Dear David,
I’ve been away walking Te Araroa lately, scratching the belly of the fish, as Hone Tūwhare used to say. It’s had me thinking about us all as a people. You have, too, I suppose. I happened to be in Russell the night of the election, caught the Ōpua ferry with Winston Peters the next day. On the way through Kerikeri, I stayed for a night with Kipa and Susie, two of the most blessed souls you’re ever likely to meet. Kipa is from Ngāti Rēhia. He told me you whakapapa to there. I envy you for that.
Thirty years ago, I went to live in Te Tii, the home of Ngāti Rēhia in the Bay of Islands. I stayed in an old tin shed by the beach. I rented it for $30 a week from Kipa’s brother, John, although everyone called him “The Hood”. He lived on a small hill above me with his partner, Kuia. Aunty Rangi lived beside them, with Milton and Erehi. Uncle Buck and Aunty Maraea lived one house over, and Aunty Bloss was in front.
On the beach in front of me lived Tom Kelly and his four daughters. The girls ate my chocolate biscuits while I nailed the corrugated iron into the bottom plate to stop the mice getting into the shed. And then again when I made a shower from roofing battens, polythene and a small water tank.
Soli lived beside me then. And on the other side of him lived Aunty Tiniwa, and Gracie, her daughter. Gracie and I watched Shortland Street together most nights. Afterwards, I would help her with her homework. In the house beyond that, at the end of the beach, lived Aunty Rongo. She is my most constant ghost nowadays. I live with her chatting on my shoulders.
Uncle Bill and Aunty Kare lived on the other side of the community. I visited them most days. Aunty Kare wanted to baptise me. Uncle Bill wanted someone to tease and to ride shotgun with him through the wild west of his memories.
For most of my life since then, I have written about Ngāti Rēhia in one way or another. They have been my muse. And continue to be. They changed my life. Afterwards, I finished university then left the big smoke forever. I have lived and worked in Māori communities ever since. I returned to Te Tii a few years later and my daughter was born there. Every year, I go back at least once or twice. I’m very grateful that they put up with me.
I’m telling you this because that old cultural fault line that runs beneath our country is rumbling again. And this time you are jumping up and down on top of it. I want to thank you for that, at least. Despite how people moan, it’s always good to chip away again at who we are as a people.
Ironically, it was Māori who taught me that irritation is a blessing. But I guess I’m also asking you to taihoa on all your bloody Treaty of Waitangi referendum stuff and go north for a while. Get to know Ngāti Rēhia – lose a few chocolate biscuits – then see what you think about things after that.
Kipa told me you’ve never been up there to talk to them as a group about it at all. I reckon they deserve that, at least.
I say that mainly because Ngāti Rēhia are beautiful. And funny. And fair. And I reckon they will give you a chance if you give them one. They’d appreciate the fronting up. They’ll challenge you, for sure. But in my experience that can be a good thing, too. I’ve come to see over time that, when people argue about how things should be, very often they are saying the same thing in different ways.
I keep hearing that the referendum is just a way of ensuring the fairest form of government possible – that one person getting one vote on how things should be couldn’t be simpler, or more reasonable. The argument sounds good. And noble, even. Very Greek, I suppose. But democracies have ridden roughshod over minorities using this principle for years.
I’m not sure they are always the safest way of making decisions.
Māori could give you plenty of examples. Act itself relies on MMP to give it a voice. Otherwise it would be drowned out by an overwhelming majority of voters.
I’m worried, too, that the whole thing is really just a Trojan horse for those who feel that Māori are getting too much power and prominence – that the cultural landscape is getting shared a bit too much for their liking. Some will feel they are owed a backlash. Some will be good people who found that somewhere along the line the cultural rules for the country changed and no one talked to them about it.
You could dismiss me as another bleeding heart, I suppose. To be honest, I’m actually super pissed off that the last Labour government didn’t front up while they could and talk to us at all about how we can share two distinctive cultures in one country. That’s a fluid, challenging and exciting conversation to have as a nation. Not to have it, or to leave people out of it, will always damn the opportunity to create something unique, powerful and lasting.
At the same time, it would be hard to find anyone who works in health, justice, social work or education – or who has read anything balanced and reputable about New Zealand history – who would argue that Pākehā deserve a backlash.
All the data points overwhelmingly in the opposite direction. The insults Māori have endured at the hands of many New Zealand governments are overwhelming when looked at objectively. Our country has a wound in it. Your proposal for a referendum just pokes another clumsy finger inside of it.
Majorities won’t make it go away – they are a medicine for something different. They cannot be used for this sort of healing. The wound is in you, too, brother, like it or not. Only the purposely blind ignore it.
There are days I want to poke the bear myself. My daughter also has whakapapa. She is the product of a kura-ā-iwi education and is fluent in her language and grounded in her Ngāti Raukawatanga. I shiver a beautiful shiver to see it. But I also argue with her about why being indigenous is so important.
Wasn’t there a time when Māori transitioned from tauiwi to tangata whenua? Has that not happened for Pākehā, too? And what is it about being indigenous that is important? Does being the first to be somewhere confer rights in and of itself? And if so why? Or is it at risk of becoming a stock defence to any challenge? I usually lose the arguments, though.
Regardless, I throw my shoulder behind Māori not because they happened to be here first, but because of the beauty, fun and hospitality I have always found in the values they expound, and in the people I have known who are Māori. In many ways, they have taught me to be more fully Pākehā by searching for that sense of the raw in my own culture. For me, the world would be infinitely poorer without the powerful ideas and experiences Māori bring to all parts of our life on Earth.
I also want to see a time in our country when the weight of Pākehā guilt can be ameliorated – by Pākehā and Māori. There are still so many narratives that seem to advance the idea that Pākehā are entitled and mean-spirited. These are toxic ideas. And they drive a wedge between the cultures. We are individuals but we also share a collective existence. The collective existence may have injustices in its past but individual lives can be utterly free of the same. The problem is that poorly thought-through critiques of colonialism blur these selves together and feel so personal – when that is not fair or appropriate. Having said that, the right action of the collective self that has an unmet injustice to deal with is to create structures to tell the truth about that, and as best as possible make redress. And we still have some distance to travel as a country to truly guarantee that for Māori.
Nevertheless, I look forward to a time when accusations of racism, colonialism and privilege are not automatic responses to any questioning of te ao Māori. These responses stop conversation and care.
The greatest gift I was ever given as a Pākehā was to have the core narratives of my culture questioned. I think it is also a gift to challenge the modern Māori world about some of these things, too.
Treaties are important for setting the rules of the game. In some ways, ours are a series of markings around the national rugby ground: goalposts, touchlines and 22s. Those things are essential, of course, but even still, they are not the pleasure and beauty of the game itself. That comes when we play together, rub shoulders, pack down scrums, put each other into a sweet gap.
The joy of two cultures living with each other is in love and kissing. And in challenging each other to do better – with kindness and encouragement – rather than a berating condescension. It is about having babies together. It is in having brown teachers in white classrooms and white teachers in brown classrooms. It is about coaching each other’s sports teams. It is about local farmers forming relationships at the marae down the road, doing the dishes, and dropping off a beast during a big tangi. It’s about doctors and nurses from both cultures working together, getting out of their clinics and having cups of tea in their patients’ homes. It’s about a young Māori boy saying, “Kia ora, Kris”, to an Indian shopkeeper in Papakura. And an Indian shopkeeper in Papakura saying, “Tēnā koe, Tama”, back. The treaty is about love and respect. I’m unapologetic for the sookiness. Unless we play here and have commerce with each other, it doesn’t matter what else happens. Relationships change our deep structure. Tellings-off, not so much.
Fundamentally, your bill seems to actually be asking, do we still want this cumbersome relationship between our cultures? Or should we try again to bury one inside the other? The unspoken question seems a rejection of all our trying to get it right, and a weak surrender to the loudest voice.
I want to live in a country that still has a chance for its two core cultures to share how they live and work together. This will take justice and love and self-reflection from both of them. Māori have so often been drowned out by the majority and your referendum risks allowing that again. Even more, it hints at the idea that Māori have too much – which is demonstrably untrue – and a mythology the ignorant use to justify not sharing significant and real power structures with them.
In the past, I’ve written about being the last Pākehā of my line. My life has been so influenced by Māori and Pasifika peoples that there are no generations beyond me or my brothers and sisters who will identify as Pākehā.
But nowadays I’m not even sure I would identify as Pākehā myself. Not in the way I used to, I suppose. It feels like my deep structure itself has changed. I have a foot in both camps. I have my arms both ways. Mostly now, when I am asked who I am I say that I am Ngāti Creamy-Brown. I’ve got the feeling that I’m not the only one who feels like that. There are so many of us now.
Please go home, e hoa, some time. Reach out to Ngāti Rēhia. Expect some buffeting. That’s what Māori do. And should do. It’s what we all do. There is a way of adjusting our democracy so Māori have the power to really sit at the top table with adequate representation that cannot be voted away. It’s not that bloody hard. It is such a brilliant problem for our country to have to solve. Let’s have at it. There are so many clever, informed and passionate people out there. Let’s blue sky it – whiteboard it – not call each other names. Or try to blanch ourselves all into the same skin.
Let’s take our time so all our voices can be heard and come up with something that respects and meets the needs of both cultures. But all of that is predicated on relationships between us – so let’s start hanging out. Head north for a while. Go get haunted. Beautifully. Speak to the dead. Listen to the land talk back to you. Feel the old ones flying about and perching on your shoulders. Get looked at with wet eyes. Listen. Stop telling. You haven’t earned the right yet.
You are Ngāti Rēhia. Your people have saved my life in a way I could never give them enough thanks for. Go and talk to them. All of them. You had a crack at dancing. They deserve at least the same commitment and vulnerability. I’ve sent a couple of books I’ve written about them to your office – you don’t need to read them, of course – just look at the pictures. If you are lucky, you might see something of yourself looking back.
Go well, brother. Ngā mihi nui to that old ancestor sitting inside. My best wishes to you and the whānau.
– Yours, Glenn Colquhoun