We need to keep discussing how biculturalism provokes and challenges education in Aotearoa New Zealand, and as philosophers of education, it’s appropriate for us to maintain a self-reflexive focus on our own discipline. This column continues investigating bicultural education in Aotearoa New Zealand by looking through the lens of Māori philosophy to read and respond to the recent essay on this topic by Michael A. Peters. Having done so much for philosophy of education through PESA, Peters is still walking this journey alongside us, still interested in hearing from both sides of the Indigenous-settler hyphen in Aotearoa New Zealand.
The main aim of Peters’ essay is to educate non-Māori about how whitewashed New Zealand’s national identity and history have been. As Peters recapitulates, until recently the dominant narrative of New Zealand history was one of steady progress ‘from rugged colony to harmonious, egalitarian nation-state,’ but, in recent decades, this Eurocentric reading has been disrupted by accounts of a past characterised by ‘conflict, deliberate forgetting and unresolved tensions that continue to shape the present.’
New Zealand literature tells the same story, forgetting early Māori generosity towards European travellers and settlers in favour of a tale of antipodean pioneers battling hostile bush and natives, giving rise to the ‘man alone’ motif and, as poet Allen Curnow put it, a need to ‘learn the trick of standing upright here.’ New Zealand literature documents the changing ‘versions of the dream’ of Pākehā identity over time, starting with the ‘Pastoral Dream’ and building on its foundations a welfare state version of the ‘Just City,’ which was later converted into the ‘Affluent Suburb.’ According to historian Barbara Brookes, ‘Māori disrupted this Dream, were excluded from the Just City, and denied entry to the Affluent Suburb. Pākehā identities were dependent upon this exclusion.’
Since Pākehā identity depends on being ‘not-Māori,’ it is unsurprising that most Pākehā find it difficult to grasp how Māori view the world. Pākehā misunderstanding of Māori thinking follows the sociological rule that members of powerful social groups have the privilege of choosing to be ignorant about disempowered groups, while the powerless have every reason to study the powerful. In the case of New Zealand, which was ‘created in Aotearoa by the British,’ as Bill Willmott phrases it, only Pākehā have the privilege of choosing whether or not to strive for biculturalism. Living in a Pākehā-dominated present, Māori have no choice but to be bicultural in order to avoid being completely assimilated.
The meaning of ‘Aotearoa’ is not co-terminous with ‘New Zealand,’ which is why Willmott’s phrasing is so powerful: New Zealand was created in Aotearoa by the British. Māori still think and talk all the time about how things were ‘before Pākehā,’ which, in practice, often means before WWII, when most Māori still lived in rural communities and were first-language speakers of te reo Māori, in limited contact with Pākehā. In terms of spatiality, the name ‘Aotearoa’ well captures te ao Māori (the Māori world) then and now: both the world of Māori memories, languages, family stories, oral repositories, objects, structures and iconography that lives on from a time before Pākehā and the world of those who self-identify as Māori today and give the lie to 150-plus years of policies of assimilation by Pākehā.
Willmott also addresses the role of colonial capitalism in New Zealand history, arguing that the main reason why the British created ‘New Zealand’ in Aotearoa was to absorb a surplus population that had begun to erode the profitability of British capital. The colonial enterprise of New Zealand depended on cheap land to entice that surplus population to leave Britain and become settlers here. Cheap land could only be provided by appropriating the land from Māori by means of theft, token payments or military force. Thus, the high standard of living of Pākehā came about through the impoverishment of Māori, a historical unfairness with ongoing influence on the inequalities still experienced by Māori today.
Peters calls on the recent book by historian Michael Belgrave, citing its central thesis that the Treaty settlement process is not merely ‘addressing’ history but ‘making’ history, albeit without being able to undo the great unfairnesses dealt to Māori in the course of history. Nevertheless, the Waitangi Tribunal and the whole Treaty settlement process have had beneficial effects, such as catalysing and funding research into iwi histories. The inherent friction between iwi and state viewpoints creates a form of creative, productive tension, opening up what Bhabha calls a third space for the exploration of the particularity of both viewpoints. Furthermore, despite its flaws, all New Zealanders can be proud of the intention of the Waitangi Tribunal to redress historical wrongs.
In an endnote to the essay, Peters argues that the country name ‘New Zealand’ is ‘increasingly viewed as problematic,’ in large part because it ignores the ‘existence and prior naming’ by Māori, writing that ‘their [Māori’s] name for the country is Aotearoa.’ I would add that the term ‘Aotearoa’ is contested, and the term ‘Māori’ is a post-colonial ethnicity and an umbrella category for the many autochthonous iwi identities. In some iwi traditions, notably that of Ngāi Tahu, Aotearoa refers to what is known in English as the ‘North Island.’ Scholars on both sides of the Indigenous-settler hyphen must work together to trace the all-too-pervasive Eurocentrism of New Zealand historiography and redress its ‘deliberate historical amnesia.’
Peters also gives a synopsis of the origins of the name ‘New Zealand’ in, first, Dutch, then British voyages of ‘discovery’ and subsequent colonisation and settlement. He argues that the name ‘New Zealand’ represents the process of Māori subjugation, so the country’s official name should be changed to ‘Aotearoa.’ But I would argue that dropping ‘New Zealand’ would suppress that history, which may not have been as smooth and peaceful as the erstwhile dominant narrative claims, but is still ours to own, as a country groping towards biculturalism.
Peters rejects the image of a lighthouse with its ‘single, guiding beam’ to represent the former Eurocentric grand narrative of New Zealand historiography in favour of the image of a constellation to represent a multiplicity of ‘varieties’ of histories. I agree that moving beyond a singular history is a good thing, but I think replacing ‘New Zealand’ with ‘Aotearoa’ would simply replace one grand narrative with another – and might even be seen as an act of assimilation. One day, we might posit ‘Aotearoa Zealand’ since the ‘new’ in ‘New Zealand’ is redundant when linked with Aotearoa. For now, I prefer ‘Aotearoa New Zealand,’ not as a transitional strategy, but as a decolonial investment in biculturalism, one that does not whitewash history but, rather, names and finds space for both Māori and Pākehā worlds.
