scholarly journals Conclusion: Spiralling Forwards, Backwards, and Together to Decolonise Freshwater

Author(s):  
Meg Parsons ◽  
Karen Fisher ◽  
Roa Petra Crease

AbstractIn this concluding chapter, we bring together our earlier analyses of the historical and contemporary waterscapes of the Waipā River (Aotearoa New Zealand) to consider the theory and practice of Indigenous environmental justice. In this chapter, we return to review three key dimensions of environmental justice: distributive, procedural, and recognition. We summarise the efforts of one Māori tribal group (Ngāti Maniapoto) to challenge the knowledge and authority claims of the settler-colonial-state and draw attention to the pluralistic dimensions of Indigenous environmental (in)justice. Furthermore, we highlight that since settler colonialism is not a historic moment but still a ongoing reality for Indigneous peoples living settler societies it is critically important to critically evaluate theorising about and environmental justice movements through a decolonising praxis.

Author(s):  
Meg Parsons ◽  
Karen Fisher ◽  
Roa Petra Crease

AbstractIn Aotearoa New Zealand, co-management initiatives are increasingly commonplace and are intended to improve sustainable management of environments as well as foster more equitable sharing of power between the settler-state and Indigenous Māori iwi (tribes). In this chapter we examine one such co-management arrangement that recognises and includes Ngāti Maniapoto iwi in decision-making about their ancestral river (the upper section of the Waipā River Catchment) and whether the implementation of initiative translated into tangible benefits for the iwi. Our research findings highlight how co-management agreement is perceived as overwhelming positive by both government and Ngāti Maniapoto representatives. However iwi note that they still face substantive barriers to achieving environmental justice (including the lack of formal recognition of their authority and power, and limited resourcing).


Author(s):  
Meg Parsons ◽  
Karen Fisher ◽  
Roa Petra Crease

AbstractWe explore the ways in which the formal recognition (to some extent) of Indigenous knowledge systems within environmental governance and the role of reconcilition in achieving environmental justice. We examine whether recent agreements between the New Zealand Crown (Crown) and Māori tribal groups (iwi), known as Treaty ‘settlements’, to establish shared co-governance and management over rivers encapsulate and are capable of achieving environmental justice for Māori. We draw on schoalrship on legal and ontological pluralism to consider questions of how to remedy environmental injustice and what reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples means in settler societies. Rather than seek to provide a singular definition of Indigenous environmental justice (IEJ), we instead examine how Indigenous peoples in Aotearoa New Zealand and other colonial societies are engaged in efforts to negotiate with and challenge the colonial legal orders, develop their laws, policies, and governance frameworks to achieve justice within the freshwater realm.


Author(s):  
Meg Parsons ◽  
Karen Fisher ◽  
Roa Petra Crease

AbstractWe argue that it is important to acknowledge that river restoration (both in theory and practice) still remains largely located within the realm of the hegemonic Western knowledge systems. In this chapter we challenge the Eurocentrism of dominant ecological restoration projects by documenting the different framing and approaches to restoration being employed by Māori (the Indigenous of Aotearoa New Zealand). We focus our attention on the collective efforts of one tribal group (Ngāti Maniapoto) who are working to decolonise how their ancestral river is managed and restored through the use of Indigenous Knowledge, augmented by Western scientific techniques. A key focus is on restoration that is underpinned by the principle of kaitiakitanga (environmental guardianship) and devoted to healing fractured relationships between humans and more-than-humans.


Ethnicities ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 146879682110626
Author(s):  
Avril Bell ◽  
Rose Yukich ◽  
Billie Lythberg ◽  
Christine Woods

This special issue showcases research exploring the work of settler individuals and groups in support of projects of decolonisation in Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia, Canada and Israel. The papers gathered here were developed from presentations at an international symposium held in Auckland, New Zealand and online in February 2021. As symposium organisers and editors of this collection, we speak and write as settler subjects ourselves, and this collection is situated within the field of Settler Colonial Studies (SCS). This editorial provides an opening framing of the field into which these papers speak, and a survey of some of the key themes within the wider literature. We aim firstly to locate this work within the wider field of scholarship and activism on decolonisation and decoloniality, delimiting the particular focus of decolonisation within settler-dominated contexts. We then discuss the critiques that have been mounted against SCS and some important defences of the field. We argue that while settler colonialism persists, work in SCS has a contribution to make – in highlighting and critiquing settler logics and in identifying changes that it is within the power of settler peoples themselves to make as a contribution towards Indigenous-led decolonisation. Further, we argue that decolonising settler societies must involve settlers learning to be ‘in relation’ with Indigenous worlds and people outside of deeply habituated logics and practices of domination. The papers gathered here provide examples of settler subjects at various points on the path of decolonising themselves and learning the work of ‘being in relation’.


2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Belinda Borell ◽  
Helen Moewaka Barnes ◽  
Tim McCreanor

Historical trauma is an important and growing area of research that provides crucial insights into the antecedents of current-day inequities in health and social wellbeing experienced by Indigenous people in colonial settler societies. What is not so readily examined is the flip side of historical trauma experienced by settlers and their descendants, what might be termed “historical privilege”. These historic acts of privilege for settlers, particularly those emigrating from Britain, provide the antecedents for the current-day realities for their descendants and the structural, institutional and interpersonal levels of advantage that are also a key feature of inequities between Indigenous and settler. This article theorises an explicit link between historical trauma and historical privilege and explores how the latter may be examined with particular reference to Aotearoa New Zealand. Three core elements of historical trauma are posited as a useful framework to apply to historical privilege.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Martyn Reynolds

<p>Pasifika education, the education of students with connections to the Pacific in Aotearoa New Zealand, is intercultural; Pasifika students are generally taught by Palangi (European-origin) teachers in a system originally designed to meet the perceived needs of European settlers. The field has a history of inequity, consigning many Pasifika students to mediocrity in formal education. A cultural reading of the situation connects a need for emancipatory self-description with the achievement of social justice within the kind of participatory democracy imagined by Dewey. Recent government initiatives such as the Pasifika Education Plan have sought ‘Pasifika success’ through targets and initiatives, the most visible focusing on success as achievement understood by comparison to other ethnic groups. This has been critiqued as not seeking success as, but of Pasifika, in effect another assimilative practice. This thesis interrogates how success in formal education is understood, described, and explained by male Pasifika students as they enter the secondary sector. This is complemented by: paying attention to experiences of success in primary education; extending discussion to families; and the catalytic use of Pasifika community-sourced data to create opportunities for teachers to re-vision their practice. The inquiry is a bounded case study in the atypical context of a high-decile single-sex state school. A framework which combines a critical theory, critical race theory, and a Pacific Indigenous research paradigm provides a nuanced strengths-based approach. A dialogical-relational methodology argues for a mediated dialogue to teu le va (care for the relational spaces) between participants. The thesis demonstrates how catalytic attention to relationality can help teachers positively re-vision their practice. Attention to relationality also supports a complex positionality where a Palangi researcher seeks to edgewalk between Pasifika and Palangi concepts and communities, teachers and students, and Pacific-orientated research and the academy. Findings suggest that male Pasifika students hold a wide basket of forms of success which both contrast with and complement success as achievement: ideas about a ‘good education’, acceptance, participation, comfort, resilience, and the contextual extension of competence. These can be understood through Pacific origin concepts such as va (relationality), malaga (journey) and poto (wisdom), disturbing existing thinking about Pasifika education. As a result, the thesis has potential to assist a re-framing of theory and practice in the field as well as providing a model of relational inquiry for further social justice research into intercultural fields such as Pasifika education.</p>


Author(s):  
Avril Bell

Settler colonialism involves processes of destruction and substitution aiming to replace indigenous with European/western worlds. But indigenous worlds persist in numerous spaces, moments and interactions where distinct ontologies and ways of being-in-the-world prevail. In Aotearoa New Zealand these spaces of the Māori world persist most obviously on marae. Māori and western worlds also briefly come together in public contexts where Māori protocols are used to mark openings of various sorts, temporarily governing public space and sociability. In this paper, I explore a different case where, I argue, Māori and western worlds are entangled or knotted together in the carved pou in the atrium space of a new community building in Kaitaia.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Francesca Benocci

<p>This thesis is a case study in literary translation. It consists of a creative component (60%) — an anthology of contemporary New Zealand women poetry translated into Italian — and a critical component (40%) — an interdisciplinary commentary outlining the historical, linguistic, cultural, literary and translational aspects underpinning my work as editor, literary translator and scholar. My interest in New Zealand literature began with my Master’s thesis, when reading Keri Hulme’s 1985 Booker Prize winning novel the bone people exposed me to the linguistic and cultural specificities of literary works produced in Aotearoa/New Zealand. This interest was further ignited by reading Marinella Rocca Longo’s pioneering study of New Zealand poetry, La poesia neozelandese dalle origini inglesi ai contemporanei, published in 1977. To this day, Hulme’s novel remains untranslated in Italian and Rocca Longo’s monograph is the only comprehensive study about New Zealand poetry for an Italian-speaking readership, one with which I have engaged constructively and critically in the course of my studies. This doctoral thesis thus combines translation and poetry. More specifically, it asks itself what it means to translate contemporary New Zealand women poets into Italian. This choice is motivated by three aims, which complement the wider ambition to make New Zealand writing better known to Italian readers: to better reflect the ethnic richness of New Zealand literature; to highlight the major role played by women in developing and expanding New Zealand poetry; to discuss translation theory from a post-colonial and feminist viewpoint. These factors are reflected in the structure and contents of this thesis. A historical overview of New Zealand literature in general and of New Zealand poetry in particular as an example of post-colonial literature is followed by a discussion on which theories and practices of translation are ethically as well as aesthetically the most appropriate for the translation of post-colonial poetry written by women. The comprehensive anthology I have compiled and the commentary that accompanies it bring this discussion to life, celebrating not only the creative and scholarly contribution of the translator as an intercultural negotiator, but also the ethical responsibility underscoring this task. The opportunity to undertake this research in Aotearoa/New Zealand has made this study particularly intense as well as personal, as I negotiated and renegotiated the space between theory and practice, pushing myself to expand and deepen the choices a translator is called to make as a reader, as an interpreter, as a critic, and as a writer. I hope that this goal has been achieved in the negotiation between the theoretical, scholarly and creative parts of this project that are embodied in the outcome of this thesis.</p>


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