior frameworks and explain it back to them, then we are behaving as cultural supremacists. We will continue to creep infinitesimally towards understandings that others have known for generations and have freely offered us. Which might be fine, if we weren't destroying ourselves and our planet as we do so.

To learn more about cultural imperialism and the importance of mātauranga, I highly recommend getting hold of Te Wānanga o Raukawa: Restoring mātauranga to restore ecosystems (produced by Te Whare Whakatupu Mātauranga, published by Te Tākupu and written by Āneta Hinemihi Rāwiri). Kim Mcbreenhttps://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-20836152.post-51153246604315667352012-09-20T11:05:00.000+12:002012-09-20T11:08:10.957+12:00It's about whānau—oppression, sexuality and mana(my talk from the Kei Tua o te Pae conference 2012)

Introduction
I need to start by talking about who I am, and why this is important to me.

I was adopted at birth by my Pākehā parents, who were guaranteed by the social worker that I was a Pākehā baby, so I grew up entirely in te ao Pākehā. People often asked if I'm Māori, and all I could say was, I don't know. When I was 20, I got my original birth certificate with my mother's name on it, and I tracked her down and met her. She is Pākehā, her and my birth father were kids and didn't know each other for long, and he was gone by the time I was born. She gave me his name and a decade old address in Australia for him. It took me another 10 or so years before I committed to finding him, because I wanted to have children, and I want my children to know their whakapapa, whatever it may turn out to be. I eventually found him, and on his side, I'm from Ngāi Tahu.

I'd already been a bit involved in rōpū Māori when I was at uni, but I'd been uncommitted, because I couldn't know for sure whether I had whakapapa Māori. Finding out that I do meant an obligation to find out more, to find my place, if any future children of mine were going to be comfortable. I committed to meet my father's whānau, and find out as much as I could about us and Ngāi Tahu, and where I fit in. That went well, but some other stuff was going on that I couldn't ignore.

At the time I was doing Te Ataarangi, and it was obvious that my girlfriend and I made a couple of people uncomfortable just by being in class. Student whakaari were at times openly mocking of gay or camp behaviour. When I came to Te Wānanga o Raukawa a year later, again, I saw what I would say was open hostility to sexualities other than heterosexual. For whatever reason, some people must have assumed I was heterosexual, and talked to me about how disgusting homosexuality is, and a kaiako talked in class about homosexuality as if it was worse than incest. It was only a minority of people, but it got my attention.

I'm not suggesting homophobia is unique to Māori. My Pākehā parents were openly homophobic until a year or so after I came out to them. Walking down the street I've been abused, had eggs thrown at me, and been chased by cars for holding hands with my girlfriend. At university it wasn't uncommon to read fantasies about killing gays or lesbians in the letters to the editor of the student newspaper. Homophobia was not a new experience to me, but it got me wondering—I'd had years to find a place for myself in te ao Pākehā, would there be a place for me in te ao Māori? Would that be somewhere I could feel comfortable—as someone who was raised Pākehā, for whom mātauranga Māori is really new, and who is queer. Is it worth trying to find a place here? In the same way that many of us have to act Pākehā to fit into the colonising culture, am I going to have to act straight to fit into te ao Māori? Will there be somewhere that can accept all of me?

This was a question in the back of my mind when I was a student in Ahunga Tikanga classes, listening to Ani Mikaere, Moana Jackson and Leah Whiu talking lovely stuff about whakapapa, ngā kaupapa, inclusion and balance. Everything they said made sense and sounded great, but at the same time I was getting other messages from other places, about excluding people who are different, about disgust and fear of sexual difference in particular, which sounded pretty similar to my experience in Pākehā culture. What was pono? Is there space for me in te ao Māori?

That is where the question started for me, and answering it has taken me in a few different directions. My understanding of this hui is that it is about making sure our tikanga are true to ngā kaupapa mai rā anō, keeping them relevant and adaptive. Hopefully, by the end of this talk, you'll have some ideas about sexuality and tikanga that adequately reflect our kaupapa.

Before I go on, I want to define two words that I will use in this talk.

Queer (not kuia): a label for those of us who don't think well-defined boxes are a helpful way to think about gender or sexuality. My partner pointed out to me that it's hard to hear the difference between queer and kuia. In this talk, I might describe myself as queer, I am not claiming to be a kuia.

Homophobia: the belief that heterosexuality is normal and healthy, and that anything else is wrong, depraved, unhealthy or dangerous.

Colonisation = oppression = trauma

 "Oppression is trauma. Every form of inequity has a traumatic impact on the psychology, emotionality and spirituality of the oppressed." (Akili, 2012)
When Yolo Akili says oppression is trauma, he is not saying anything we don't already know about the effect of oppression on our wairua, but I thought this was a good place to start, because we can agree on it.

We can agree on it, because we live with the ongoing effects of colonisation. We know that colonisation is oppression, and we know the trauma of that oppression in our communities and in our lives. Part of the oppression is the acts of the colonisers—taking our land, spreading diseases, imprisoning us, outlawing our ways of being. The oppression is also the messages that they say about us to justify and minimise their crimes against us.

Many of us internalised the messages we heard, and we know many of our young people will internalise the messages they hear—that Māori are physical and emotional, meaning we aren't smart enough to look after ourselves or our whenua; that we aren't moral like the colonisers; that we are violent and overly sexual. Politicians and the media go out of their way to find stories of Māori failure, especially those that show us as naive, immoral and out of control.

We know the effects of this oppression: there is massive pressure to conform to the dominant, colonising values. Some of us do eventually conform, while others can't or won't. For all of us, whether we conform or not, oppression tears at our wairua, the sense of self that should make us strong.

Like all indigenous peoples who are living through colonisation, Māori now have high rates of suicide as well as high-risk and anti-social behaviours. This is the effect of the trauma caused by the oppression of colonisation, it is an attack on our wairua. It leads to a whole bunch of outcomes that we all know and I'm not going to go into—I think we can accept that colonisation is oppression, which is trauma. And just as colonisation is very clearly oppression so too is the repression of sexual diversity.

Sexual repression = oppression = trauma
What I'm calling sexual repression are the acts and messages that say that sexual diversity is wrong—that anyone who isn't heterosexual is abnormal, or deviant or immoral, and is somehow a threat to society, or tikanga or family values, whatever those are. Clearly, that is about oppressing people, and it must therefore be an attack on their wairua.

When I was a child, we used words like faggot and lesbian before we had a clue what they meant other than they were something really bad. I don't know where we got these words from, but I don't remember anyone ever being told off for using them. Boys were mocked for being girly by adults and by other kids—there are so many words for boys who aren't appropriately masculine. Sexual or gender difference, being gay or camp, is still the punchline of so many jokes. And most of us will internalise those messages. Whoever we grow up to be, these are really damaging and limiting messages. The effect is similar to colonial oppression—there is massive pressure on all of us to conform to the dominant heterosexual standard. Most of us try to, and for those of us who can't, if we internalise these messages, we will learn to hate ourselves.

I'm going to talk about shame, because I think it's important to understand what it's like to grow up in a culture that is terrified of sexual difference, and I want you to think about a response to that culture which expresses our kaupapa. Should we buy into homophobia, should we allow ourselves to be silenced and timid, or should we protect our tamariki mokopuna?

When I think of my experience as a child, I don't remember any particular homophobic incidents, but just growing up in Pākehā culture in the 1970s and 80s was like soaking in homophobia. Everything told me that heterosexuality was normal and healthy, and anything else was sick. I remember when homosexual law reform was going through parliament, there was lots of talk about how homosexuals are paedophiles and law reform was opening the door to bestiality. There was all sorts of hateful fear mongering. My parents were saying this stuff too. I knew that homosexuality terrified people because something about it was so sick and disgusting.

Exactly the same hate came out 20 years later when parliament started talking about the Civil Unions bill, and we're seeing it again now with the Marriage Equality bill. Almost exactly the same words. Whenever anyone tries to remove some anti-homosexual discrimination, we all get a massive dose of hate speech, which is particularly dangerous for children.

I heard all that in the mid 1980s when I was 11 or so, well before I was thinking about what sexuality meant to me. I already knew that something about me was different from other girls. I didn't know what it was, but I knew there was something wrong with the way I was with my friends and with boys. I was 14 when I started going out with girls, and then everything became much clearer, but also worse, because I knew what people thought of people like me. No-one could know, so I became secretive. I became physically self-conscious and reserved. I didn't touch anyone, especially not other girls, unless I absolutely had to. I wouldn't go near children. I had this facade of who I was, and it was completely unrelated to me and what I was feeling. For years, everything about me was fake and was about hiding this awful secret. I still carry some of that self-hatred, that expectation that people will be disgusted or scared to let me be around their children. A lot of people I've talked to who aren't heterosexual relate to this, and some wrote about it in Sexuality and the stories of indigenous people (Hutchings & Aspin, 2007).

I know for most children, first crushes are both exciting and terrifying, and coming into your sexuality is also exciting and terrifying. Ideally, children can talk to their friends about it, or better still their parents. People are excited when children start showing those signs. For lots of young queer people, it is just terrifying. It feels life threatening, and it actually is.

By the age of 21, about a third of young people who are attracted to their own gender will have tried to kill themselves (Suicide Prevention Resource Centre, 2008; in New Zealand, Fergusson, Horwood & Beautrais, 1999). The messages they hear about homosexuals are so clear and hateful that the thought of being one, or trying to live as one, is just too awful.

Why am I talking about this? My point isn't to bring you down—my point is that how we talk about sexuality or respond to homophobia isn't abstract or an academic interest. This isn't a philosophical debate about rights or political views. This is about the survival of our children, just like fighting the racist environments in some of our schools is about survival. To bring it back to the kaupapa of this hui, our tikanga should be helping us to survive as Māori, not killing us.

We give children messages about sexuality and gender in many ways. Teaching them to be ashamed, controlling how we behave as girls and boys, talking about heterosexuality as if it is the only normal option as opposed to just a common way of being, laughing at people who are different—none of this will make us heterosexual. All it does is make us scared of who we might be. It makes us all police our own behaviour. For those of us who can't be straight, it may teach us to hate ourselves, and make us scared to show ourselves to you. We may become secretive and isolated. It is an attack on our mana, and our wairua. At best, it makes it harder for each of us to reach our potential, at worst, it is so effective that it kills us.

These messages are a form of cultural imperialism, just like colonisation. Those with more power are using it to suppress those with less. Those who are heterosexual are trying to impose their way of being over everyone else, sometimes with the power of the state, sometimes with the authority given to them by a religious text, sometimes with nothing more than numerical dominance and the same self-righteousness that the colonisers wear. It's all the same.

When I was putting this together, I kept being reminded of Whatarangi Winiata's paper Treaty of Waitangi: towards 2000, and his analysis of why Māori do poorly now compared to Pākehā: <q>It is difficult to find a field of human endeavour and development where policies of the Crown have not been prejudicial to Māori. It is probably the single most important factor explaining Māori experience in the last century and a half.</q> (Winiata, unpublished, p 6). He talks about all the ways that the Crown have on the one hand supported Pākehā ways of being, and on the other hand suppressed Māori ways of being, and the effect that this has had on the success, or otherwise, of Pākehā and Māori. He discusses the effects on how we each see each other, how we see ourselves, and the futures we are able to imagine for ourselves.

The racist practices that Whatarangi describes privilege a Pākehā way of being as normal and right, while pathologising Māori ways of being, and lead to the horrible statistics and health outcomes we all know. To me, this seems parallel to how heterosexual ways of being have been privileged by the Crown, by churches and eventually by our communities and whānau, while at the same time, other ways of being have been suppressed. This has meant that many young queer people struggle with who they will be and what their future will look like, for exactly the same reasons that young Māori often struggle with these questions (and it is likely that this is particularly true of young people who are both queer and Māori). Because almost everywhere we turn, it is being drummed into us that we are different, and lesser, and wrong—and we are then blamed for the inevitable outcomes.

As I've said, this is all true of Pākehā culture, but from my limited experience, and from talking to and reading about the experiences of other Māori, I think there are the same destructive attitudes and behaviours in many Māori communities. I would argue, there is a lack of leadership and willingness to talk about why. I'll talk about our leaders in a moment, but first I want to talk about our children.

Homophobia at school
There are at least two places where our children should expect to feel safe—at home and at school. There is very little research that has been done on sexuality and health, and of the studies looking at youth, they almost all focus on school.

In a survey of New Zealand high school students, compared to students who identified as exclusively heterosexual, twice as many same-sex attracted students were afraid that someone would hurt or bother them at school, three times as many had stayed away from school because they were afraid someone would hurt or bother them, three times as many were bullied weekly at school, and 54% had been physically assaulted in the last 12 months (compared with 42% of exclusively heterosexual students); of the same-sex attracted students who were bullied, one third were bullied because they were perceived to be gay (Rossen, Lucassen, Denny & Robinson, 2009, p 26). A US study suggests that not only is homophobic violence commonly experienced, a surprising number of people are perpetrating it—one in ten university students admit physical violence or threats against people they suspect of being homosexual, and one in four admit verbally abusing them (Franklin, 2000).

It is common for students to see their schools as poor at responding to any form of bullying (Carroll-Lind, 2009, pp 41-47, 77; Painter, 2009, p 11). Many schools aren't proactive about dealing with homophobic abuse, they don't talk positively about sexual diversity, they don't challenge ideas that heterosexuality is normal and everything else is deviant and wrong, or that people who are different deserve abuse and ridicule (Carroll-Lind, 2009, p 61; Painter, 2009, pp 22, 25). Often when homophobic abuse is happening, schools still won't address the real problem (Carroll-Lind, 2009, pp 46-47). Schools might deal with the physical violence, but not the underlying attitude; they might deal with the perpetrator, but not the culture that allows bullying (Carroll-Lind, 2009, pp 134-135). It's not uncommon for victims of homophobic abuse to be blamed for provoking the abuse by being homosexual (Painter, 2009, p 12). Even in the face of ongoing physical violence to children because they are perceived to be homosexual, some schools will continue to claim that they provide a safe environment for their students (Kendall & Sidebotham, 2004, pp 71-72). Some principals and boards refuse to see homophobic attitudes as something they should be addressing in school (Painter, 2009, pp 12, 20-21).

Whether we're talking about race or perceived sexuality or gender, when schools fail to challenge hatred of any sort, they give a clear message that it is okay, and that there is something wrong with the victims. Studies consistently show that these messages are associated with the physical, emotional and social harm that I've been talking about, the self hatred, the isolation and the suicide (eg, Suicide Prevention Resource Centre, 2008, pp 19-28 and references therein; Ryan, Huebner, Diaz & Sanchez, 2009, pp 346, 350-351, and references therein).

I hope we can all agree that this is something we should be protecting our children from.

Homophobia at home
Much less is known about the effect of attitudes at home. The first study came out in 2009 (Ryan, Huebner, Diaz & Sanchez, 2009), and it gives clear indications of how whānau rejection, even in relatively subtle forms, can have a huge impact on the health of queer youth. The researchers interviewed a bunch of young adults who had come out to at least one of their parents as an adolescent. From those interviews, they made a list of 51 rejecting behaviours—things like, if their parents ever blamed them for anti-gay mistreatment, if they were ever excluded from whānau activity because of sexuality, if family members ever made disparaging comments about queer people in front of them, or verbally or physically abused them because of their sexuality.

Participants were assigned to groups based on whether they experienced few (0-11), some (more than 11 and up to half), or more than half of these behaviours. These groups turned out to be a good predictor of negative health outcomes, particularly for attempted suicide, where over two thirds of those in the group who had experienced more than half the rejecting behaviours had attempted suicide, compared to one in five in the group with the least rejection.

This study only included young people who had come out to a parent during adolescence—you'd expect participants to come from less homophobic homes than those of us who waited until we'd left home to tell our parents. So these results may be underestimating the effect of homophobic experiences at home. Reading this study really drove home to me how dangerous homophobic attitudes and behaviour can be.

I know I've been saying all through this talk how marginalising sexual or gender differences is similar to the way we are marginalised as Māori, but in the home there is a really big distinction. Most Māori children are raised by at least one Māori parent, and the family knows that their children are Māori. Māori parents know what it's like to be raised in a racist society, and may have some idea of how to protect their children from the stuff they will encounter. Most Māori children probably feel pretty safe talking to their parents about racism that they see or hear, and asking for help understanding or dealing with it. Whereas almost all queer children are born to heterosexual parents, who have no idea what it's like to grow up queer in a homophobic society, and who don't know that their children will be queer. The parents of queer children may have no idea how to protect them from the messages they will get, or even that they need to. The parents may themselves be homophobic.

Many of our whānau are not safe places for queer children, and I'd argue that if they aren't safe for queer children, they aren't safe for any children. Not just because we can't know who our children will grow up to be, but also because hatred isn't safe for children—white children are endangered by growing up with racists, boys are endangered by growing up with misogynists, and heterosexual children are endangered by growing up with homophobes.

Is repression of sexual diversity tika?
I want to start with the question of whether or not sexual diversity is traditional. This is an impossible question, because the answer will depend on how far back we go, and who we ask. One of the themes through this hui has been the ways that our tikanga may become distorted or co-opted, so some of us get the idea that something is traditional when it is clearly a relatively new development. The more useful question is whether or not something is consistent with what we know to be tika—based on kaupapa mai rā anō (or ngā matapono).

In class recently, Moana Jackson was talking to Ahunga Tikanga students about relationships of any sort, whether a parent child relationship, a relationship between workmates, or between institutions, or sexual partners, and how you know whether those relationships are tika. It seems obvious that the gender or sexuality of the people in those relationships is pretty much irrelevant to that question. If the relationships are based on mutual respect, manaakitanga, aroha, then they are tika, irrespective of anything else.

The question of whether heterosexuality is more tika than other ways of loving or relating or having sex with each other seems ridiculous to me. I can't imagine a kaupapa-based argument that justifies marginalising people based on who they are attracted to. I can't think of anything resembling kaupapa that would judge me as more or less depending on the gender of the people I love. Any attempt to reduce my mana based on who I sleep with is an insult to my whānau, my whakapapa and all my tūpuna. I cannot accept that as kaupapa or tika.

One of the comparisons that is often made between western culture and most indigenous cultures is that indigenous peoples know we are all different, and that those differences are not just valid, but potentially valuable. We don't need to feel better about ourselves by trying to dictate anyone else's tikanga—we just have to get our own stuff right for us. I think this is relevant to how we think about other people's relationships.

I expect we all know when our wairua is healthy. We feel good, grounded, sure in who we are, safe. When I start focusing on what other people are doing wrong, I know I need to sort myself out. So I don't see how it can be tika to insult and demean people in healthy relationships because the set up of those relationships is different from what I would choose. If I'm judging other people like that, it's a pretty good sign that there's something going on with my own wairua that I need to address.

So if policing people's sexualities in this way isn't tikanga, where did it come from?

Colonisation and sexual repression
We know the West is a seriously unhealthy culture. It forces itself on everyone else. It tries to stamp out difference. I don't know why it is so obsessed with who sleeps with whom, but it is, to a really bizarre extent.

When Europeans arrived here, they brought with them their fear and hatred of homosexuality. In English law at that time, homosexuality could be punished by hard labour or even death. It's only been 25 years since the New Zealand state got rid of the law that could imprison men for consensual sex with other men.

When we look to our parents and grandparents for guidance on how to think about different sexualities, we need to remember that for generations we have lived under that strange legal system. Our parents and grandparents, and their grandparents, have been educated in schools and churches based on western values. There are very few places to avoid the awful messages of that culture—remember that it called our tikanga primitive and violent, then told us that we needed to beat our children, our men needed to dominate women and we all needed to hate homosexuality.

Our parents or kaumātua may genuinely believe that there is something wrong with homosexuality. They may genuinely believe that it is traditional to stifle some people's ways of being. After a couple of hundred years of colonisers trying to shame us into rejecting our values and adopting theirs, that's hardly surprising. That's the reason it is so important that we have hui like these to talk about tikanga and kaupapa.

African American activist and academic Angela Davis is clear about where she thinks homophobia comes from: <q>The roots of sexism and homophobia are found in the same economic and political institutions that serve as the foundation of racism in this country.</q> (Davis, 1989, p 12). She is talking about the US, but it's equally true here—it's the desire to force what makes sense to me onto everyone else. As I said earlier, whether we are talking about homophobia, sexism, or racism, it's all about cultural imperialism.

Heteropatriarchy and homophobia
I want to talk specifically about how we've come to buy into this western preoccupation about how and with whom we have sex. I know we're all familiar with the way patriarchy has been creeping into interpretations of tikanga and kōrero tawhito, but I think it's helpful to think about the way that patriarchy privileges certain men more than others, and the effect of that.

For example, at the time the English decided they wanted to colonise these motu, their ideal man was the Victorian gentleman. The men that England sent to control us were pretty much in that mould. They weren't aristocracy, and they hadn't gone to the flash schools, they were earning their place as gentlemen through their occupations—the military, the church, and the government. Like all social climbers, they brought with them an unwavering belief in that society's rules. They taught us what it was to be a leader, and how to get those attributes—through private schools, manly sports and Christianity. I don't think it is too much of a stretch to say some of us are leaning this way now. If we add business people to the list of career pathways, and replace aristocracy with whakapapa, we are starting to describe a path that many of us would see as ideal for developing our young men into iwi leaders.

One of the things that is interesting about this, is that in general, men, people educated in private schools, people who play dominant sports (in this country, rugby, soccer, cricket and softball), and people with Christian beliefs have each been shown to be associated with more homophobic attitudes (Osborne & Wagner, 2007, pp 599, 601, 607-609, and references therein). If we do follow this pattern for developing leadership, we are pretty much guaranteeing that we will develop sexual repression, and that our children will be subjected to that sexual repression, which will limit the development and potential of most of them, and will endanger the lives of some of them.

What can we do?

Re-broaden our concept of leadership
One thing that I think would make a big difference is if our leadership (whatever we mean by that) reflected the diversity of our communities. I'm not knocking any of the contributions anyone has made, but I think we should be asking why the people who make up groups like the Iwi Chairs forum or the Māori Council seem so similar. What messages does it give our young people if they can't see anyone like them being recognised as having mana?

Make our schools safer
We need to make sure our schools are safe for all our children. This means being proactive. Schools need to talk to children about sexual and gender diversity in a safe and accepting way. This must happen before the negative messages sink in—starting when children are 10 or 11, not leaving it until they're already sexually active, or avoiding it altogether. It means tackling any homophobic attitudes or behaviour that the children bring to school with them. Staff need to be educated and trained so they don't bring damaging attitudes with them. Schools need to be a safe place for staff to be open about their sexuality and gender. Finally, it means educating parents so that they are onboard.

Make our whānau safer
Most importantly, we have to decide whether it is more important to us that our children meet our expectations, or that they are safe to be whoever they may be. Is it more important that we shame our children into acting like we want? That we pretend they're someone who they're not? Or that we have a real relationship with them? What is more tika? What is most in line with our kaupapa?

If we want our children to be safe and happy and meet their potential, then we have to be prepared to accept them, and love them whoever they turn out to be. We have to make sure they know that.

The Continuum of Awesomeness
I like to think of our goal in terms of an awesome continuum, on which I'd like to see us all pushing ourselves towards the more awesome end of the spectrum.

In the top left, intolerance is anything that tells our children it's not acceptable to be different—abuse or statements like there's no gayness in tikanga Māori, or anything that condones abuse or mocking of difference. Treating gay men as if they're women, which reveals disrespect for both women and gay men. Anything like that is intolerant, and we want to avoid it.

Tolerance is a bit better than intolerance, it means not actively excluding or insulting people that we know to be different from ourselves, but at the same time, it assumes that heterosexuality is so normal and healthy, that we can ignore the reality that not everyone is heterosexual. For example, I might assume that every child, and everyone I know is heterosexual unless they tell me otherwise, which means I don't have to be careful about what I or anyone else does that would insult people who aren't heterosexual. It's much like the Crown acts around ethnicity, it treats us as if we are all white. Māori are not actually excluded from Pākehā society, we're just expected to change to fit in. Because we assume that every child will grow up to be heterosexual, we don't bother to protect them from hate or carelessness. We let them see sexual and gender diversity being mocked, or compared to paedophilia, or hear their queer whanaunga described as disgusting, as if this has no effect. Tolerance actually allows intolerance to flourish.

Acceptance is just that, anything that lets our children know that they are awesome and loved whoever they are. It is their whakapapa that gives them a place in their whānau, and everything else is just detail. It also means challenging any homophobic behaviour to protect them from those messages.

Celebration means going out of our way to give positive messages about otherwise marginalised genders or sexualities, as a way of fighting the messages that our children will get outside of our control. For example, loving acceptance probably isn't a sufficient response if a child has just heard that a prominent Māori leader dreams of a world without gays, or one of their friends has been beaten up for looking queer, or they're being called faggot or dyke. If a child tells us that they are queer, we should be stoked that they trust us, that they are sharing themselves with us, and we should show them that. If a child is brave enough to express themselves in a way that others are reading as queer, we should celebrate their uniqueness and bravery. Celebration might mean talking to our children about all the different crushes we've had, or acknowledging all the crushes they have had, not acting like there is something different about their friendships depending on the gender of their friend. Celebration is anything that lets our children know that whoever they are will be awesome.

If tikanga are the behaviours that express our values, I thought I could use Whatarangi Winiata's kaupapa matrix model to work backwards (Winiata, 2012). If we think of each of the points on the continuum as a set of behaviours, if they are tika, we should be able to say which kaupapa they are expressing.

Starting with intolerance, which kaupapa am I expressing if I am excluding or attacking my whanaunga based on who they sleep with? It might be a reflection of how little I know, but I couldn't think of any. Looking at tolerance, which kaupapa am I expressing when I am polite to my whanaunga, while judging them as inferior? Or including them, but expecting them to hide who they are? Again, I couldn't think of any kaupapa that fit this tikanga. The kaupapa become apparent when we look at the behaviours that show acceptance. Acceptance is an expression of a whole bunch of kaupapa—whanaungatanga, aroha, manaakitanga, rangatiratanga, whakapapa. Finally, looking at celebration, it expresses many of the same kaupapa as acceptance.

Some people will feel that celebration is a step too far—that acceptance is enough. In an ideal world, I would say acceptance is the most tika behaviour. But we live with a dominant culture that condones homophobia. To come back to the analogy with Pākehā culture oppressing tikanga, one response to a culture that makes it hard to live as Māori, is that we celebrate what it means to be Māori, we positively promote Māori ways of being. Many Pākehā are resistant to this, they see affirmative action and celebrations of our 'Māoriness' as reverse racism. We know they are wrong, and we can extend that analysis to repression of sexual diversity, even if it initially makes us a bit uncomfortable.

The point of this continuum isn't to judge where we each are as parents or friends. We will probably all struggle to overcome the culture that we have been raised in, I certainly do. This is where we need to think about whose kaupapa we are expressing. Western culture has been all about controlling and limiting us, tikanga should be about all of us reaching our potential. My challenge to you, is to make sure you are reflecting the values you want to. Be more awesome, so those around you can feel safe enough to be who they are meant to be. Be brave enough to be uncomfortable. Be brave enough to fight for sexual and gender diversity education in your children's and grandchildren's schools. Be brave enough to love your whole child, and your whole self. We know we aren't going to fully realise tino rangatiratanga unless Pākehā get a bit uncomfortable and give up some power. It's the same with sexual diversity.

Like I said earlier, no amount of hatred, bullying or abuse is going to make anyone heterosexual, it will only make people hide themselves from you. Don't be that person. If you don't know anyone who isn't heterosexual, if you think everyone in your whānau is heterosexual, then that is a reflection on the impression you have made. You can change that impression.

We need to be clear that homophobia does not come from tikanga. It comes from the colonisers. Whakapapa is about inclusion—there needs to be a really good reason to exclude or demean someone in any way. Who they sleep with is not a good reason. Our children grow up in an environment where they will see, hear and experience hatred of different sexualities. Whoever they grow up to be, these messages are dangerous. These messages will limit how our children see themselves and who they can imagine being.

At the moment, we have so much unhelpful hatred and intolerance passing as debate about marriage and adoption equality, and if there's one thing I want you to get from this talk, it's that we need to change that conversation. Our children don't need to be protected from homosexuality, they need to be protected from hate. People loving each other will never endanger children, homophobia will.

REFERENCES
Akili, Yolo 'The immediate need for emotional justice' http://crunkfeministcollective.wordpress.com/2011/11/16/the-immediate-need-for-emotional-justice/ (accessed 12/09/2012)
Carroll-Lind, J 2009 School Safety: An Inquiry into the Safety of Students at School (Office of the Children's Commissioner, Wellington)
Davis, A 1989 Women, Culture, & Politics (Random House, New York)
Fergusson, D, L Horwood and A Beautrais 1999 'Is sexual orientation related to mental health problems and suicidality in young people?' Archives of General Psychiatry 56: 876-880
Franklin, K 2000 'Antigay Behaviors Among Young Adults: Prevalence, Patterns and Motivators in a Noncriminal Population' Journal of Interpersonal Violence 15: 339-362
Hutchings, J and C Aspin (eds) 2007 Sexuality and the Stories of Indigenous  (Huia Publishers, Wellington)
Kendall, C and N Sidebotham 2004 'Homophobic Bullying in Schools: Is there a Duty of Care?' Australia & New Zealand Journal of Law and Education 9, pp 71-72
Osborne, D and W Wagner 2007 'Exploring the Relationship Between Homophobia and Participation in Core Sports among High School Students' Sociological Perspectives 50: 597-613
Painter, H 2009 How Safe? How Safe and Inclusive are Otago Secondary Schools (OUSA, Dunedin)
Rossen, F, M Lucassen, S Denny and E Robinson 2009 Youth '07 The Health and Wellbeing of Secondary School Students in New Zealand: Results for Young People Attracted to the Same or Both Sexes (Auckland University, Auckland)
Ryan, C, D Huebner, R Diaz and J Sanchez 2009 'Family Rejection as a Predictor of Negative Health Outcomes in White and Latino Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Young Adults' Pediatrics 123: 346-352
Suicide Prevention Resource Centre 2008 Suicide Risk and Prevention for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Youth (Education Development Center, Newton MA, USA)
Winiata, W 'Building Māori futures on kaupapa tuku iho' Paper given at Kei Tua o te Pae conference, 4-5 September, 2012
Winiata, W 'Treaty of Waitangi: Towards 2000: Economic Progression and the Interconnection between Maori and Tauiwi Development' (unpublished paper, 28 June 1995)
Kim Mcbreenhttps://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-20836152.post-82463851476931317342012-06-24T18:30:00.001+12:002012-09-02T19:34:11.478+12:00Ahunga Tikanga: Tikanga and sexual diversity(Note: This is a significant rewrite of a previous post on sexuality, and will be published shortly in the journal Ahunga Tikanga. Many thanks to Leah Whiu, Kiritapu Allan, Kirsty Robertson and Ani Mikaere for their advice.)

Introduction
Discussion of tikanga and Māori sexual diversity in the last decade has mostly focused on trying to reconstruct the behaviour and attitudes of our pre-European tūpuna. This reconstruction has involved both imagining and searching for historical evidence. However, we do not need to limit ourselves to trying to recreate pre-European authentic tikanga. We know the current reality: the existence of queer-identified Māori and a dominant Western culture that marginalises Māori and any sign of homosexuality. We also know the effect of negative constructions of identity. This paper argues that focusing on the principles that underpin tikanga Māori is a more accessible and appropriate method to determine a tikanga Māori approach to sexual diversity. This approach is more accessible because colonisation has left us without full knowledge of the actions of our tūpuna. It is more appropriate because, even when we know how our tūpuna behaved, their motivations are more difficult to interpret. Moreover, their actions may not have reflected their values, just as ours often do not. This method is also appropriate because it allows for the massive change in culture that has occurred since colonisation—what was tika pre-colonisation may be inadequate in a society dominated by hetero-normativity (I explain this term later). It allows us to ask what is the best way for us to behave now, that holds to what it means to be Māori, and that keeps us safe. How inclusive should we be of sexual diversity?

As Hirini Mead says, tikanga <q>link us to the ancestors, to their knowledge base and to their wisdom. What we have today is a rich heritage that requires nurturing, awakening sometimes, adapting to our world and developing further for the next generations</q> (Mead, 2003, p 21). Ani Mikaere describes tikanga as law, <q>the practical expression of the philosophical framework that has enabled us to endure and to thrive</q> (Mikaere, 1994), with whakapapa as central. Ani's article in this journal describes Ahunga Tikanga as understanding tikanga as the first law of these lands, based on Māori conceptions of reality. These conceptions of reality are reflected in our creation traditions, and in the values that emerge from them—ngā kaupapa i ahu mai i ō tātou tūpuna.

We can use these kaupapa as guides to recover our understanding of what is tika. This is necessary because we now live in an environment dominated by values and a legal system that are very different from tikanga Māori, an environment that continues to threaten our survival as Māori. From the start, the colonisers have tried to stop Māori from practising our law—they have attempted to supplant our morality with theirs through religion, education, and Crown law. After a couple of hundred years of western imperialism, our values are inevitably conflicted. Many of us want to return to tikanga as a source of strength, but in many cases, tikanga has come to mean nothing more than cultural habits—we pōwhiri, we take our shoes off indoors, we don't put hats on the table. Observing these customs has become more important than understanding why we do them. In other cases, we are still developing tikanga for new situations (such as biotechnology—genetic modification of organisms and organ transplants). In still other cases, colonisation has been so effective that the tikanga have been forgotten; or even when we know what our tūpuna would do in a situation, we may misinterpret the reasons behind their actions.

Our environment, like that of our tūpuna, is constantly changing. By stressing kaupapa, constant values rather than fixed rules or actions, tikanga Māori develops to be relevant to whatever circumstance we live in. To do this, we need to develop a culture of reflection, a culture that continually checks itself against kaupapa Māori, and that counters the effects of colonisation by re-examining the values of our tūpuna, rather than concentrating exclusively on their actions.

I want to reiterate that tikanga has always been, and continues to be, about survival (Durie, unpub, p 9). It is about our cultural survival: surviving as Māori means living according to inherited kaupapa (Winiata, Luke & Cook, 2008, p 852). And it is about our physical survival—our health, mortality and social harm statistics. This is especially true when we are talking about sexuality in a western culture that traditionally hates sexual diversity, where queer Māori are abused for not being white and for not being heterosexual.

Tikanga Māori
The purpose of tikanga or Māori law is to maintain relationships among ourselves, and between us and our environment. These relationships are defined by whakapapa, and it is for this reason that Moana Jackson describes tikanga as being born from whakapapa (Jackson, unpub, p 61). Maintaining relationships includes keeping us safe, as well as protecting or enhancing our standing through our actions.

Tikanga should not be seen as a set of rules, but rather as the set of values established and developed by our ancestors that underlie those "rules" or practices (Ministry of Justice, 2001, p 1). The values that were important to our tūpuna are illustrated in the oral traditions that have survived across generations—the creation stories, waiata, haka and whakataukī, which show us the attributes and behaviours that were adaptive and praised, and those that were not (Mikaere, 1994, p 4; Mahuika, 1993, p 46).

This focus on values rather than rules allows flexibility. In common with many traditional justice systems, the aim of tikanga Māori is social stability and enduring solutions to problems, rather than consistency of process or outcomes (Elechi, 2006, p 18). It is this flexibility that keeps tikanga constantly relevant—they can be changed or developed to suit our needs (Durie, unpub, p 8). By reference to the kaupapa that underpin tikanga, the system is adaptable: it is possible to determine tikanga-based solutions to any issues or problems that arise, as well as to redevelop tikanga where they have been lost or distorted as a result of colonisation (or any other process).

One such issue is sexuality. The introduction of Christianity has had a profound effect on Māori culture. With the well-documented, strongly-held convictions of the church on appropriate expression of sexuality, it is inconceivable that Māori attitudes and tikanga would have been unaffected (Aspin, 2005, p 4). There is growing evidence that pre-European Māori society included as much sexual diversity as contemporary Māori society. After 200 years of colonisation, the actual experiences, attitudes and tikanga of our ancestors relating to sexuality are impossible to reconstruct (for example, Hutchings & Aspin (2007, pp 15-21) provide an excellent summary on the repression of information about sexual diversity as a result of Western colonisation). What we can know for sure is the current situation: the current diversity of sexual expression and identity among Māori, current opinions towards sexuality, and the effect of these on Māori communities. With this knowledge, we can then begin a discussion on sexuality and tikanga Māori.

Sexual Diversity
For the purpose of this article, I am using the term sexuality to mean sexual behaviour (most usually defined by the adjectives bisexual, homosexual or heterosexual) between consenting adults. I am using the term sexual diversity to mean the range of expressions of sexuality. I contrast this against hetero-normative, meaning only heterosexuality is considered normal, while other sexualities are considered deviant. New Zealand's currently dominant culture can be described as hetero-normative. This is typical of Western culture, and suggests that the attitude results from colonisation (because the way New Zealanders discusses sexuality is almost identical to the way British or Americans discuss sexuality).

By definition, a hetero-normative culture marginalises anyone who is not heterosexual, just as an imperialist culture marginalises indigenous peoples. Māori who are not heterosexual will be marginalised both as Māori and as sexually deviant within dominant culture. Unlike other Māori, they may not be able to rely on their Māori community for support, they may be marginalised there because of their sexuality. Likewise, they may not be able to rely on the queer community for support, they may be marginalised (or exoticised) because they are Māori. For many Māori who are not heterosexual, there will be nowhere that they are able to be accepted as themselves, in their entirety.

There has been a reclamation of the word 'takatāpui' since it was rediscovered by Lee Smith and Ngahuia Te Awekotuku (Hutchings & Aspin, 2007, p 15; Te Awekotuku, 1991, p 38). Williams Dictionary of the Māori Language, compiled in 1832, defined takatāpui as 'intimate companion of the same sex', which may be a true definition, or it may reflect Williams' Christian prudishness towards sexuality. Modern use of the word is close to the English word 'queer', which is usually defined in opposition to heterosexual—takatāpui can encompass bisexual and homosexual, as well as transgender and intersex, but it also references Māori cultural identity. According to Aspin (2007, p 161), men who identify as takatāpui tend to maintain strong relationships with their whānau, and this means they are more immune to ostracism than those who are less connected. However, as I have touched on and will discuss further, many Māori with same-sex attractions have been excluded from Māori communities, and tikanga has been cited as the reason.

Opinions about Sexuality Diversity
 Aspin and Hutchings state that hetero-normativity is foreign to Māori society:
"Categorisation of different forms of sexual expression is . . . a Western construct which serves to classify Māori society according to sexual behaviour. Such a system of categorisation . . . fails to recognise that sexuality is fluid and flexible and that it is not necessarily constant for everybody throughout their lifespan. Nor does such a system describe adequately the cultural nuances of Māori sexuality as it was expressed in the past and as it is expressed today." (Aspin & Hutchings, 2006, p 228)

 This is consistent with Paula Moyle's experience of going home to her Ngāti Porou whānau:
"I had become so Pākehāfied in my growing up years, my fear of being out . . . that I had transferred that fear onto my own family, my own people . . . and what they saw was just Paula. A family member who has come from the city home, home with her kid, and she belongs to Meria, and Meria is connected to so and so . . . And the more that I looked the more that I saw that I had a tonne of cousins who were gay, gay men, gay women, and it was very prevalent and that was completely different than being out in the city . . . It didn't seem to be an issue." (Moyle, 3/3/2010)

 Despite this, many Māori men and women use terms such as gay or lesbian to describe their sexuality (Aspin & Hutchings, 2006, p 231). Increasing numbers are using the word takatāpui, instead of or as well as the Western terms, to identify both their sexuality and their Māori identity (Aspin & Hutchings, 2006, p 231). A 1997 study of men who have sex with men found 31 % of Māori respondents chose takatāpui as a preferred term for their sexual identity (Aspin, Reid, Hughes & Worth, 1997). These men tended to be more urban-based and to feel more connected to the gay community than the other 69 % of Māori respondents.

Researchers on the Māori Sexuality Project report they are finding evidence that takatāpui do <q>play a key role in their whanau, hapu and iwi</q> (Aspin, 2005, p 5). Recent research on men found that those who identified as takatāpui indicated <q>a strong attachment to their Māori cultural networks</q> (Aspin, 2005, p 8). Some writers in Sexuality and the Stories of Indigenous People speak to this acceptance in te ao Māori, for example, Aaron Signal (2007, p 103): <q>I am glad about the upbringing I had, based on kaupapa Māori. It is a kaupapa founded on strong respect for whānau values. It is a kaupapa that comes from my parents and ancestors.</q> Others had less positive experiences. Paul Reynolds (2007, p 111) had many experiences of homophobia: <q>It has taken me over thirty years to accept who I am, takatāpui tāne, Māori, gay and proud . . . it was extremely important to be able to pass as straight at an all-Māori boys' boarding school.</q> Geoff Rua'ine (2007, p 151) is also clear that although he grew up in a loving whānau, with the protection of his kuia: <q>In those tender teenage years I knew I was gay, but I also knew I had to keep quiet about it for my own safety and well-being.</q>

Several writers spoke of responses to sexuality within tikanga Māori. For example, Carl Mika talks of the need for toning down sexuality:
"Many takatāpui are allowed back on their marae . . . as long as it is with an asexual visage. The thought of takatāpui taking a partner along to a function on the marae often causes visceral reactions . . . Some takatāpui are prevented from speaking on the marae ātea, even though tikanga dictates they can, due to some perceived equivocality over their gender." (Mika, 2007, p 139)

 Rua'ine speaks of tikanga which are clearly not accepting of sexual diversity:
"Often when somebody's body was sent home for burial, there was a lot of shame and guilt from the whānau and hapū. There were instances where the tangihanga was rushed, the coffin sealed tight throughout the mourning and the tūpāpaku buried well away from everyone else in the urupā. Often long-time partners were never acknowledged as such. It's a good thing the loving embrace of Papatūānuku is everywhere." (Rua'ine, 2007, p 153)

 Despite Aspin's (2007, p 161) assertion that <q>Māori society is generally inclusive, tolerant and accepting</q>, there are some very strong messages that this is often not the case. Just as in New Zealand's dominant european hetero-normative culture, many of us who are not heterosexual have experienced silencing—we are expected to be discreet about our sexuality, while our heterosexual whanaunga are not. Many of us have been excluded at some time because of our sexuality, and some have been physically attacked. Too many have not survived. Tikanga Māori is often used as an excuse for this violence, hatred and fear.

Opinions about Tikanga and Sexual Diversity
Most advocates of tikanga Māori start by looking to the past for direction. Several commentators have been outspoken on Māori sexual diversity, and each attempts to justify their opinion by citing the past. However, the past is being used in different ways by different sides of this issue, as I will show.

There are a range of opinions on sexual diversity, which I have summarised into four camps:

Intolerance: The position dominated by church representatives asserts that pre-European Māori were exclusively heterosexual (Aspin, 2007, p 162 cites an article in New Zealand Herald 5/6/2004), and even that deviation was punished by death (Brian Tamaki is reported to have said this in an interview with John Banks on Radio Pacific, eg, in Aspin, 2007, p 162).

Celebration: The position dominated by takatāpui-identified academics argues that there is considerable evidence <q>that pre-European Māori society celebrated sexual diversity in all its manifestations</q> (Aspin & Hutchings, 2007, p 227).

Tolerance: A third stance is expressed by Mead (2003, pp 246-247): heterosexuality was the norm, marriage was the primary expression of sexuality, but homosexuality was tolerated. This could also be called the hetero-normative position.

Acceptance: The fourth position is that described by Paula Moyle, sexuality is not an issue. People are accepted irrespective of who they love.

I will look briefly at the evidence given for each of these positions.

Intolerance: Proponents do not provide reason or evidence for their statements. Their assertions rely on ignorance of the past and are easy to rebut, especially thanks to recent research on pre-European Māori sexuality. It is easy to prove that homosexuality did exist in pre-European Māori culture, because there is evidence in oral literature and whakairo (eg, Aspin & Hutchings, 2006, pp 228-232; Te Awekotuku, 2005, pp 6-9); likewise, it is easy to prove that a tikanga of exterminating homosexuals is unlikely, because some record of it would exist. When Vercoe says that homosexuality is <q>unnatural</q>, or <q>not morally right</q>, and that <q>One day society would find homosexuality unacceptable</q> (Vercoe, cited in Masters, 2004), he is clearly stating his opinion on sexuality. Rather than the western strategy of claiming the bible as a righteous basis for hatred, he uses tikanga Māori. He implies that such an extreme position is not just based in Christianity, but is culturally universal, based on <q>human accepted norms</q> (Vercoe, cited in Masters, 2004).

It is not just church leaders who are outspoken advocates of this position, other political figures, for example John Tamihere, have also expressed such opinions. Herewini remembers 25 years ago Whetu Tirikatene-Sullivan urging Rātana Church to take a political stand against Homosexual Law Reform (Herewini, 2007, p 174). The Māori Party has not spoken against homosexuality, but in 2005 (when Tariana Turia was their only MP), they voted against the Civil Union Act, which removed some discrimination and allows same sex civil unions. In 2011, Mana, Māori, Labour and National parties all sent Māori MPs to speak at Destiny Church, an organisation vocally opposed to sexual diversity; none of these representatives spoke against such intolerance. The importance of these people's opinions on sexual diversity and tikanga Māori isn't because they are experts on either sexuality or tikanga, but is rather because they have political power in New Zealand. Their opinions, well-informed or otherwise, carry weight because they have access to mainstream media. As more Māori are looking to tikanga as an expression of an authentic Māori identity, people like Vercoe, Tamaki and Tamihere have likewise tried to claim tikanga Māori as the source of their bigotry.

Celebration: The argument that Māori celebrated sexual diversity also reflects the opinions of those putting it, rather than historical evidence. Proponents attempt to justify this position by providing records of sexual diversity in Māori oral literature, the early European record, and whakairo. This research is hugely useful in providing a historical context and link to the past for diverse sexuality. It refutes the argument that homosexuality was non-existent or was generally punished by death. But does it actually prove that sexual diversity was celebrated by Māori society, or that it was consistent with tikanga? Of all the references to sexuality in these historical sources, how many are to homosexuality? Even accounting for the sanitising of some of these sources, how many references would constitute celebration, or tolerance, or aversion? (If we were ignorant of historical European culture and looked for evidence of their attitudes towards sexuality in the same way, perhaps we would find something similar. The early European record provides evidence of widespread homosexuality among priests (Parkinson, 2005), which in no way reflects church or European tikanga or attitudes to homosexuality.) This position looks like an attempt to justify our existence in a currently hostile society by looking to a pre-colonial, authentically Māori past.

Tolerance: Historical support for a tolerant position comes from Mead, but again, I believe it reflects his personal opinion about homosexuality, more than tikanga Māori. His description of pre-European tikanga is that: <q>same-sex pairing[s] . . . were not recognised as marriages. Rather, people in such relationships were regarded as close friends . . . Such friendships were tolerated by the community as they are today</q> (Mead, 2003, p 247). Whatever this means, it sounds very much like a description of dominant attitudes to sexuality in contemporary New Zealand, including among Māori. Mead appears unsurprised that there has been no change whatsoever in Māori attitudes towards homosexuality, even though he is aware of the impact of the Crown and Christianity on Māori social structures and understanding of tikanga. He gives no examples of 'same-sex pairings' being treated as friendships or otherwise.

Acceptance: Whakapapa is the justification given for accepting people and their partners (Moyle, 3/3/2010).

Acceptance is the only argument I have seen that seems truly based in tikanga Māori. Rather than the other positions being guided by historical knowledge of tikanga Māori (as they claim they are), I believe that proponents of each are using tikanga to justify their personally-held opinion, and reconstructing a past that supports them.

The tolerant position represents the hetero-normative argument—tolerance marginalises anyone who does not fit the heterosexual norm. It assumes that every child will grow up to be heterosexual, and they therefore do not need to be protected from messages that homosexuals are not real men or women, that we are disgusting, that homosexuality is sick and evil, or that it is practically paedophilia. Tolerance provides no defence or counter-argument. Even in this seemingly more inclusive position, there is very strong pressure to conform, and implications for those who don't.

Many groups who speak against homosexuality claim that demonising homosexual behaviour is important in maintaining family values and a healthy society. Family values are, of course, hetero-normative and good for all of us, regardless of our gender or sexuality. In a (tolerant) hetero-normative culture, even such intolerant ideas have currency.

Given that Māori have a diversity of sexualities, what are the implications of growing up and living in a hetero-normative environment?

What are the Implications for Identity?
Identity means understanding our place in the world: where we each belong and where we each stand; it is fundamental to health and well-being (Aspin, 2007, p 165). Many Māori have whakapapa as their first source of identity; however, as a consequence of colonisation, many do not know or care to know their whakapapa. Māori have intimate experience of structural and institutionalised racism, and the effect on identity. I will briefly summarise this experience, and its parallels and intersections with institutional hetero-normativity.

Colonisers actively dismantle indigenous society by suppressing traditional systems of education, religion, justice, and organisation (Smith, 1999, p 28), by confiscating land and by suppressing language. At the same time, the colonisers institutionalise their values, and build their wealth from confiscated lands and the labour of dispossessed indigenous people. The effect of replacing a positive cultural identity with powerlessness and the negative messages of dominant narratives is well-documented. In common with other indigenous cultures living under colonisation, Māori are statistically over-represented in indicators of poverty, mental, physical and social dis-ease. The framing of high rates of domestic violence among Māori as a problem of Māori culture rather than of colonisation is a typical response to these statistics. Māori are problematised and pathologised (Smith, 1999, p 92), reflecting colonial constructions of the indigenous 'other', and feeding back into a negative spiral of identity. Rebuilding cultural identity individually and collectively is critical for breaking this relationship of power and oppression. In the last few decades many kaupapa groups and programmes have been set up to do this; Māori are able to reconnect with te reo and tikanga, to participate in marae and iwi organisations even away from their rohe, and to participate in non-whakapapa based groups.

Just as the coloniser culture treats us as if we are all white, it also is hetero-normative: it treats us as if we are all heterosexual. There is pressure to conform, either to actually suppress our non-conforming sexuality, or to behave according to socially acceptable ideas of homosexuality, 'playing straight', butch or camp. Homosexuality has literally been pathologised by the West—until 1974 homosexuality was considered a mental illness by Western medicine, and homosexual acts between men were illegal in New Zealand until 1985. While New Zealand culture is more tolerant of sexual diversity now than 25 years ago, there is still judgement and violence. Heterosexuality is privileged, it is treated as normal, neutral, value-free, whereas deviations are 'othered', or defined in opposition to normal, and are only allowed to be the things that heterosexuality is not (Johnson & Pihama, 1995, p 77)—only heterosexuals can be real men or women. Anti-gay messages are common.

While there are usually obvious clues to ethnic identity, sexuality is less obvious. This increases the problems of developing a positive identity, because we can hide or deny our sexuality under pressure to be invisible, and because it increases our exposure to hateful messages. Rejecting and stigmatising people who are not heterosexual is as equally damaging as stigmatising Māori; effects include high rates of suicide and other self-harm, dangerous behaviours, unplanned teenage pregnancies, alcoholism and other drug use (eg, Ryan, Huebner, Diaz & Sanchez, 2009, p 346 and references therein). Organisations that support sexual diversity, such as Rainbow Youth, Manawatu Lesbian and Gay Rights Association, and Gay Auckland Business Association, or informal 'sub-cultures', are responses to this. Such communities define their own needs and norms, support each other and provide a positive source of identity and belonging.

Both Māori and people who are not heterosexual have been marginalised and problematised by New Zealand's dominant culture. Survival means organising to build pride in our identities, and from there, fighting for recognition. Unfortunately, this does not necessarily meet the needs of non-heterosexual Māori, whose identities intersect with both these areas of marginalisation. As mentioned already, it is not uncommon for Māori who are not heterosexual to feel excluded from Māori communities because of our sexuality, and from queer communities because of our ethnicity. To fit in anywhere, we must stifle an important part of who we are. There are whānau who are so afraid of homosexuality, they will exclude non-conforming whanaunga from fully belonging. When leaders in groups such as the Waipareira Urban Authority or the Anglican Māori Tikanga are some of the most outspoken advocates of intolerance, and other Māori leaders refuse to argue against them, it is understandable that some of us are unsure of our place in Māori culture. Likewise, queer culture is often as ignorant of colonisation as mainstream culture, and just as inclined to racism and exoticisation of non-white ethnicities (Aspin, 2007, p 162 and references therein). Many do not find this a safe community in which to be Māori.

If Māori culture continues to condone intolerant heterosexuality or hetero-normativity in tikanga Māori, we leave a group of Māori out. In this intersection between being Māori and not being heterosexual, survival is even harder. For Māori who are not heterosexual, survival might mean choosing between their sexual identity or Māori identity and leaving one behind; or creating two separate identities that each suppress part of who we are, behaving 'straight' with Māori and 'white' with queer friends. Some of us will survive by asserting our whole identity wherever we are, or by finding others like us, and creating our own culture. Others of us will simply not survive. Is this consistent with tikanga? Is any exclusion of whanaunga consistent with tikanga? I think the best way to answer this question is to look to kaupapa Māori.

Kaupapa, Tikanga and Sexuality
As discussed previously, tikanga are flexible, and whether we like it or not, will change over time. We can allow this to happen unconsciously, or to someone else's agenda that we do not control; this is happening now, as our tikanga become colonised to reflect the values of the dominant Western culture (for example, many Māori believe that physical discipline of children is both tika and traditional, despite evidence that it developed in response to imposed European values (eg, Jenkins, Harte & Te Kahui Mana Ririki, Traditional Maori Parenting: An Historical Review of Literature of Traditional Maori Child Rearing Practices in Pre-European Times); Taihakurei Durie (Custom Law, p 25) and Annette Sykes (Bruce Jesson lecture 2010, Politics of the Brown Table) both discuss how modern understanding of rangatiratanga is influenced by European ideas of leadership; and Ani Mikaere (The Balance Destroyed: The consequences for Māori women of the colonisation of tikanga Māori) discusses how European patriarchy has distorted our understanding of the roles of men and women). Or we can use a kaupapa analysis, based on the principles that should determine tikanga, to make conscious choices about what is adaptive for us.

A Kaupapa Approach to Sexuality
The first step of a kaupapa analysis of sexuality is to make explicit the values of a Māori understanding of reality. These values can then be applied to sexual diversity.

Whakapapa
Whakapapa is the basis of all tikanga and mātauranga Māori, defining every relationship. It is closely linked to whanaungatanga, relating to whānau and identity. It is also linked to mana and to what I am calling atuatanga. Individuals are seen as part of their ongoing whakapapa: 'ko tātou ngā kanohi me ngā waha kōrero o rātou mā kua ngaro ki te pō'. It is through whakapapa that an individual always has a place in the world; their position within whānau, hapū and iwi cannot be taken away. This includes a literal place, tūrangawaewae (Mead, 2003, pp 42-43, 60), as well as identity and the right to participate.

Stressing whakapapa as fundamental to tikanga Māori implies a responsibility to continue the whakapapa, and this can be used as an argument for compulsory heterosexuality. However, sexual identity does not determine whether or not a person will have children—many people who are not heterosexual will have children, and many people who are heterosexual will not have children. There are also very important ways to contribute to the survival of whānau and hapū without literally giving birth to another generation—for most of us, it is not a lack of people that is threatening our whānau or hapū, but rather a lack of knowledge, whanaungatanga, and whānau identity. There is no evidence that sexuality determines contributions to these, and the participation of everyone should be valued, regardless of sexuality. Pushing people away does not strengthen whānau. Intolerance does nothing to ensure the continuation of whakapapa.

By the same argument, because all Māori have whakapapa, we are all connected to each other, to our tūpuna, to our whenua, to atua. My whakapapa is the basis of my belonging to my whānau, not my sexuality. It cannot be taken away. Any arguments for tikanga of exclusion are an insult to our whakapapa. We may not know who our queer whanaunga and tūpuna are, but we certainly all have them. Arguing against acceptance of those of us whose sexuality does not conform to hetero-normativity is clearly an insult to those whanaunga and tūpuna. Based on whakapapa, it is tika to accept all of our whanaunga, and welcome our diversity.

Whanaungatanga
 Whanaungatanga stresses the importance of maintaining relationships, and working collectively. Working collectively includes: respecting the role of kaumātua for maintaining cohesion, educating and guiding; sharing responsibility for the problems or actions of all group members to maintain or enhance the mana of the group; and educating children (or those returning to te ao Māori) about appropriate behaviour and values (Ministry of Justice, 2001, pp 51-58; Mead, 2003, p 345). Practices that connect people, such as whāngai, are very important. Whanaungatanga stresses inclusiveness—maintaining relationships, and making use of people's skills for the collective good. Greater diversity means a greater skillbase.

Rua'ine and Reynolds each mention that their kuia were more supportive of their sexuality than were other family members (Rua'ine, 2007, p 149; Reynolds, 2007, p 121). Anecdotally this seems common, but far from universal. Many of our whānau have conservative christian values. In some whānau, kaumātua strongly police sexual norms, reflecting the huge impact of the colonising culture. Whanaungatanga requires us to find ways to honour those kaumātua, just as it requires us to undo the harm of the colonisers' message of hatred of difference.

Whanaungatanga is inconsistent with intolerance or mere tolerance, and consistent with acceptance and celebration.

Mana
Mana is essentially a measure of social standing based both on whakapapa and on personal achievements and contributions (Durie, unpub, p 6). Any actions should acknowledge or enhance the mana of ourselves and others, and members of groups are expected to uphold the mana of their group (Ministry of Justice, 2001, p 55). There are consequences for failing to respect mana (Mead, 2003, p 30). Important skills and attributes are inherited from tūpuna and ultimately from atua through whakapapa; these include teaching, organising, resolving disputes and looking after people. People gain mana by showing such skills and using them for the collective good (Ministry of Justice, 2001, pp 51-52). Durie lists "honesty, integrity, reliability, keeping one's word, generosity, bravery, fearlessness, humility, respect, caring for others, community commitment and oratory" as traits that enhance mana (Durie, unpub, p 6), whereas mistreating, belittling or abusing people diminishes one's own mana (Mead, 2003, p 52).

Colonisation has contributed to a limited definition of mana, which has come to be associated with 'masculine' traits—the description of Māori as a 'warrior race' has become a source of pride in the face of otherwise overwhelmingly negative messages about Māori people and culture (eg, Blank, 2007, p 107). The emphasis on staunchness as a main source of mana is inconsistent with the stereotype of gay men, but equally it is inconsistent with a healthy culture (hooks, 1990, p 77). We need a diversity of skills, including communication, nurturing, teaching, negotiating, and community building. The hypermasculine, heterosexual, patriarchal stereotype that Māori are currently being sold (eg, Hokowhitu, 2003, pp 179-201) is holding us back and literally killing us. We need to fight against it, actively promoting different sources of mana, and breaking down associations that the colonising culture has built between mana and hypermasculinity.

For many of us, our understanding of mana has been distorted by the colonising culture—especially its fear of women and homosexuality. We need to reclaim our definitions of mana so that it continues to promote healthy, functioning communities. My understanding of mana is as a force to achieve our potential. Clearly, this is consistent with accepting and celebrating diversity, and inconsistent with limiting expression of who we each are.

Rangatiratanga
Rangatiratanga is the qualities of good leadership (Mead, 2003, p 366), which include recognising and using the resources of a group to enhance the mana of that group, as well as maintaining social cohesion. Every member of a group is a resource with skills that can be used. Rangatiratanga means maximising those skills and acknowledging everyone's contributions, so that everyone feels valued and continues to participate.

Alienating people or allowing them to be alienated because of their sexuality is inconsistent with rangatiratanga. It means losing group members and their skills from the pool of resources, so the whole group suffers. Rangatiratanga includes encouraging a culture which supports all group members. This means not only accepting and supporting all group members, but also encouraging others to be accepting, and confronting those who aren't. This requires actively fighting messages from the dominant hetero-normative culture. Rangatiratanga is inconsistent with intolerance or mere tolerance of sexual diversity; it is most consistent with celebration of diversity.

Manaakitanga
Manaakitanga is the constant need to nurture relationships and care for people, to balance mana and aroha for the common good (Mead, 2003, pp 29, 346), <q>to respect the mana of other people no matter what their standing in society might be</q> (Mead, 2003, p 345). Generosity and respect are behaviours that do not only acknowledge the mana of others, they are associated with rangatira and add to the mana and reputation of the person concerned (Ministry of Justice, 2001, pp 122-123, 137; Mead, 2003, p 345).

This is a kaupapa which can only be interpreted as honouring diversity and respecting others. It is clearly inconsistent with intolerance or mere tolerance of sexual diversity, and is consistent with acceptance and celebration.

Atuatanga
<q>He atua! He tangata!</q> (Pere, unpub). We all whakapapa to atua, and because we create and shape the world around us, we continue that atuatanga. The truest expression of ourselves is our atuatanga; when we believe in ourselves and love ourselves, we are celebrating atuatanga: <q>This is the greatest tribute I can pay to the atua who begat me</q> (Pere, unpub).

Atuatanga is consistent with accepting and celebrating who we each are. It is inconsistent with exclusion, or any message that silences part of us, including tolerance.

The kaupapa that inform tikanga Māori are all consistent with acceptance and celebration of diverse sexualities.

I want to return briefly to the four camps I identified earlier: intolerance, tolerance, acceptance and celebration.

The intolerant heterosexual camp is clearly inconsistent with my understanding of kaupapa—this position tries to limit sexual expression, and condemns and alienates those who refuse to conform. This is clearly not tika. I can find no justification in kaupapa for limiting consensual sexual expression; there is nothing to suggest that non-heterosexual behaviour should be considered evil, wrong or even embarrassing. Any messages or acts that alienate or vilify people because of their sexuality are not based in tikanga, and should be seen as breaches of tikanga.

The tolerant stance is also inconsistent with our kaupapa. It assumes heterosexuality as normal, as opposed to common, and supports institutions that privilege exclusive heterosexuality. The idea of heterosexuality as normal creates pressure to conform, and a position of tolerance implies disapproval of non-conforming behaviour. Accordingly, sexuality becomes an issue only for those who do not conform, not for others. This is about power and control. Tolerance of sexual diversity by a dominant heterosexual "mainstream" culture can be compared to tolerance of tikanga Māori by a dominant colonising "mainstream" culture. How far that tolerance goes, what behaviours are considered to be tolerable and at which times, is determined by the dominant culture. Tolerance is used to try to define and shape sexual diversity, to contain and control it, just as it is used to try to limit and control tikanga Māori. Those with power are determining the extent to which others should be allowed to exist. This is not consistent with kaupapa Māori, which stress whakapapa, contributions to the collective, and maintaining relationships. According to kaupapa, sexuality is irrelevant. Any messages or acts that marginalise people, that minimise or limit their contributions, or question their position within te ao Māori because of their sexuality are not based in tikanga, and should be seen as breaches of tikanga.

Acceptance of sexual diversity is consistent with kaupapa. This means that people should be able to explore and express their sexuality, within the limits of consent and respect, without implication or judgement. Recreating a culture that accepts all of us without reference to who we sleep with is a reasonable goal.

However, we currently live in a hetero-normative culture, and this has influenced our tikanga and understanding of kaupapa. Of course Māori attitudes to sexuality have been affected by the pathologising of homosexuality within Western medicine, demonising within Western religion, and criminalising under colonial law. The effect is obvious when tikanga is used to try to exclude non-conforming whanaunga, but it may also have subtle effects, in the language we use, and the behaviours we allow. This means that in order to enable freedom of sexual identity and expression, we need to educate ourselves and develop tikanga that expose and undo the messages of heterosexism and homophobia. We need to challenge our own behaviours, using the kaupapa that are important to us, and focus on expressing the values that we care about. For this reason, I consider celebration of sexual diversity to be the most tika of the four camps.

We need to look at our assumptions about sexuality. These assumptions are important, because they influence our behaviour, and give messages we might not intend. Some of the common assumptions are:

everyone is heterosexual until proven otherwise

heterosexuality is normal

homosexuality is deviant or wrong

deviations from heterosexuality need an explanation

sexuality is static and can be labelled

experimenting when you're young is normal, but then you settle down

no-one would choose to be gay

homosexuality is a sign of weakness

if someone doesn't disclose their sexuality, they're ashamed of it

violence and discrimination is a thing of the past

homosexuality is distasteful

children need to be protected from homosexuality

homophobia is safe for children

tolerance is generous and loving

tolerance is a neutral position

common behaviour is better than less common behaviour.

For our culture to survive and remain relevant, our tikanga need to reflect our values and kaupapa. The above assumptions come from the colonising culture, which brought its shame and fear of sexuality to these islands. We need to be giving positive messages that all sexualities are normal and fluid, and that exploring and expressing sexuality is healthy and brave when you respect other people. We need to be actively creating a culture where it is safe and it feels safe for people to be open about who they are. That is the ideal of our kaupapa. It means being aware of all the influences that undermine our kaupapa, and responding to them.

Conclusion
Tikanga need to serve us, they need to be flexible and relevant. Looking to the actions of our tūpuna may be one way of informing decisions around tikanga, and may be useful for people who are seeking identity in history. However, it is only one approach. We may never really know some attitudes of our tūpuna, or the answer may not suit our needs. Whatever the results of such research, it is important that we use kaupapa to develop tikanga that serve us. It seems reasonable to expect that tikanga would at least include all of us.

A diversity of sexualities certainly existed prior to the arrival of Pākehā, and diversity continues to exist. In Pākehā culture, this diversity is tolerated, but not generally accepted. This is also true of many Māori communities. It may be that individuals with strong connections, mana and value to their whānau, who are obviously secure in their sexual identity, and whose whānau is secure in its mana, are accepted within their community. The problem is that inclusion and acceptance is usually passive and silent, whereas exclusion, fear and hate are usually loud, powerful and impossible to miss. Silent, loving acceptance is not enough to combat the messages of intolerance that we regularly see or hear. Children need to witness and hear positive messages. Within a hetero-normative culture, this means finding ways of moving sexual diversity from the margin to the centre, celebrating the diversity, unlearning the shame.

Sexuality is not visible, the future sexuality of a child cannot be known by his or her parents. Would we raise our children differently if we didn't assume they were heterosexual? If we knew a child would not grow up to be heterosexual, what messages would we want to give her or him? Would we consider silent, loving acceptance a sufficient response to that child after he or she saw 10 000 Destiny Church members march against same-sex civil unions? Or after hearing an uncle ridiculed for being effeminate? Or after reading that homosexuality was an affliction introduced by Pākehā, and that Māori look forward to returning to a world without gays?

It seems to me that we have a responsibility to those children, indeed to all children, to work towards whānau that genuinely value and celebrate all our members. The only way to do this is to loudly confront any language or behaviour that excludes, and to behave as if any child might grow up to be anyone they want.

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Kim Mcbreenhttps://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-20836152.post-44816314642782091172012-09-01T10:08:00.000+12:002012-09-01T10:10:31.122+12:00Two publications launched at Kei Tua o te PaeTwo Te Wānanga o Raukawa publications will be launched next week at Kei Tua o te Pae.
5:45 pm Tuesday 4th September
Te Wānanga o Raukawa

Te Wānanga o Raukawa: Restoring mātauranga to restore ecosystems
(produced by Te Whare Whakatupu Mātauranga, published by Te Tākupu and written by Āneta Hinemihi Rāwiri)

 This report explores Te Wānanga o Raukawa's experience of a collaborative project with Ecological Economics Research NZ, Landcare Research and Te Rūnanga o Raukawa.

Despite a commitment to the rhetoric of partnership, the project generated predominantly tikanga Pākehā research outputs focused on biophysical restoration. The lead researchers generally approached ecosystems restoration as an unproblematic exercise of 'adding-on' mātauranga to Pākehā economics- and science-based research activity. The report provides a detailed critique of this approach, and argues for iwi and hapū mātauranga to be recognised as vital to ecosystem health.

Indigenous languages and cultures need to be respected as fundamental to ecosystems health—to be carefully preserved and maintained alongside their embedded biophysical context. To achieve this, ecosystems restoration theory and practice need to shift away from 'participatory' approaches, where Māori participate in Pākehā-defined processes and frameworks, and move instead towards pluralistic processes.

This approach embraces a broader outcome of preserving bio-linguistic diversity. The focus shifts to restoring ecological and cultural integrity and stability, recognising that where there is a loss of biodiversity and community, mātauranga disappears, and that the decline of iwi and hapū mātauranga is intrinsic to ecosystem decline. The two are closely interrelated; the loss of one critically affects the other. This approach is consistent with the goal of Te Wānanga o Raukawa, to contribute to the survival of Māori as a people, by restoring and revitalising te reo me ōna mātauranga.

Ahunga Tikanga
(published by Te Tākupu)

 This is the inaugural journal of the Ahunga Tikanga programme at Te Wānanga o Raukawa. The journal contains articles by Moana Jackson, Glen P Te Awaawa Firmin, Elizabeth Cook, Ngāhuia Murphy, Matiu Dickson, Debbie Broughton, Kim McBreen and Ani Mikaere. The articles are diverse in subject-matter, ranging from the story of one man's close relationship with the Whanganui river to an investigation into the way that we perceive and portray our relationships with atua; from the inspiring personal account of attending a mau rākau wānanga for women to a detailed analysis of the link between Māui and menstruation; from a discussion of the history recounted in a waiata tawhito of Ngāti Hangarau to an examination of the Waitangi Tribunal report Ko Aotearoa Tēnei (Wai 262); from an exploration of a tikanga-based approach to sexual diversity to an explanation of the theory underpinning Ahunga Tikanga studies at Te Wānanga o Raukawa. All of the writers have a close association with the Ahunga Tikanga programme, serving as past and present kaiāwhina or staff members.

Currently offering qualifications from the Heke (undergraduate diploma) to the Tāhuhu (masters degree), Ahunga Tikanga studies have been taught at the Wānanga for nearly twenty five years. The programme is founded on the incontrovertibility of tikanga as the first and only legitimate law of Aotearoa, and encourages students to explore the practice of tikanga, as well as the philosophical foundation that underpins it. The content of Ahunga Tikanga courses reflects the conviction that the reclamation, maintenance and thoughtful development of tikanga are both achievable and crucial to our future survival. Kim Mcbreenhttps://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-20836152.post-31468783846964167982012-08-23T14:50:00.000+12:002012-08-30T15:32:53.742+12:00Kei Tua o te Pae hui update
More information about the hui has gone up on their website, including video of a couple of the organisers talking about the hui, a programme, and information about all of the speakers. Registrations close this Friday (24 August), so spread the word if you know anyone who might be interested in exploring the challenges of kaupapa Māori in te ao hurihuri . Also, there's a number of student places at a reduced price of $250 (includes all food and accommodation at Te Wānanga o Raukawa).
 The programme includes:

Whatarangi Winiata—<q>Building Māori futures on kaupapa tuku iho</q>

Ngāhuia Murphy—<q>Te Awa Atua: The river of life: menstruation in the precolonial Māori world</q>

Mereana Pitman—<q>Violence and the distortion of tikanga</q>

Leonie Pihama—<q>Te Ao Hurihuri</q>

Kim McBreen—<q>It's about whānau: oppression, sexuality and mana</q>

Meihana Durie—<q>He Kawa Oranga: Enhancing Māori achievement in the 21st century through the application of tikanga and kawa</q>

Moana Jackson—hui reflections

Panel discussions:

Hemi Toia, Ani Mikaere, and Jessica Hutchings on Changing worlds, changing tikanga

Naomi Simmonds, Caleb Royal, and Mera Penehira on Tikanga as liberation

There's also workshop time, so we can all talk with each other. I'm really excited by the conversations that will happen.Kim Mcbreenhttps://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-20836152.post-14602828969187558772011-01-11T17:10:00.005+13:002012-08-11T13:52:33.100+12:00Defining Māori

This is another rough draft which still needs a lot of work. The connections are clear in my head, but they haven't made it onto the page yet. It has come out of discussions with several friends about our identity as Māori. I have learnt a lot about myself from listening to Rouge, Zac, Sarsha, Kat, Hana and Pip. I also need to thank Leah Whiu and Moana Jackson for helping me to understand what it was I was trying to say. And Kirsty for listening to me explore these ideas, and for comments on an earlier draft.

Introduction
I feel conflicted about my identity as Māori, and I know many other people feel similarly about their Māori identity. Why is this? I'm certain it isn't for the reasons of previous generations, when some Māori had been made to feel so much shame in their heritage that they invented other ancestries, claiming southern European or other origins. So why is it then? Why are so many of us uncertain of our standing as Māori? In this essay, I explain it as an effect of colonisation, and show how it can affect the futures we are able to imagine.

Colonisation invented a story of who Māori are: it made Māori a race, and made up a limited set of characteristics for that race. These stereotypes are not controlled by us (Māori), they limit us, and they serve the purposes of ongoing cultural imperialism. They make us uncomfortable in our own skins and on our own land. They are used to blame us for the problems created by colonisation. It is essential that we develop our own answers to the question of what it means to be Māori.

I should first explain that I have very good reasons to be uncertain about my ethnic identity. I was adopted by my Pākehā family at birth, I am often read as Pākehā, and I didn't even know for sure that I have Māori whakapapa until I was 33 and managed to track down my birth father. Until recently, my experience of being Māori was never knowing how to answer questions about my ethnicity, and trying not to care what the answer was so I wouldn't feel disappointed or fake if I was wrong. In a society that is so monoculturally Pākehā, this meant being Pākehā—which means I didn't have to experience much racist crap, and I will always benefit from white privilege. I feel guilt because this means I've had an easy ride. At the same time, it hasn't been a joy ride. I was asked if I am Māori regularly enough that I knew I wasn't completely passing as Pākehā. It didn't matter how many times my parents said they had been guaranteed I was Pākehā, other people seemed unconvinced. It was unsettling to know that I didn't completely fit the box I was supposed to be in, and yet I couldn't choose another one.

But my insecurity is far from unique, and my personal history doesn't explain why I still feel conflicted. What are the sources of conflict in my and others' identity as Māori? Why do I feel almost apologetic when I say I am Māori? It isn't because I am ashamed of what it means to be Māori; it's the opposite. I am not Māori enough. Being culturally Pākehā, I feel like an imposter—or as Te Arawa said to Tipene O'Regan, a Pākehā with a whakapapa (cited in O'Regan, p 54). I am too pale, too urban, too schooled in Pākehātanga, too middle-class, too vegan, too kuare, too geeky, and as smart as I think I am, I cannot speak te reo. I can't sing, I don't play sport, I don't eat meat or seafood, I don't listen to music, I've never lived at a pā, or even within my iwi's rohe, and until three years ago, I hadn't set foot on the land of my tūpuna Māori.

This list of ways I don't feel authentically Māori shows what I have learnt to believe about what it means to be Māori. It is based on stereotypes, even if the experience of not fitting in is real. For example, the majority of Māori are urban and have little reo (Research New Zealand, p 5), so why do I feel too urban and ignorant of te reo? This is one of the many tragedies of colonisation—the coloniser didn't just make up stories about Māori, it forces us to live them as our reality, and judges us as inauthentic if we don't. We don't even get to choose these stereotypes that we are being judged against, but eventually, we end up judging ourselves against them too. We begin to ignore or forget that it is our whakapapa that makes us Māori. If anyone is to define what it means to be Māori, it should be ourselves.

The insult Te Arawa used to try to discredit O'Regan shows that many do not consider whakapapa to be the only criterion for Māori identity. Calling O'Regan a Pākehā with whakapapa, does not just dismiss his whakapapa, it insults all our whakapapa. They were saying that whakapapa is insufficient—you may have whakapapa, but you may not be Māori. They were saying that being Māori depends on something more, it depends on behaviour or culture. I want to look more at this idea that we should behave in some way if we are to be judged truly Māori.

The way that we see ourselves is constructed on more than whakapapa. There is external feedback from people reacting to us, and reading our ethnicities. This depends on their expectations of Māori, which might include behaviour, knowledge of te reo and tikanga Māori, skin colour, dress, education, profession, diet, and countless other racial or cultural signifiers. Many of us who feel as if we fail on a crucial signifier, such as skin colour, try to compensate by excelling at another. For example, Hana O'Regan has spoken about how her fluency in te reo Māori has given her security in her identity as Māori (O'Regan, 10/10/2010), which had been challenged by both Māori and Pākehā (O'Regan, pp 20-21). This has been fantastic for Kāi Tahu, but not everyone will respond in such a positive way to discomfort around their identity, and not everyone will get to the place that she has, confident in their identity.

For those of us who have lived mostly in te ao Pākehā, most of the people we interact with will be Pākehā. It makes sense that our idea of what it means to be Māori will be influenced by Pākehā expectations. But after 200 plus years of European contact, even those who live in Māori communities, who have less interaction with Pākehā people, will still likely be influenced by European ideas of who Māori are. European ideas of racial identity, or othering, will also play a huge part.

There is a tradition of Europeans racialising the peoples they encountered as they traveled, traded, and attempted to control the world. The experience of Māori fits into this tradition of Othering and Orientalism. The characteristics Europeans associated with Māori are based on imperialism. We (Māori) have little ability to define how Māori are represented, or even defined.

This has implications for imagining constitutional frameworks for our future. There is a temptation to react against 'their' racist depictions of Māori by constructing our own racial identity; countering their negative messages with our positive ones. But, as I hope to show in this essay, race is a crap basis for identity—it is inherently limiting and dehumanising. Whakapapa is a genuine and useful foundation for identity, but we need to explore what that means. After a couple of centuries of colonisation, it may not be immediately obvious how whakapapa differs from race. But it is different, it has very different implications, and it needs to be the starting point for thinking about our future.

Colonisation hasn't just racialised a Māori identity, it has messed with our ideas about gender. I don't just mean the way we relate to each other—our understanding of colonisation itself, has been gendered. This has worked its way into our language and metaphors, and potentially our visions for decolonisation. We need to ensure that our visions are in all ways free from patriarchy.

Othering
Othering has been used to explain and deconstruct representations and treatment of cultures, genders and sexualities. Johnson and Pihama review the literature about Othering and much of the following is based on their work. Othering is a term that has been given to the situation where a privileged group defines itself as normal, and compares all other groups (the Other) against this normality. Others are described as opposite to the norm. Othering highlights differences between groups, while at the same time ignoring differences within the Othered groups. "Using its own values, experiences and culture as standards, the dominant group measures the Others and finds them lacking" (Johnson and Pihama, p 77). Biases that favour the dominant group are ignored, and any differences in outcomes (such as prison statistics, success at school or economic differences) are explained as coming from the shortcomings of the Other.

Johnson and Pihama summarise the effect of Othering on Māori in New Zealand. First, "difference is applied in ways which are not complimentary or positive for Māori or their interests and aspirations" (Johnson and Pihama, p 80). This includes using stereotypes as explanations to blame Māori for situations that are actually caused by structural racism (for example, Māori do poorly at school because we are lazy, Māori end up in prison because we are violent, etc.). Second, Pākehā cultural norms are legitimised and reinforced in all institutions and aspects of New Zealand. This means that anywhere in New Zealand, Pākehā culture and English language are considered normal—so much so that many Pākehā are unaware that they even have a culture. Whereas in most situations it would be both unexpected, and even unacceptable, to behave according to tikanga Māori, or to use te reo Māori. Third, once the dominant culture has set this up, there is "a double-edged sword of either ignoring or focusing on differences" (Johnson and Pihama, p 81). Ignoring differences leads to assimilation of Māori into Pākehā culture—essentially cultural extinction. Acknowledging the differences highlights that they are associated with deprivation (for example, Māori are over-represented among the poor, imprisoned, etc.), leading to stigma. Either of these end up reinforcing the dominance of Pākehā.

Said has written about Othering in the context of the European invention of Orientalism. The Oriental is a specific type of Other, and the European understanding of Māori in New Zealand is essentially as an Oriental. It may seem odd to consider Māori as Oriental, but Europeans imagined the world divided into two hemispheres, the west (Occident) included only Europe and America; everywhere else from east of the Mediterranean was the east or Orient, from India to Japan to Mongolia to Turkey to Egypt. As Said documents, when Europeans met peoples who were different from themselves, they slotted them into the category of Oriental, and treated them almost as if they were interchangeable. This 'interchangeableness' is important in thinking about Māori cultural identity, because it means that stereotypes that had been forced onto the Oriental, have also been applied to Māori.

Said argues that the major component of European culture is its belief in its own superiority compared with non-European cultures (Said, p 7). Centuries and the resources of empires have gone into creating the idea of the Oriental—opposite and subordinate to Europeans:

"One ought never to assume that the structure of Orientalism is nothing more than a structure of lies and myths which, were the truth about them to be told, would simply blow away… Orientalism … is not an airy European fantasy about the Orient, but a created body of theory and practice in which, for many generations, there has been considerable material investment" (Said, p 5)

There are two reasons for this. The first is that Europeans believed that if they studied the Oriental, European management of the Orient would be easier and more profitable. The second is that the circularity of Orientalism reinforced European ideas of who Europeans are. By casting the Oriental as exotic and inferior, Orientalism confirms Europeans as normal and superior. The Oriental is always defined in opposition to Europeans, representing the opposite of how Europeans see themselves: "Orientalism… has less to do with the Orient than it does with 'our' [European] world" (Said, p 12). According to this logic:

"The Oriental is irrational, depraved, childlike, 'different'; thus the European is rational, virtuous, mature, 'normal'… the Oriental is contained and represented by the dominating frameworks." (Said, p 40)

As Balfour pointed out, Europeans governed over the Orientals not just out of self-interest, but for the sake of the Orientals (Balfour, cited in Said, p 33). This is the white man's burden. There is no reflection or examination of the assumptions that require European rule over the Orient—European culture is superior therefore dominant, Other culture is inferior therefore dependent. The reason Orientalists could gather and provide such knowledge about Orientals, Māori or otherwise, is because Orientals are completely knowable—Orientals have an unchanging essence that once known is always known. This is important; this changes a stereotype into a fixed racial characteristic.

Orientalism seems archaic, but Said demonstrates how it continued to affect US policy under Kissinger (Said, pp 46-48), and, in his afterword to the 1995 edition, how it continues to play out (Said, pp 329-354). Closer to home, I want to show how Orientalist thinking continues to affect the representation of Māori in New Zealand, and how this entrenches cultural identities that are not helpful to us.

Māori as an Oriental
Reading Said's Orientalism, it is impossible not to notice the similarity in both strategies and stereotypes in the treatment of Māori by Europeans. From the very first encounters between Europeans and Māori, Europeans were examining this new people, working out where Māori fit in with races that had already been identified. Where are Māori on the hierarchy of races? Europeans provided not only the gold standard of humanity against which all races could be ranked, but were also the subjective, disinterested judges of the ranking. Whatever the motives of ethnographers like Elsdon Best or S. Percy Smith, their gathering of information about Māori is entirely within the European tradition of the Orientalist. They collected data, became the recognised authorities, so that finally their subject can be understood by those who wish to control Māori without having to meet us. There is no need to ask Māori questions about ourselves when there are Europeans who know us better, and who certainly know what is best for us. Grey, on the other hand, made explicit his reasons for studying Māori:

"I soon perceived that I could neither successfully govern, nor hope to conciliate, a numerous and turbulent people, with whose language, manners, customs, religion, and modes of thought I was quite unacquainted… Clearly, however, I could not, as Governor of the country, permit so close a veil to remain drawn between myself and the aged and influential chiefs, whom it was my duty to attach to British interests and to the British race, whose regard and confidence, as also that of their tribes, it was my desire to secure, and with whom it was necessary that I should hold the most unrestricted intercourse." (Grey, pp v, viii)
Like his contemporaries in the Orient, Grey was gathering information so that he could better manipulate and control his native subjects.

But this is not the most striking similarity with Orientalism. The strangest similarity is not in the ways Europeans behaved towards Māori and other peoples considered Oriental, but rather the results of their attempts to know the Oriental. There are remarkable similarities between the unchanging essences that are described for Orientals, and those described for Māori. As examples, I compare the descriptions of Oriental women and men with representations of Māori women and men.

Oriental women are literally the stuff of Orientalists' wet dreams: "[They] express unlimited sensuality, they are more or less stupid, and above all they are willing" (Said, p 207). Oriental women are described in ways that limit their roles to sexual objects, mothers and domestic servants. Like European women, they are always seen as powerless and inferior to men, but unlike European women, they are always sexually compliant. Isn't this exactly how Māori women were described by Europeans? The dusky, unblushing, Polynesian maiden is surely an Orientalist invention.

Whereas Oriental men are always uncivilised, irrational, physical, emotional, childlike, violent, incapable of self-government, communal, closely associated with nature, in a word, feminised. Again, this sounds very much like the early representations of Māori men. It may seem strange to talk of Māori men as being represented as feminised, given the dominant current stereotype is often described as hyper-masculine. Hokowhitu touches on this:

"Early representations of Maori men portrayed them as lacking the qualities of the civilised European male. They had woman-like characteristics—they talked a lot, were animated and did women's work, while they lacked a stoic disposition because they were over emotional and whimsical." (Hokowhitu, p 184)

European men considered all Others (whether Other genders or Other 'races') to be non-rational, and therefore associated with the non-human world (Forbes, p 104). Women and Orientals were understood as more primal and closer to nature (i.e., primitive, native, savage) than European men, who were instead cultured.

I want to come back to two points that may seem incompatible. As I have mentioned, Orientalism claims that the Oriental can never change—"The very possibility of development, transformation, human movement—in the deepest sense of the word—is denied the Orient and the Oriental" (Said, p 208). How does this fit with Hokowhitu's observation that Māori men were originally represented as feminine, whereas now they are represented as hyper-masculine? In fact there is very little difference between the two representations—both rely on the idea that Māori men are physical and emotional rather than intellectual and rational. What has changed much more are the attributes associated with the European ideal man.

At the time that Europeans first started describing Māori, the ideals they brought with them were those of the English gentleman—rationality, authoritarian leadership, dispassionate, cultured, misogynous, and single-minded or stoic. Māori men were described as the opposite of these traits. However, the colonial gentleman is no longer considered the ideal man (Hokowhitu, pp 187-197). Feminism has shifted our understanding of the most useful or adaptive skills to include characters previously associated with femininity, for example, communication, emotion, and nurturing. The masculine ideal has been updated to the 'new man', who embraces these qualities; he is liberal and cosmopolitan, and retains masculine privilege. At the same time, the dominant stereotype of Māori men shifts from the joker (personified by Billy T James), to the hyper-masculine (personified by Jake in the film version of Once were warriors).

As Wall describes, the joker is an old stereotype that is replicated across the Orient, and fits with many early European representations of Māori (Wall, p 42). The joker is lazy, talkative, clever but not intelligent, and emasculated. He is clearly the opposite of the ideal colonial gentleman. The violent, hyper-masculine stereotype is also as old as colonisation, driven by fear of the indigenous peoples rising up against colonial rule. He is rural, works in primary industry, talks only with his fists, and beats his wife. I believe he could not become the dominant Māori stereotype while New Zealand still held to myths of its rural roots, and the good kiwi blokes who built this country. While Crumpy and Pinetree Meads were the quintessential New Zealand men, there wasn't room for a negative Māori version—it was too close to home. The rise of the new man made room for the hyper-masculine stereotype of Māori to rise as his opposite.

Seen this way, the dominant Māori stereotype will always be opposite to the dominant (and therefore European) masculine ideal. If Pākehā ideas of themselves shift, then their representations of Māori, their 'common sense' stereotypes of Māori, will shift to be the opposite: "The effect is that native men become a backdrop for the staging of and representation of all that is 'good' in white masculinity" (Matahaere-Atariki, p 111). And there will be no acknowledgment that the stereotype has changed—Māori men have always been hyper-masculine. They must have been, because like any Oriental, they cannot change—they have a biologically determined, essential core. Only Europeans can change.

Of course there are several other stereotypes of Māori, but as Hokowhitu states, the roles that are available to Māori are limited (Hokowhitu, p 190). Racist government policies were largely successful in restricting Māori to manual education and employment, and therefore the working-class. This reality reinforces the stereotype of Māori as physical rather than intellectual.

Constitutional Issues
What has any of this got to do with constitutional issues? While I recognise the urgency in imagining how we want relationships between tangata whenua and tangata Tiriti partners to develop, an equally urgent task is acknowledging and dismantling the effects of 200 plus years of misrepresentation and Othering. I am not arguing that this should happen before we sort out our relationships with the newcomers—decolonisation is a long and on-going process—but it is a crucial component of developing our place in the future. We need an understanding of who we are as a foundation for shaping our future.

With all the time, force and experience of imperialism behind it, I think it is impossible to resist internalising at least some of the messages of the coloniser. Unfortunately, I don't believe it is only the pale skinned, Pākehā schooled, urban Māori like me who are affected. The messages are relentless, and they are backed up with policies that make them seem real. For example, the coloniser didn't just say that Māori aren't as smart as Europeans and are only suited to manual labour—the Crown made it so. It demanded that schools train Māori to be farmhands and domestic servants, rather than teaching academic subjects. And when, as a result of this, Māori turn out to be under-represented in professions and over-represented in manual jobs, we all have the evidence to prove that the racist stereotype is true. There are two aspects of this relentless Othering that I consider especially relevant, and that we are in danger of continuing. The first is that Othering has racialised a Māori identity, the second is that it has gendered colonisation.

Racialising Māori
Prior to colonisation, Māori were simply groups of people living on these islands who were related by whakapapa, who shared a worldview founded on whakapapa, and who shared a common language. There was no national or racial identity—people grouped and regrouped as was appropriate or necessary, usually based on whakapapa. Following the arrival of Europeans, the word Māori began to be applied to all tangata whenua, and very quickly a whole range of Oriental stereotypes were piled onto that group. Wall explains how and why Māori were turned into a race by Europeans: "Universalised racial discourse was the key mechanism for dehumanising the Other, to negate the notion of Maori as the victim" (Wall, pp 40-41). Universalised and dehumanised, we were made all the same.

As a race, we were knowable, contained, unchanging; and as a race, we are defined by blood. From this thinking, whakapapa becomes a way, not of relating with each other and our world, but of measuring Māoriness—half-caste, quarter-caste, five-sixteenths. How much is enough to be really Māori? This question has been asked and answered by Europeans as a way of excluding people, both from being European and from being Māori. Any issue involving a Māori group is characterised as a racial issue. Colonisation and decolonisation are cast as racial issues, not justice issues. Statements such as 'there are no full-blooded Māori left' are used to argue against redressing the crimes of colonisation.

This has been so relentless that we are doing it to ourselves. Wall describes how Māori have developed our own stereotype of the 'quintessential Māori', based on an idea of a romanticised 'traditional' past (Wall, p 43). According to this stereotype, we are rural, spiritual and focused on family. She argues that this racialised Māori identity is based on colonial stereotypes, and holds no promise for us. Like those stereotypes, it traps Māori in a fixed identity where we are all the same (or we aren't really Māori). Because Māori are contributing to its construction, this image has a special power. We cannot so easily blame it on our coloniser, but it is an inevitable consequence of colonisation—it is the search for the real us. But a real understanding of what it is to be Māori is not going to be found in stereotypes, or reconstructions, whether by us or our colonisers.

Pākehā may have invented the doctrine of race, but that doesn't mean we are immune from it. When we have been racially defined for so long, we may fall into the trap of confusing race with whakapapa. It is helpful to regularly remind ourselves that it is whakapapa and not race that makes us Māori. As Moana Jackson took pains to ensure I understood, whakapapa is not race (Jackson, 13/11/2010). It does not carry racial stereotypes; it does not imply an oppositional relationship with other races.

This has implications for constitutional models. Whereas a racial identity is fixed, a whakapapa identity is not. Since Europeans started taking censuses, requiring Māori to name their hapū and iwi affiliations, they too have become fixed and unchanging. Being based on whakapapa, Māori identities are relational—sometimes we are tangata whenua, sometimes we are manuhiri, sometimes we are even tangata Tiriti. Usually I speak of the iwi that connect me with the South Island, but occasionally it may be more useful for me to stress my relationship with our northern whanaunga, like Ngāti Kahungunu. This makes constitutional models based on fixed identities challenging, and I think deserving of more attention.

Gendering colonisation
As a woman looking at the Othering or Orientalising of Māori through racial stereotypes, one of the most unsettling aspects is how invisible they make Māori women. The coloniser has focused so much on Māori men, that Māori women appear to be irrelevant as anything other than sexual playthings. Mikaere and others have done a great job of highlighting the effects of this on how we (both Māori and Pākehā) understand Māori society, and I'm not going to revisit that work. Instead I want to focus on the effect it has on our understanding of colonisation, and therefore decolonisation.

As I mentioned earlier, the Oriental male was seen as feminine; he was Othered in ways similar to European women—irrational, emotional, close to nature, etc. As Matahaere-Atariki warns, it is dangerous and misleading to see Māori within colonisation as analogous to women within patriarchy (Matahere-Atariki, p 108). It reflects the misogynous idea that colonisation is harder on Māori men. This is misogynous because overlooks the realities of women, but more dangerously, it genders colonisation—colonisation becomes emasculation.

bell hooks explores the language and imagery of racial domination and of emancipation, particularly for black liberation struggle in the US. She argues that black liberation has been sexualised "in ways that support and perpetuate sexism, phallocentrism, and male domination" (hooks, p 60). Racist domination has been equated with the loss of black manhood, so freedom means regaining that manhood:

"The discourse of black resistance has almost always equated freedom with manhood, the economic and material domination of black men with castration, emasculation. Accepting these sexual metaphors forged a bond between oppressed black men and their white male oppressors. They shared the patriarchal belief that revolutionary struggle was really about the erect phallus, the ability of men to establish political dominance that could correspond to sexual dominance." (hooks, p 58)

It is important to continually examine our language to ensure our understanding of colonisation isn't influenced by misogyny. Once there, it can easily creep into our futures. The use of gendered metaphors in describing the effects of colonisation is dangerous. For example, rape may seem an appropriate image for the effect of colonisation on this land, but it is unhelpful. It reinforces the idea of the coloniser as male, and by extension, of Māori as female or emasculated. It juxtaposes the active, male coloniser, against the passive, female whenua (to which Māori are linked). This is a coloniser's fantasy.

We need to ensure that we are not confusing Māori men's liberation with decolonisation. We have been fortunate in the number and calibre of women protesting for and theorising about decolonisation. Kuia like Eva Rickards and Whina Cooper have become iconic, and there have been and are countless more who have had less media attention. But men quickly become the focus of media when they are near the front—the images of Springbok protest, the Seabed and Foreshore Hīkoi, or the occupation of Pākaitore, for example, focus on the men. Tame Iti's facial moko has become an emblem of Māori resistance, turning up on t-shirts and stencilled graffiti. It sometimes feels as if masculine images are the symbols of real protest.

The Crown has been quick to recognise male leadership by co-opting Māori men. I am not going to single any out, but there are countless examples of men, and groups of men, who have been rewarded in this way. We need to be careful that we do not fall into the trap of believing men are our only leaders, and succumb to the coloniser's patriarchy. Women and men must both shape our future. The recent formation of Te Whaainga Wāhine shows that this is an ongoing problem, but more importantly, it shows that mana wahine is still powerful after more than 200 years of attempts to crush it.

Conclusion
Does any of this help me to understand where I fit in? Stereotypes have power, and that power doesn't disappear just because we know they aren't real. They lurk in the backs of our minds, and subtly (or not so subtly) influence how we feel in the world and how we understand our world. We cannot ignore them, because they are relentless and omnipresent. We cannot disprove them, because we don't control them—they serve a purpose, just not ours. And we can't simply construct a nicer racial stereotype of our own, because it will be just as limiting and essentialising. If I can be honest with myself, about who I am and where I fit into a discussion about the future, then I won't dispel any of the stereotypes or feelings of insecurity around my identity, but I will take a lot of the power out of those thoughts and feelings.

Whakapapa provides a way forward, not just for me, but for these islands. Whakapapa provides a way of understanding who each of us are, by focusing on the relationships that we are in, and by being honest about where we came from and how those relationships came to be. As we think about our future, as individuals and as peoples in this land, Māori and tauiwi, that's what we need. Whatever develops, it needs to be based on honesty—honestly looking at power, who has it and how they came to have it, honestly looking at the effects of colonisation, at our privileges and our oppressions. Our whakapapa.

That sounds optimistic, I don't believe for a moment that we will get there in my lifetime. We are a long way from being able to have honest conversations about our histories. Most New Zealanders know very little about the history of these islands. Most probably prefer not to know. There is so much fear and ignorance of the reality of colonisation that needs to be driven out before most Pākehā New Zealanders can approach honesty. Truthful education about our past is the key to the future.

ORAL SOURCES
Jackson, Moana (13/11/2010) Discussion with author, Te Wānanga-o-Raukawa, Ōtaki

O'Regan, Hana (10/10/2010) Discussion on te reo Kāi Tahu, Tū Roa Kohanga Reo, Ōtaki

PUBLISHED MATERIAL
Forbes, Jack D (2001) "Nature and Culture: Problematic Concepts for Native Americans". Indigenous Traditions and Ecology: The interbeing of cosmology and community Edited by John A. Grim. Center for the Study of World religions, Harvard Divinity School, Cambridge Massachusetts, USA

Grey, George (1995) Nga Mahi a nga Tupuna. Reprint Published by University of Waikato Library, Hamilton

Hokowhitu, Brendan (2003) "Maori masculinity, Post-structuralism, and the Emerging Self" New Zealand Sociology 18 (2)

hooks, bell (1990) Yearning: race, gender, and cultural politics. South End Press, Boston, MA, USA

Johnson, Patricia and Leonie Pihama (1995) "What counts as difference and what differences count: gender, race and the politics of difference". Toi Wāhine: the worlds of Māori women Edited by Kathie Irwin & Irihapeti Ramsden, Illustrated by Robyn Kahukiwa. Penguin Books, Auckland

Matahaere-Atariki, Donna (1999) "A context for writing masculinities" Masculinities in Aotearoa/New Zealand Edited by Robin Law, Hugh Campbell and John Dolan. Dunmore Press, Palmerston North

O'Regen, Hana (2001) Ko Tahu, Ko Au: Kāi Tahu Tribal Identity. Horomaka Publishing, Christchurch

Said, Edward W. (1995) Orientalism: Western conceptions of the Orient. Penguin Books, London

Wall, Melanie (1997) "Stereotypical constructions of the Maori 'race' in the media" New Zealand Geographer 53 (2)

UNPUBLISHED MATERIAL
Research New Zealand (2007) 2006 Survey of the health of the Maori language: Final report. Te Puni Kokiri/Ministry of Maori Development, WellingtonKim Mcbreenhttps://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-20836152.post-54527240448837181602012-07-31T22:09:00.000+12:002012-08-01T13:15:11.503+12:00Muddying the watersI haven't written anything much about the Māori Council's Waitangi Tribunal hearing on water rights, because I haven't had the time to follow the argument, and because I expect the arguments are very similar to many other inquiries. For example, the radio spectrum claims (summary here, and which I might write more about shortly), or the Ngāti Apa case that led to the foreshore and seabed debacle (see Myths of the foreshore and seabed for a history to the Marine and Coastal Areas Act).

In short, most of the land and resource claims are pretty similar. Prior to European arrival, tangata whenua had mana for their rohe and everything within it. If tangata whenua have not given that mana to someone else, then they must retain responsibility (mana/ rangatiratanga). It doesn't matter how many times the Crown says "but you can't own [whatever they are currently trying to take control of]". It doesn't matter how much the Crown wants to take control or has always assumed that it has control of something, be it the coastline, radio spectrum, fresh water or anything else. If tangata whenua haven't given it away, then responsibility must remain with them. Really simple stuff.

So why does it always seem so complicated?—Because it is in the interests of the Crown to make it complicated. It takes a really complicated argument to make anything resembling a case for Crown sovereignty (Moana Jackson calls these arguments legal magic), whereas tangata whenua arguments are straightforward. —Because many tau iwi want to believe that New Zealand has an honourable history and their culture is legitimately dominant, so they are invested in ignoring all the simple truths that tell a different story. Again, they must rely on magic to believe in Crown sovereignty.

Time after time, politicians show they care less about justice than they do about getting elected. Popular opinion is more important than justice, so it doesn't matter how simple or straightforward the issues are, what the tribunal recommends, nor what the courts decide. It doesn't matter how much money, time, energy, or lives tangata whenua put into their cases. It doesn't matter what is fair or true. If it's an important issue for the Crown, then the Crown will win—they own the game and they make up the rules to suit them.

As Key has said, and many instances show, Tribunal recommendations are not binding, so the Crown can ignore those it doesn't like (eg, the Radio Spectrum claim). The Crown loses still more moral high ground, but it's already buried under so much bullshit, what does a few more metres matter?. And if it loses in the courts, it can simply make up a new law (eg, the Ngāti Apa seabed and foreshore case). This is one reason why I hate this process—our people die fighting for justice in a system that is set up to fail them (eg, the WAI 262 claim).

But back to the freshwater case. Here's some links in lieu of specific analysis:

Audrey Young's summary of the freshwater claim (from Feb, 2012)

Tapu Misa's column on ideas of property ownership and the claim: Water claim really about Maori's role as caretakers

PDF of the interim recommendation by the Waitangi Tribunal that the Crown hold off any share float until the Tribunal reports on stage 1 of the inquiry

Donna Hall's summary of the interim recommendation

Carwyn Jones's summary: Tribunal requests crown to wait for water report

Bryce Edwards explaining which method Key will likely use to ignore the Tribunal: Water claim – three possible paths for National

Enjoy. Or not.Kim Mcbreenhttps://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-20836152.post-79482212543469292652012-07-23T20:08:00.001+12:002012-07-24T10:05:39.250+12:00Won't somebody think of the children—sexuality, marriage and adoptionThis is a summary of my previous very long post "Ahunga Tikanga: Tikanga and sexual diversity".

There's been a bit of talk lately about tikanga and sexuality, triggered by debate over whether two men or two women should be legally able to marry or to adopt children as a couple. One side is saying things like same sex marriage and adoption are anti-tradition/ tikanga, anti-society and endangering children. The other side tells us that opposing same sex marriage and adoption is discriminatory and bigoted, and also anti-tradition/ tikanga. I can understand not wanting to be associated with either of these sides.

What is missing is discussion about whose values are at the heart of the debate. When Hone Harawira and Brendan Horan say there are more important issues than gay marriage (on Rhema and Native Affairs episode 6/17 respectively), I agree—but what I think is more important is probably very different from where they're at.

The legal rights we give to different sorts of relationships are much less important to me than how we treat people in our communities. Too many kids never get old enough to be in a relationship. Around a third of 21 years olds with same sex attractions have already tried to kill themselves (eg, in New Zealand and other studies). The messages they hear about homosexuals are so clear and hateful that the thought of being one, or trying to live as one, is just too awful. This isn't because these young people are weak, this is because of the bullying, stigma, and hatred they see and live through. Stopping that crap is more important to me than legalising same sex marriage, or even adoption. At the same time, legal discrimination justifies hateful behaviour.

Where does all this fear and hatred of homosexuality come from?
It certainly doesn't come from tikanga mai rā anō—there's no evidence of homophobia in anything that I've come across (such as creation traditions, whakataukī, art, pakiwaitara). There are enough people looking to justify their homophobic beliefs that I'm confident if there were homophobic traditions, we'd all know about it. There's plenty of evidence from the period of early contact with Europeans that tangata whenua didn't consider 'sexual orientation' a big deal at all (eg, Te Awekotuku, Ngahuia (2005) "He Reka Anō – same-sex lust and loving in the ancient Māori world" Outlines: Lesbian & Gay histories of Aotearoa. Edited by Alison J Laurie & Linda Evans. LAGANZ, Wellington )—whereas Europeans did (eg, Parkinson, Phil (2005) "'A most depraved young man': Henry Miles Pilley, the New Zealand missionary" Outlines: Lesbian & Gay histories of Aotearoa. Edited by Alison J Laurie & Linda Evans. LAGANZ, Wellington).

Europeans, and especially the Christian churches, introduced their fear and hatred of homosexuality to these lands. English law is strangely obsessed with who people have sex with. Until very recently, men who had consensual sex with men could be imprisoned, or even killed. Te Awekotuku talks about the church trying to have one of its own priests hanged because he liked sex with men (he survived because English racism was greater than their homophobia—the only evidence they had was from the Māori men the priest had slept with, and it wouldn't be right to kill an Englishman based only on evidence from natives). I don't know why they developed such violent practices to control something as joyful and fun as sex, but they brought them here.

When we look to our parents and grandparents for guidance on how to think about different sexualities, we need to remember that for generations we have lived under English law, and been educated in their schools and churches. There are very few places to avoid the awful messages of that culture—it called tikanga primitive and violent, then told us it was right to hit children, to dominate women and to hate homosexuality. Our kaumātua may genuinely believe that there is something wrong with homosexuality. After a couple of hundred years of colonisers trying to shame us into rejecting our values and adopting theirs, that's hardly surprising. Many of us aren't sure what is really ours and what has been forced on us (perversely, Māori who have come to accept values the colonisers taught us, like homophobia and patriarchy, are now called primitive and ignorant).

We can't stop children being exposed to hatred, but we can fight the impact, just as we have with all the messages about Māori being less than awesome. We can stand up for sexual diversity; we can talk about our own crushes or curiosity or lovers; we can treat their crushes equally, whether it's a boy or girl they're obsessing over; we can speak against homophobia, silence and discrimination; we can show our children that it is safe for our whanaunga to be honest about their relationships. We can make sure they understand that it is wrong to even ask whether gay couples should be able to legally marry or adopt. It's a ridiculous question that reflects a ridiculous but dangerous culture.

We need to be clear that homophobia (the belief that homosexuality is wrong, depraved, and dangerous) does not come from tikanga. It comes from the colonisers. Whakapapa is about inclusion—there needs to be a bloody good reason to exclude or demean someone in any way. Who they sleep with is not a good reason. Our children grow up in an environment where they will see, hear and experience hatred of different sexualities. Whoever they grow up to be, these messages are dangerous. These messages will limit how our children see themselves and who they can imagine being.

Two women or men loving each other does not endanger children, homophobia does.Kim Mcbreenhttps://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-20836152.post-94047603783871532012-06-30T15:46:00.000+12:002012-06-30T15:46:56.854+12:00Kei Tua o Te Pae hui 4-5 September, 2012
Changing worlds, changing tikanga - Educating history and the future

My previous post was a long one, and I intend to follow it up with a shorter, less journally summary. In the mean time, I want to let you know about this hui coming up (where coincidentally, I'll be talking about sexuality). I'm really excited about the speakers they have lined up (listed below). Early, cheaper registrations are due in the next few weeks, and there's a very limited number of free registrations for students. Check out their website for more information or to register (I've pasted some of the info below).

(From their website:)
Te Horopaki – Background
This year's hui builds on the Kei Tua o Te Pae hui in 2011. It explored the challenges of kaupapa Māori thinking and action in the 21st century. In 2012 we want to progress Moana Jackson's challenge to us to respect and recognise the diverse elements that make kaupapa Māori unique.

The 2012 hui will explore the impact that colonisation has had on tikanga Māori and challenge our thinking about tikanga Māori. As hosts we believe that tikanga is ever-changing. We will be bringing together a diverse Māori audience interested in thinking about how tikanga has been shaped by history, and what we take with us into the future. .

This two-day event is jointly hosted by Te Wāhanga, New Zealand Council for Educational Research (NZCER), and Te Wānanga o Raukawa. Te Wānanga o Raukawa is a tikanga Māori centre of higher learning, dedicated to ensuring the survival, wellness and advancement of Māori as a people. Te Wāhanga is the kaupapa Māori unit at NZCER. It undertakes kaupapa Māori educational research that contributes to whānau wellbeing. .

Hui co-coveners: Ani Mikaere (Te Wānanga o Raukawa), Jessica Hutchings (Te Wāhanga) .

Speakers include:
Moana Jackson, Ngāhuia Murphy, Whatarangi Winiata, Ngahiwi Tomoana, Ani Mikaere, Hemi Toia, Jessica Hutchings, Naomi Simmonds, Kim McBreen, Meihana Durie, Leonie Pihama, and Caleb RoyalKim Mcbreenhttps://email@example.com