We need to decolonise our world view and make alliances with movements in Australia, Pacific, Asia, Africa and the Americas

From the Land of the long white cloud documentary series Confronting Colonisation: Wellington protest in support of Ihumatao occupation. Photo / NZME

OPINION:

Racism is a hard question. It’s tempting to forget about it when we have natural disasters and the cost of living to worry about.

But racism is at the root of who we are as a country. My European ancestors took this land from my Māori ancestors because they believed that they could make better use of the land because Māori were ignorant savages.

There was some technological basis for that attitude, but Māori, who were fast adopting the new technologies, experienced it as an insulting put-down.

No one likes to feel put down or treated as inferior. We tend to rebel against it, sometimes violently. So we have developed a fundamental principle of human ethics – to respect and care for other people as our equals even when we don’t like some of the things they think or do.

After that principle was violated by the Christchurch mosque killer in 2019, the government promised to develop a national action plan against racism. Last month Te Kāhui Tika Tangata the Human Rights Commission published two reports on what the plan should do.

Although racism takes many forms, tackling racism in this country has to start by tackling the historical attitude that Europeans knew better than Māori and all the institutions that grew out of that. In verbal shorthand: “decolonisation”.

We need to decolonise our thinking – stop thinking that European ideas such as democracy, capitalism and rationalism are superior to other cultural traditions. There are good and bad elements in all cultures, and we should draw on the best of them all to build a new culture that cares for one another and for the planet.

We need to decolonise our political system – share power by enabling and funding Māori and other groups to govern their own schools, health services, justice systems and overall systems of government if they choose to.

We need to decolonise our economy – enable other kinds of enterprise besides shareholder-owned companies and self-employment, including tribal and other collectively-owned enterprises.

We need to decolonise our culture – fund all forms of cultural expression, not just European arts and sports.

We need to decolonise our language – learn Māori and other languages, and continue to change place and street names where colonial names recall painful events in our history.

And we need to decolonise our world view – make alliances with decolonisation movements in Australia, the Pacific, Asia, Africa and the Americas, not just with European OECD countries.

We also need to formally acknowledge the racism in our past and present. The Treaty of Waitangi settlement process is part of this, but the Māori caucus report for the Human Rights Commission, Maranga Mai!, says settlements to date, constrained by the $1 billion “fiscal envelope” set in the 1990s, have returned only a tiny fraction of what Māori have lost in the 183 years since the treaty.

Former Herald journalist and now community advocate Simon Collins. Photo / Supplied

Maranga Mai! proposes a broad, South African-style Truth, Reconciliation and Justice Commission to hear the hurt of Māori who have been made poor and almost landless, and to lead a more substantial decolonisation process to restore Māori land and mana. I can’t see that happening in the current “bread and butter” political climate, but we should tell our politicians that we want it to happen soon.

Unlike Maranga Mai!, I don’t actually think it should happen just because some of my Māori ancestors signed a treaty with my European ancestors’ governor in 1840. The treaty is an historical document from which we can draw inspiration, but it is actually neither necessary nor sufficient for a good anti-racism plan.

Rather, we should decolonise in every sense simply because it is the right thing to do. We need to own up to our ancestors’ racism and our own racism, recognise that it has hurt and still hurts people, and do everything we can to stop it from now on.

Former Herald journalist Simon Collins (Ngāti Raukawa, Ngāti Pākehā) is a financial mentor and advocate in South Auckland.