title: Race-ing and engendering the nation-state in Aotearoa/New Zealand

authors: Seuffert, Nan

subjects: Maori

abstract: During the past several decades the dynamics of law and policy reform in Aotearoa/New Zealand have prefigured and encapsulated contemporary trends in economic state restructuring, indigenous claims to refigure the nation, and gender struggles for political representation. Successive governments have restructured the economy and the state using radical forms of neo-liberal economic policy with the stated aim of globalizing the economy. Political action on the part of the indigenous Maori people, often led by Maori women, increased and diversified, and included demands for self-determination and redress of historical colonial injustices. In 1997, the conservative National Party’s Jenny Shipley become the country’s first white female Prime Minister, followed in 1999 by the election of a center-left coalition headed by Labour Party leader Helen Clark. This article analyzes the race and gender dynamics of these contemporary trends. First, it argues that policies of state structural adjustment and Maori political claims have converged in commodified settlements of past colonial injustices as corporate deals. These deals are temporary alliances of men across race to silence and erase the demands for self-determination or political power sharing of Maori activists, who are usually Maori women. Second, this article contends that the political instability created by rapid structural adjustment and the change to a Mixed Member Proportional (“MMP”) electoral system converges with white backlash against these settlements to open space for New Zealand’s first two female Prime Ministers. This article also suggests that the election of a second white female Prime Minister in New Zealand may reflect the (temporary) regendering of the role of Prime Minister to the feminine.

text: Race-ing and engendering the nation-state in Aotearoa/New Zealand During the past several decades the dynamics of law and policy reform in Aotearoa/New Zealand have prefigured and encapsulated contemporary trends in economic state restructuring, indigenous claims to refigure the nation, and gender struggles for political representation. Successive governments have restructured the economy and the state using radical forms of neo-liberal economic policy with the stated aim of globalizing the economy. Political action on the part of the indigenous Maori people, often led by Maori women, increased and diversified, and included demands for self-determination and redress of historical colonial injustices. In 1997, the conservative National Party’s Jenny Shipley become the country’s first white female Prime Minister, followed in 1999 by the election of a center-left coalition headed by Labour Party leader Helen Clark. This article analyzes the race and gender dynamics of these contemporary trends. First, it argues that policies of state structural adjustment and Maori political claims have converged in commodified settlements of past colonial injustices as corporate deals. These deals are temporary alliances of men across race to silence and erase the demands for self-determination or political power sharing of Maori activists, who are usually Maori women. Second, this article contends that the political instability created by rapid structural adjustment and the change to a Mixed Member Proportional (“MMP”) electoral system converges with white backlash against these settlements to open space for New Zealand’s first two female Prime Ministers. This article also suggests that the election of a second white female Prime Minister in New Zealand may reflect the (temporary) regendering of the role of Prime Minister to the feminine.

year: 2002-02-01

title: Genealogical Violence: Mormon (Mis)Appropriation of Māori Cultural Memory through Falsification of Whakapapa

authors: Simon, Hemopereki

subjects: whakapapa

abstract: The study examines how members of the historically white possessive and supremacist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the United States (mis)appropriated Māori genealogy, known as whakapapa. The Mormon use of whakapapa to promote Mormon cultural memory and narratives perpetuates settler/invader colonialism and white supremacy, as this paper shows. The research discusses Church racism against Native Americans and Pacific Peoples. This paper uses Anthropologist Thomas Murphy’s scholarship to demonstrate how problematic the Book of Mormon’s religio-colonial identity of Lamanites is for these groups. Application of Aileen Moreton-Robinson’s white possessive doctrine and Hemopereki Simon’s adaptation to cover Church-Indigenous relations and the salvation contract is discussed. We explore collective and cultural memory and discuss key Māori concepts like Mana, Taonga, Tapu, and Whakapapa. A brief review of LDS scholar Louis C. Midgley’s views on Church culture, including Herewini Jones’s whakapapa wānanga, is followed by a discussion of Māori cultural considerations and issues. The paper concludes that the alteration perpetuates settler/invader colonialism and Pacific peoples’ racialization and white supremacy. Genetics science and human migration studies contradict Mormon identity narratives and suggest the BOM is spiritual rather than historical. Finally, the paper suggests promoting intercultural engagement on Mormon (mis)appropriation of taonga Māori.

text: Genealogical Violence: Mormon (Mis)Appropriation of Māori Cultural Memory through Falsification of Whakapapa The study examines how members of the historically white possessive and supremacist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the United States (mis)appropriated Māori genealogy, known as whakapapa. The Mormon use of whakapapa to promote Mormon cultural memory and narratives perpetuates settler/invader colonialism and white supremacy, as this paper shows. The research discusses Church racism against Native Americans and Pacific Peoples. This paper uses Anthropologist Thomas Murphy’s scholarship to demonstrate how problematic the Book of Mormon’s religio-colonial identity of Lamanites is for these groups. Application of Aileen Moreton-Robinson’s white possessive doctrine and Hemopereki Simon’s adaptation to cover Church-Indigenous relations and the salvation contract is discussed. We explore collective and cultural memory and discuss key Māori concepts like Mana, Taonga, Tapu, and Whakapapa. A brief review of LDS scholar Louis C. Midgley’s views on Church culture, including Herewini Jones’s whakapapa wānanga, is followed by a discussion of Māori cultural considerations and issues. The paper concludes that the alteration perpetuates settler/invader colonialism and Pacific peoples’ racialization and white supremacy. Genetics science and human migration studies contradict Mormon identity narratives and suggest the BOM is spiritual rather than historical. Finally, the paper suggests promoting intercultural engagement on Mormon (mis)appropriation of taonga Māori.

year: 2024

title: The New Zealand Curriculum in the moana

authors: Del Monte, Pablo

abstract: Reading this issue’s five reflections on the Aotearoa New Zealand Curriculum (ANZC) has provoked us to think again on a returning question, that is, what is a curriculum—and its reform? We have thus come to think about the curriculum as an event that determines “at least in part, what we are, what we think and what we do today” (Foucault, 1984, p. 32). Furthermore, we have been musing on the shifts and movements of vā (Fa’avae, 2018) and power, and consider that a useful concept to think of the curriculum may be the moana—the vast ocean or space of interconnections. The curriculum conduces forms of power that ‘make us up’ (Hacking, 1986) and produces shifts of the vā that animates the souls (Ball, 2003) of those that take part in education. This commentary is an open conversation with the articles of this special section, and between the writers, an attempt to bring us together and think differently. It is riddled with contradiction, which we embrace as a prolific space where we can think together. First, we set the grounds for a decolonial reading of the curriculum, and ANZC's reform specifically. Secondly, we consider the curriculum as the currents that bring together and conduct a heterogeneity of beings (policy texts, discourses, technologies, actors, etc.) creating a sense of shared identities that connect the past, present and future. We also understand the ANZC as a fluid space where specific forms of power circulate and flow, and make us up as beings with particular capabilities. Finally, we conclude by asking what kind of life is possible in these waters. The articles in this issue agree on the potency of the ANZC to contribute to the making of productive, socially engaged and culturally aware citizens. We ask further as to what forms of knowledges, identities and subject positions are made available for students and educators in the curriculum.

text: The New Zealand Curriculum in the moana Reading this issue’s five reflections on the Aotearoa New Zealand Curriculum (ANZC) has provoked us to think again on a returning question, that is, what is a curriculum—and its reform? We have thus come to think about the curriculum as an event that determines “at least in part, what we are, what we think and what we do today” (Foucault, 1984, p. 32). Furthermore, we have been musing on the shifts and movements of vā (Fa’avae, 2018) and power, and consider that a useful concept to think of the curriculum may be the moana—the vast ocean or space of interconnections. The curriculum conduces forms of power that ‘make us up’ (Hacking, 1986) and produces shifts of the vā that animates the souls (Ball, 2003) of those that take part in education. This commentary is an open conversation with the articles of this special section, and between the writers, an attempt to bring us together and think differently. It is riddled with contradiction, which we embrace as a prolific space where we can think together. First, we set the grounds for a decolonial reading of the curriculum, and ANZC's reform specifically. Secondly, we consider the curriculum as the currents that bring together and conduct a heterogeneity of beings (policy texts, discourses, technologies, actors, etc.) creating a sense of shared identities that connect the past, present and future. We also understand the ANZC as a fluid space where specific forms of power circulate and flow, and make us up as beings with particular capabilities. Finally, we conclude by asking what kind of life is possible in these waters. The articles in this issue agree on the potency of the ANZC to contribute to the making of productive, socially engaged and culturally aware citizens. We ask further as to what forms of knowledges, identities and subject positions are made available for students and educators in the curriculum.

year: 2021