scholarly journals He Rawe Tona Kakahu/She Wore a Becoming Dress: Performing the Hyphen

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Miki Seifert

<p>In the British settler nations of the United States, New Zealand, Australia and Canada, there continues to be debate about how to conduct research across the coloniser-indigene hyphen. Various indigenous scholars have discussed, at length, how western scholarship has been and continues to be implicated in the colonisation of indigenous peoples. While some progress has been made, it continues to be an unresolved issue. As a white American woman, I have responded to this situation by conducting my doctoral research using a decolonising epistemological pluralism that I developed through my practice as an artist and performer. This methodology, which is critical and performative, seeks to dismantle the colonial matrix of power and the dualisms that underpin the hegemony of western knowledge and casts a critical eye on power relations as they manifest out in the world and as they reproduce themselves inside individuals. It is my belief that such an approach will decentre the settler and facilitate working across the hyphen. As an example of how such a methodology could function, I undertook a collaborative and performative research project with Anahera Gildea, a Māori writer and performer from the iwi (tribe) of Ngāti Raukawa ki te Tonga. Our research examined the intersection of gender and colonisation. The knowledge systems that we chose to use arose naturally out of who we are and what we know. We are both Butoh performers. We both practice Nichiren Buddhism and use it to guide our daily lives. The outcome of our research was He rawe tona kakahu/She Wore A Becoming Dress, a multimedia Butoh performance, which was performed for two nights at the Film Archive in Wellington, New Zealand in 2009. As a collaboration that worked across the hyphen, we both engaged with critical and decolonising theory from our respective positions on the hyphen, as well as brought our respective world views—I, white American and Anahera, Te Ao Māori . This thesis is an attempt to provide a practice-based understanding of what it was like to undertake research using such a decolonising epistemological pluralism.</p>

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Miki Seifert

<p>In the British settler nations of the United States, New Zealand, Australia and Canada, there continues to be debate about how to conduct research across the coloniser-indigene hyphen. Various indigenous scholars have discussed, at length, how western scholarship has been and continues to be implicated in the colonisation of indigenous peoples. While some progress has been made, it continues to be an unresolved issue. As a white American woman, I have responded to this situation by conducting my doctoral research using a decolonising epistemological pluralism that I developed through my practice as an artist and performer. This methodology, which is critical and performative, seeks to dismantle the colonial matrix of power and the dualisms that underpin the hegemony of western knowledge and casts a critical eye on power relations as they manifest out in the world and as they reproduce themselves inside individuals. It is my belief that such an approach will decentre the settler and facilitate working across the hyphen. As an example of how such a methodology could function, I undertook a collaborative and performative research project with Anahera Gildea, a Māori writer and performer from the iwi (tribe) of Ngāti Raukawa ki te Tonga. Our research examined the intersection of gender and colonisation. The knowledge systems that we chose to use arose naturally out of who we are and what we know. We are both Butoh performers. We both practice Nichiren Buddhism and use it to guide our daily lives. The outcome of our research was He rawe tona kakahu/She Wore A Becoming Dress, a multimedia Butoh performance, which was performed for two nights at the Film Archive in Wellington, New Zealand in 2009. As a collaboration that worked across the hyphen, we both engaged with critical and decolonising theory from our respective positions on the hyphen, as well as brought our respective world views—I, white American and Anahera, Te Ao Māori . This thesis is an attempt to provide a practice-based understanding of what it was like to undertake research using such a decolonising epistemological pluralism.</p>


2015 ◽  
Vol 40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frances Wilkins

Graeme Morton and David A. Wilson, eds., Irish and Scottish Encounters with Indigenous Peoples: Canada, the United States, New Zealand, and Australia. Montreal & Kingston, London, Ithaca: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2013. Pp. 389. ISBN 9780773541504. $35.00 CAD.


2018 ◽  
Vol 87 (4) ◽  
pp. 638-666 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Stevenson

During the late nineteenth century, the print culture associated with women’s suffrage exhibited increasingly transnational connections. Between the 1870s and 1890s, suffragists in the United States, and then Australia and New Zealand, celebrated the early enfranchisement of women in the U.S. West. After the enfranchisement of antipodean women at the turn of the twentieth century, American suffragists in turn gained inspiration from New Zealand and Australia. In the process, suffrage print culture focused on the political and social possibilities associated with the frontier landscapes that defined these regions. However, by envisioning such landscapes as engendering white women’s freedom, suffrage print culture conceptually excluded Indigenous peoples from its visions of enfranchisement. The imaginative connections fostered in transnational suffrage print culture further encouraged actual transpacific connections between the suffragists themselves.


Author(s):  
Alana Gall ◽  
Kate Anderson ◽  
Kirsten Howard ◽  
Abbey Diaz ◽  
Alexandra King ◽  
...  

Despite the health improvements afforded to non-Indigenous peoples in Canada, Aotearoa (New Zealand) and the United States, the Indigenous peoples in these countries continue to endure disproportionately high rates of mortality and morbidity. Indigenous peoples’ concepts and understanding of health and wellbeing are holistic; however, due to their diverse social, political, cultural, environmental and economic contexts within and across countries, wellbeing is not experienced uniformly across all Indigenous populations. We aim to identify aspects of wellbeing important to the Indigenous people in Canada, Aotearoa and the United States. We searched CINAHL, Embase, PsycINFO and PubMed databases for papers that included key Indigenous and wellbeing search terms from database inception to April 2020. Papers that included a focus on Indigenous adults residing in Canada, Aotearoa and the United States, and that included empirical qualitative data that described at least one aspect of wellbeing were eligible. Data were analysed using the stages of thematic development recommended by Thomas and Harden for thematic synthesis of qualitative research. Our search resulted in 2669 papers being screened for eligibility. Following full-text screening, 100 papers were deemed eligible for inclusion (Aotearoa (New Zealand) n = 16, Canada n = 43, United States n = 41). Themes varied across countries; however, identity, connection, balance and self-determination were common aspects of wellbeing. Having this broader understanding of wellbeing across these cultures can inform decisions made about public health actions and resources.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document