A group of Pākehā is embracing the opportunity to honour Te Tiriti, saying a commitment to tino rangatiratanga strengthens rather than divides Aotearoa.
The Pākehā Project is an organisation of tangata Tiriti leaders who run programmes and workshops for Pākehā, aimedat deepening their understanding of the constitutional foundations of Aotearoa.
The group was founded in 2019 by Rebecca Sinclair and Louise Marra (Tūhoe), who met while undertaking a leadership programme.
Sinclair said the birth of the Pākehā Project was a long journey that came from a range of experiences and realisations that “s*** wasn’t right, so what can we do about it”?
“You start to see the cracks in the story that you’ve been told about the world and when you start seeing those cracks, you start to be curious about why they’re there and try to understand what’s actually going on there.”
Dr Karlo Mila, an award-winning poet and founder of the indigenous leaders programme Mana Moana, also issued the academics a challenge.
Mila said that after participating in Mana Moana, Pasifika often returned to their places of work only to have the transformative ideas they had learned from the programme “squashed”.
Sinclair said Mila told them Pākehā needed to do the internal work themselves.
“We took her challenge to us and said ‘yes, that is actually the work that needs doing and that’s really where the problem is’.
“The problem’s not Māori or Pacific or anything like that. The problem’s with Pākehā because we’re the ones that are in control.”
Sinclair said she and Marra were proud to be one part of the movement of people doing restorative and meaningful mahi.
“[We] want to acknowledge how difficult (and quite frankly, dangerous) it has been for many who have been leading this for decades, often having to bear the intolerance and abuse of those who find it threatening.
“We stand on their shoulders.”
Rebecca Sinclair (right) acknowledges Louise Marra (left) as her tuakana in this work. Photo / Sophie Harrington
Meaningful mahi
Māori had been at the forefront of the decolonisation movement for generations, Sinclair said, and while Pākehā should not take the lead, they had a responsibility to engage and include as many people as possible in the movement.
“Our work is not re-indigenising. Our work is making the space so that re-indigenisation can happen.”
Sinclair said they prepared tangata Tiriti to have constitutional conversations, not binary debates, so they could begin to approach those conversations “as deeply and as richly as Māori have been doing for generations”.
“That is what we need to do if we are to have any hope of fulfilling the promise of Te Tiriti o Waitangi.”
She said it was crucial that Pākehā worked together to support one another in this journey of decolonisation and connection.
Without those conversations, Sinclair said, “we will continue to tear our social fabric apart. But with it, we have an extraordinary opportunity to grow and evolve together in mutually beneficial ways”.
“It’s not a loss to move into these spaces. We don’t lose anything if tino rangatiratanga is honoured, we just gain.”
Emotional safety and understanding
The Pākehā Project’s work was focused on helping people become comfortable with discomfort – acknowledging emotions such as grief, rage, guilt and shame, without using them as a tool for blame, Sinclair said.
“We don’t try and shame people or make people feel guilty, but we know that’s going to come when you start to open yourself up to these stories and start to see the harm that has been caused by whiteness in the world.”
By exploring both the strengths and weaknesses of the orthodox Western world view and its role in shaping society and colonisation, the Pākehā Project encouraged curiosity about other world views rather than dismissiveness, she said.
“We’re trying to help Pākehā become aware of actually what that world view is, how it wires us completely, and actually how it’s harmful for us too.”
Creating safe spaces was key to this process, because it allowed Pākehā to process emotions without harming others, especially Māori, Sinclair said.
“Māori have been telling us for generations. The last thing we want is Māori to have to be in the room, witnessing the learning and epiphany that often takes place.”
A need for anti-racism education
While their work had received much aroha, Sinclair said they had also faced resistance, including hateful messages and threats.
“I had someone [who went by] ‘Adolf Hitler’ telling me I was a race traitor,” she said.
Initially, the hate caused fear and doubt, but Sinclair came to see these attacks as attempts to disempower her mahi.
She said such sentiments only underscored the importance of anti-racism education.
“This gave me a small glimpse into the hate that fear can elicit. And it is exactly why we need programmes like ours and many others that directly address how racism and oppression work.”
Sinclair encouraged Pākehā to engage with Tiriti-led spaces, describing the beauty that lies within.
“It’s absolutely beautiful to be in the work ... you start to feel like you belong, that you can settle and that you don’t have to prove yourself.
“There’s a richness of this huge wide world that we have not experienced.”
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