The November hīkoi was a defining moment for New Zealand. Photo / Hagen Hopkins, Getty Images
The November hīkoi was a defining moment for New Zealand. Photo / Hagen Hopkins, Getty Images
Opinion
Open-mindedness important in understanding diverse perspectives on history, particularly regarding Te Tiriti.
It highlights the significance of works such as Toi Te Mana and Maranga! Maranga! Maranga! in presenting Māori history from Māori perspectives.
We must engage with these works to challenge and expand our understanding of te ao Māori and the role of art and history.
Frank Zappa once noted that “a mind is like a parachute. It doesn’t work if it is not open.”
We too often forget this and allow our minds to work within comfort zones defined by our own culture, experience, education, or privilege.
To me one of the great limitations and dangers of the current debates over Te Tiriti is how much the proponents of simplifying, codifying, and imposing a set of “principles” reflecting one (the colonial) perspective ignore this.
It is important that we grow beyond this. To see the world from different perspectives, to accept our limitations in doing so, and to respect the differences not brush over them.
We see widely quoted the whakataukī “ka mua, ka muri” which I understand to be an admonition that we should look to the past to inform our approach to the future. This requires the Zappa instruction of “open mind” if it is to be meaningful.
Part of this is to be able to see the past not simply as a chronological process or set of events. To take this view is a closed mind approach. It is one way to understand the past but not the only one.
One major history scholar of last century, Arnold Toynbee, noted that “some historians hold the view (incorrectly) that history ... is just one damned thing after another”. But he and his colleagues were typically locked in a very limited, ethno-centric, world view of time and meaning.
Part of decolonising Aotearoa is building and gaining understanding of the authenticity and validity of other views of the past and what it means.
Too much of what has passed for Māori history has been told by (not always even well-inclined) non-Māori. It is not all wrong or without value but at the very least it is partial.
The ability to really hear Māori on their history has been one of the great contributions of the Waitangi Tribunal hearings and this is at an early stage despite what some modern re-colonisers might assert.
I’ve had the time recently to delve into two aspects of this.
The recently published history of Māori art Toi Te Mana (Auckland University Press) by Deidre Brown and Ngarino Ellis with Jonathon Mane-Wheoki, is a magnificent volume with intense scholarship and beautiful presentation “written by, for, and about Māori”.
It shines with and because of that proud assertion but remains accessible to a Pākehā reader with the Zappa mind.
Enough to inspire some fascination, even awe, but also to challenge my limited views not only on te ao Māori but also on the nature and importance of art in our lives. Most tangata tiriti readers will dip in and out of this and I encourage that but we will gain something every time we do.
Maranga! Maranga! Maranga! The Call to Māori History is also confidently assertive.
This volume from the excellent Bridget Williams Books brings together essays from the Te Pohere Kōrero project. This project has provided an excellent opportunity and support for members to “write our history, for ourselves and our children in the first instance and then for the world”.
Former Health NZ chairman Rob Campbell. Photo / Michael Craig
The essays cover a wide range from issues involved in researching and publishing scholarly research by Māori, to religious experience, anthems, moko kaue, te reo, Parihaka, the Treaty settlement process and more.
Each essay stands on its own but shares a base in a developing kaupapa Māori history which, to use Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s phrase is about “empowering, embracing, and privileging the complexity of who and what we are”.
The work in these publications is academic. But it is very purposeful and alive with positive messages. It is work by Māori for Māori from which in a Tiriti perspective we all benefit. (Did I mention how helpful now disbanded Marsden Fund support has been for a good bit of this work?)
We all benefit from this if we just choose to open our minds or as Lennon and McCartney put it: “You say you’ll change the constitution ... Well, you know … You’d better free your mind instead.”
