Academic Hemopereki Hōani Simon is the first Māori scholar to be awarded a fellowship at Mills College in California. Photo / Supplied
Taupō academic and scholar Hemopereki Hōani Simon says some people - especially the growing conservative movement espoused by groups like Hobson's Pledge - find his work difficult.
"It's challenging because at the end of the day, New Zealand was set up as a settler colony country and Māori were excluded from that setting-up. We have a hard time in this country talking about racism, let alone the fact that we are not a Treaty people, that the country was invaded."
But as a Māori academic, Hemopereki says part of his role is to be a critic and conscience of society.
That role is set to further develop after Hemopereki, 38, yesterday took up a fellowship at Mills College, Oakland, California. Mills College is a women's liberal arts college which also offers graduate programmes to students of all genders. It has 1122 students.
Due to Covid-19, Hemopereki will be completing the fellowship remotely but will travel to the US at the completion of the fellowship to present a symposium paper on his research.
Hemopereki, who affiliates to Ngāti Tūwharetoa hapū Ngāti Tūtemohuta and Ngāti Rūingārangi, was raised in Taupō and attended Tauhara College before studying economics and Māori development at the University of Waikato, followed by an honours degree in Māori Studies and a master's degree at Massey University in environmental planning. His masters thesis was on the problems for the development at Ōtuparae Headland at Acacia Bay, Taupō.
He is currently preparing to submit his body of published work for his PhD in inter-disciplinary studies, focusing on indigenous politics, policy and development, through Charles Sturt University in Australia.
"It [my PhD] looks at mana motuhake (indigenous sovereignty) and the collective future as well as looking at issues around Te Tiriti," says Hemopereki.
"My main argument is that Te Tiriti isn't as relevant as what society makes it out to be in that there are many iwi, including Ngāti Tūwharetoa, that didn't sign the treaty, and how relevant is it. It's an instrument of settler colonialism and if we are moving towards a future, that future must be based on a form of collective values.
"I would argue that those values would need to be Māori values because as Ranginui Walker says, the base culture of New Zealand is actually Māori culture so that makes sense that the values that we move forward on to be inclusive would be Māori values."
For his PhD, Hemopereki studied haka, moteatea (traditional chants), and waiata-ā-ringa (action songs) to build a political philosophy and theory from a Māori viewpoint.
Hemopereki says New Zealand is becoming more accepting of te reo Māori and te ao Māori, and at some point there will be a realisation that New Zealand needs to come up with its own set of values. He believes these should be based on five core Māori values proposed by Victoria University of Wellington Associate Professor of Law Dr Carwyn Jones: whanaungatanga (centrality of relationships), manaakitanga (looking after people), mana, tapu/noa (respect for the spiritual character of things) and utu (balance and reciprocity).
Hemopereki intends to use his Mills College fellowship to explore four topics, all for publication purposes. The first is the moteatea E Pā To Hau, a lament of the Waikato tribe Ngāti Apakura whose undefended settlement near Te Awamutu was attacked by British troops in 1864, the people driven away and the land confiscated. Hemopereki says he will study the moteatea for its philosophy and theory on elimination, grief and dispossession.
His second topic will be critiquing the idea of Massey University and the University of Otago becoming Treaty-led institutions and the third will be a critique of settler colonialism and its effect on the Pasifika diaspora population in New Zealand in response to a racist attack on University of Auckland academic Jemimah Tiatia-Seath.
The last topic is a theoretical position on what a Pacific indigenous peoples and kaupapa Māori response to climate change should be. He argues that for the indigenous Pacific, climate change is not a human rights issue but an existence issue and people must go back to their philosophical traditions to come up with solutions.
The fellowship runs until April and Hemopereki says his preparation is already largely done.
"One of the things I like about Mills is that it's a very liberal institution and it's very progressive so it's very much in line with the stuff I do anyway."
He hopes this fellowship will lead to another one, which may well be overseas as his work is considered challenging in New Zealand.
"For the type of work I do, it's unlikely to be accepted for a few years within New Zealand and that's a shame because of the inherent racism within the country."
Hemopereki says it's convenient at times of crisis, such as the Christchurch mosque attacks, for Governments to talk about tikanga values and then shelve them the rest of the time. He says disestablishing the settler colonial state and co-creating a space based on Māori constitutional values can form the basis for a society where everyone in New Zealand can move forward together.
"I argue it should be underlined by aroha, tika and pono as a process of tikanga, how we come to decision-making. So, do it with compassion, do it with depth and truth, and then also do it because it's the right thing to do."
