Te Whakatara! – Tangihanga and bereavement COVID-19

New Zealand responded swiftly to the Covid-19 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) to prevent the spread of sickness and prevent unnecessary deaths. The government initiated a four-level social distancing alert system with specified measures at each level to manage and minimise the risk of COVID-19. By late March 2020, Alert Level 4 required people to stay in their homes in their ‘bubbles’ or family units. Social contact was restricted other than for essential personal movement and travel was severely limited. The Ministry of Health (2020) produced tangihanga (funeral rituals) policy guidelines for Māori, requiring the immediate collection of the deceased’s body by a funeral director. Gatherings to do with death and post-death customs were severely restricted and all marae (indigenous gathering places, land, buildings) were closed and burials could only include the immediate family bubble. In this autoethnographic paper, we draw on one Māori family’s experience of the birth and death of a baby with an anticipated life-limiting illness, during the most restrictive lockdown phase, level 4. We describe the impact COVID-19 tangihanga policy restrictions had on the family. The guidelines prevented them from conducting timely customary internment rituals with support from kaumātua (older men and women) and whānau (family including extended family and friends) in accordance with their cultural preferences. To prepare for future pandemics we recommend mana whenua (local Māori who have authority over their lands and marae) have autonomy to plan and manage tangihanga to avoid unnecessary distress, particularly where there is a known palliative condition.

Black women as compost: An autoethnographic cantata

This performative autoethnography is a restorying of my Black girlhood/Black womanhood journey. The format incorporates Black aesthetics through poetic and musical representations, while inviting the reader to make meaning for themselves. This autoethnographic cantata is a call to Black women everywhere to sing their own melodies and to compose their own songs from girlhood to womanhood. The lack of intext citations is also a purposeful call for readers to connect this work within their own disciplinary contexts and knowledge bases. It is written to be spoken or sung aloud, alone or in groups.

Crisis Curriculum: Poetic Ethnography Through Crisis, Coping and Community

In the face of the pandemic, Temple University rushed to transition to online or remote-learning. As faculty quickly adjusted their classes to accommodate these unprecedented changes, many of us quickly realized that our students’ needs, likewise, shifted drastically. In response to this new reality, I developed a crisis curriculum that drew upon the best of ethnographic methods coupled with digital technology to turn the gaze on the Poetic Ethnography students themselves and capture a unique look of the COVID-19 crisis. Key words: COVID-19, Corona Virus, Pedagogy, Poetry, Ethnography.

Action sports lovers locked down due to COVID – 19

What is it like for a family of skiers, mountain bikers, climbers, and outdoor lovers to experience a quarantine? Not being able to move in nature gradually led us to think about freedom, the possibility of decision-making, civil society, solidarity, and at the end to the democracy in the Czech Republic. Our experience of Covid-19 quarantine turned from a small social experiment into a dragging confrontation with the wobbliness of the fundamental pillars of democracy in our country. The isolation itself couldn’t go separately from reflecting on the social and political context. With some 7000 cases we may have won the battle against the spreading of the virus. We may count significant losses in the war against the strengthening anti democratic trends in the post communist region. Therefore this text is personally reflective as well as it becomes political in places where the two aspects meet.

Cartography of evidence, ethics and engagement: Researcher decisions in (re)presentation

A novice researcher may anticipate that on completion of gathering evidence, the decision-making involved in a project might become more straightforward. Typically, ethics committees and review boards have asked researchers to look ahead in consideration of research design and conduct to the gathering of evidence. However, decisions about representation and presentation of research contain further challenges and tensions. There are researcher decisions in determining what to say, how to say it and to whom. In the field of qualitative inquiry, there are multiple and increasing (re)presentational options and recognition of diverse standpoint epistemologies with implications for these researcher decisions. The core of this article is a written script or ethnodrama, the presentation of research in the form of a play. The dialogue in this play originates from questions, information and reflections recorded in my journals during one project and related to decisions of representation and presentation of research for audiences.

Kuahuokalā: Reflections on Space and Ttransformative Education Conversations

How can a place transform a conversation? In this paper the authors discuss how meeting to develop a professional learning community in a hale, a traditional native Hawaiian building, changed the course and direction of the learning community. Too often, departments and divisions of higher education are driven by external standards imposed by state and national accrediting and licensing agencies. The conceptions of education and the way it is implemented then is more focused on meeting the standard rather than coming to a deeper understanding of what can be accomplished for our communities in the name of education and how it can be achieved. Our PLC is intended to address this shortcoming by creating space of sharing, conversation and communal action. What emerged from our work within our relationship to the hale was an expression of the values, commitments and ideals that emerged through the context of our developing relationship. With a political desire for voice, we built a community that found meaning in the process of building something greater than ourselves, yet fundamentally immersed in our everyday lives.

Fear and Silence Meet Ignorance

When I studied in Spain in 1969 and 1970, I knew about the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), briefly mentioned in my Spanish history books; General.simo Francisco Franco declared victory. I knew Spain through my graduate studies in Spanish literature and through Michener’s book Iberia (1968). In 2000, I met Jordi Calvera, a Catal.n whose post-war stories conflicted with that idyllic Spain. I returned to Spain in 2013, still with no idea of the impact of the totalitarian dictatorship based on fear and silence through which Franco ruled until his death in 1975, leaving a legacy of fear and silence. In Barcelona, I met a group of adults in their eighties who shared Jordi’s experience. My intrigue with these stories led me to learn more about the war, the dictatorship and the aftermath by interviewing people whose lives had been touched by those years. Through a layered account, I present some of the stories and examine my oblivion. Keywords: Critical autoethnography, autoethnography, ethnography, Spanish Civil War, Franco’s totalitarian dictatorship

Kia Tae Pākoro: Lessons of CEAD 2018

When Camilo Catrillanca (24) died, he had one son and a pregnant wife. He was a weichafe (warrior) of the Mapuche, one of nine indigenous nations recognised in the Chilean Census. I learnt of Camilo’s life and death as a consequence of my attendance at the 2018 hui of Contemporary Ethnography Across the Disciplines (CEAD). I was able to learn about Camilo because I arrived at the hui laden with, aware of, and willing to share my own sorrow (tae pākoro). This article stories the environment within which the CEAD hui 2018 was held. It discusses the history of settler colonialism in Chile, the problems of Via Chile.a and the suffering of La Araucan.a. The writing reflects my time as a manuhiri in Santiago. It recognises my autoethnographic method’s whakapapa as offspring to a tool of colonisation. Hence, it offers a different form of autoethnography, one that begins with the tangata whenua, the people of the earth. Key words Chile; Mapuch; Māori; Indigenous; Autoethnography