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Posted at 8:14AM on 11 Jan 07. Permalink.

mark, i agree completely. andrew sharp has always been an assimilationist in very liberal garb. but it's hard to know what the motivation is. is he an assimilationist because he genuinely wants a 'single nation' nzl that is a melange of all peoples, or because he doesn't like maori?

having spoken to sharp a bunch of times i'm inclined to think the former, and i get the same vibe from english (philosophically speaking). it is however a viewpoint i can't agree with. assimilation is assimilation, minorities always lose.

brash and bassett? the complete opposite. they're also fond of a heterogenous nzl, but one where eevryone plays by the same rules.

their rules that is.

but the australian model? i could not disagree more. the common law/black letter law approach has failed aboriginal people miserably. it's been exploited by howard to undermine aboriginal rights at every, single, opportunity in favour of hard assimilation, ie "be brown-skinned white men, no other alternative is offered".

and manakura, again, i agree. it's the *real* white man's burden, you can't take take the piss without looking like a colonial oppressor... sigh... ah well, at least i'm easily employable and tend to get paid more than everyone else. :)

Posted at 1:15PM on 11 Jan 07. Permalink.

i am pakeha, although not even sure of the exact definition of this: isn't it "white pork" or something? can anyone remind / enlighten me? should i be upset?
i am married to a coconut (with alleged kwangsi canton ancestry).
a big, grey / latte-coloured PC zone lies in between calling someone "black" "boong" "hori" "coconut" as a term of endearment and calling them the same, out of ignorance.
judging by these threads, these zones are called "suburbs" in auckland.
if i can get away with using these terms would it be because my friends have a sense of humour, or because i have mana?

Posted at 1:38PM on 11 Jan 07. Permalink.

Maori ancestry traced back to Taiwan

Surely none of that was actually <i>new</i> discoveries by July '05?

Posted at 2:01PM on 11 Jan 07. Permalink.

a linguist told me that phonetically 'pa-ke-ha' breaks down into "feels different".

'white pork' is a anti-maori-rights backlash meme floated in the 80s.

Posted at 2:30PM on 11 Jan 07. Permalink.

great, cheers for that. i certainly don't mind feeling different - or take umbrage being described as such.

does anyone know any good te reo classes in wellington? they are so hard to find; i have researched & emailed around with no luck.

hot in thorndon today innit!

Posted at 2:48PM on 11 Jan 07. Permalink.

Che,

I wasn't suggesting that Sharp is a liberal assimilationist, nor would I even suspect that he 'doesn't like Maori'. I haven't read his book properly in a few years and I have a brain like a sieve, but it seemed to be more descriptive and analytical than stating his own views, and as pretty respectful of Maori conceptions of justice. He is certainly not a fan of putting too much store in the Treaty, but does not argue that Maori cannot justify differentiated rights. One (very readable and concise) example of some of his arguments is here.

I don't really see what distinction you are drawing between the English line and the Brash line - they both want a homogeneous liberal democratic citizenship "one law for all", in a diverse (ethnically, religiously, etc) society. Which obviously means that the dominant ethnie will impose its cultural mores on the others, unless the minorities can bargain for some respect of their own.

Don't know exactly what you mean about "common law/black letter law" approach in Australia, as the common law has given some protection of native title there: government legislation and policies is the main problem. I definitely don't disagree with your conclusions - Australia is the place that we would be hard-pressed to find any policies worth replicating here. Though it would be useful as an example of strategies to counter odious governmental policies. Again, McHugh Aboriginal Societies and the Common Law provides a comprehensive analysis.

Posted at 3:15PM on 11 Jan 07. Permalink.

I've heard a few theories about where the term "pakeha" came from, one being that it is a Maori transliteration of what Maori heard early white people in NZ calling each other, namely "bugger", as in "you silly bugger". Seems to me that it's as good as any theory.

I don't think there's any decided origin of the word, or indeed a meaning, what's clear is that pakeha is not offensive or insulting to pakeha.

Besides which Maori means common (I think), normal, ordinary. Maori would probably have referred to each other, in terms of their ethnic identity, on the basis of hapu and iwi, prior to the arrival of those who didn't fit into that structure (tau iwi).

Posted at 3:37PM on 11 Jan 07. Permalink.

span, dunno, i reckon that's probably a further mythology of the word. for one, 'bugger' and 'pakeha' don't sound anything alike. if someone could correct me, wouldn't a transliteration of 'bugga' be 'paka'. 'buggery' would be 'pakari'?

and mike, always good to kick off a friendly debate with a statement of positions!

what seems to distinguish the 'english' and 'brash' positions, to my understanding, was the degree to which the minority influenced the majority as it assimilated.

so yes, assimilation was the outcome, but in the english position, the majority evolves under the influence minority assimilation. in the brash position all minorities became like the majority.

an example of the former is the assimilation of migrant peoples into white colonial society in australia during the 1950s-1980s period. the nature of australian society changed dramatically during that time. not all of which can be attributed to the presence of a sizable "wog" population (globalisation being an obvious variable), but a heck of a lot of the cosmopolitan attitudes of major australian cities are.

the "english position" if we can separate that from the man, seems to advocate a similar line using polynesian cultures, i.e. "assimilating maori and pacific islanders will permanently change white new zealand's culture, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing".

and, will try to read that sharp article.

Posted at 3:38PM on 11 Jan 07. Permalink.

if i can get away with using these terms would it be because my friends have a sense of humour, or because i have mana?

Probably neither is the salient factor, the more important factor would be the consider you an insider in the context of your social group. Be interesting to see what would happen if you called one of them a dumb hori on their home marae, or in front of their parents or nannies.

a linguist told me that phonetically 'pa-ke-ha' breaks down into "feels different".

more exactly, the linguistic breakdown reads as 'smells different', which makes sense if you consider the personal hygeine of your average 17th century sailor. They would have smelt very strong, (as would have Maori). Its a mark of the respect Maori have for guests and visitors that they were restrained enough to denote the early European explorers and whalers/trader as smelling different, as opposed to smelling bad.

But, most scholars of te reo Maori would warn against breaking words down into their constituent syllables in oder to derive meaning. Its not always a valid method.

Span, you're sort of right - Pakeha is not inherently an insult, but it is considered insulting by many Pakeha. As I've mentioned on the thread that would not die, and Che alludes to above, the negative connotations is fairly recent and arises more out of the actions of the European ethnic majority over the 20th century.

Posted at 3:45PM on 11 Jan 07. Permalink.

Paka:
http://www.learningmedia.co.nz/nz/online/ngata/m2edictionary

Pakari

http://www.learningmedia.co.nz/nz/online/ngata/m2edictionary

Bugger/Buggery

http://www.learningmedia.co.nz/nz/online/ngata/e2mdictionary

Posted at 3:59PM on 11 Jan 07. Permalink.

Pakari

Or perhaps buggered = pakaru?

Posted at 3:59PM on 11 Jan 07. Permalink.

What about pakehakeha (the mythical pale-skinned people)?

Posted at 4:18PM on 11 Jan 07. Permalink.

Be interesting to see what would happen if you called one of them a dumb hori on their home marae, or in front of their parents or nannies.

i don't call them dumb anyway.

yep, humour has context (wow). my folks would look sideways at any friend of mine who came to their house & called me something traditionally disparaging like "white trash". unless it was exceptionally well delivered.

the learning media web site, while really useful for some quick online definitions, is not the best way to come to grips with te reo. i wonder what is - it's hard to find a course.

Posted at 4:35PM on 11 Jan 07. Permalink.

I was always told the best place to learn a language is in bed.
Seems to be working for my brother anyway, good planning on his part to find a multilingual girlfriend - I didn't even know Luxembourgish was a language!

Posted at 5:31PM on 11 Jan 07. Permalink.

E, no need to be snippy it was a question asked in good faith.

the learning media web site, while really useful for some quick online definitions, is not the best way to come to grips with te reo. i wonder what is - it's hard to find a course.

Vic Uni would be your first stop, their Maori studies is called Te Kawa a Maui. It offers an excellent te reo Maori course I'm told. If what they offer doesn't suit then one of the tutors will be able to point you in the right direction to a tech course, night course or marae based wananga. And if you strike one of the nannies that teach at Vic they'll have you fixed up with one of their multilingual grand daughters if you're not careful! :)

Posted at 7:32PM on 11 Jan 07. Permalink.

Could we do "tauiwi" now?

I don't mind being called pakeha (although palagi sounds better to my ear) but I was once called "that tauiwi fella" on a marae, and not in a very nice way.

And I do sort of object to being defined as a foreigner, immigrant or stranger in a country where I was born and where I've had family for more than a century.

Thoughts?

Posted at 8:04PM on 11 Jan 07. Permalink.

You're up against the forces of inverted racism (which is a misnomer, I know) as supported by the opportunist brigade of the politically correct, so it's not advisable to sound miffed about being fingered as a dirty furrinner despite being a native.

Hmm, maybe I should guest blog about that?

Posted at 8:47PM on 11 Jan 07. Permalink.

I have been waiting to join this discussion all day - I can't quite bring myself to post from work. But now the kids are fed, washed and in bed, I have poured myself a glass of wine, and I'm ready to start doing real work.

is he [Sharp] an assimilationist because he genuinely wants a 'single nation' nzl that is a melange of all peoples, or because he doesn't like maori?
having spoken to sharp a bunch of times i'm inclined to think the former, and i get the same vibe from english (philosophically speaking). it is however a viewpoint i can't agree with. assimilation is assimilation, minorities always lose.

I'm not so sure about that, Che. I guess my concern would be that if we don't have a little bit of assimilation, or at least some cross cultural fertilisation, or maybe a melange that allows room for difference, then we go to the other extreme, of sharply individuated cultures, in the mode of Kukathas' The Liberal Archipelago. And the problem with Kukathas' liberal archipelago is that group rights necessarily trump individual rights. Kukathas claims that if individuals have a right of exit (and by that he means a formal right, not a substantive right), then group rights don't trump individual rights, but I think that although that might be nice in theory, in practice (and afterall, political theories should work in the real world, no?) it's not enough to allow only a formal right of exit. Hence the need for some degree of cultural exchange.

This is not to say that assimilation a la the 1950s in New Zealand, or the more recent version dragged stinking from the grave by Dr Brash, wasn't a very bad thing indeed. It wasn't cultural exchange - it was 'there should be one rule for all, and it had bloody well better be European rule'.

I think English has a good point - there is a degree of reverse assimilation going on, if only in tiny forms so far, like the casual use of words of te reo in everyday discourse. In fact is such a small degree thus far that it would be better to describe it as cross cultural fertilisation. Nevertheless, I think the cultures gathered here are now creating something new, which might provide a basis for binding us all together, while allowing us our differences.

Do minorities always lose? Absolutely, under Brash-style assimilation. But in terms of creating something new which forms a basis for the ties that bind, or at least a mode of living together - I'm not so sure.

I think that this sort of view allows for something different from the liberal archipelago, and in particualr, it allows individuals the ability to be part of more tahn one culture. Someone else on this thread (Manakura?) has mentioned that he is both Maori and pakeha, and there can't be too many of us these days who don't have family members who are, or who have married into, other cultures. We simply don't have distinct edges between cultural groups anymore.

My worry is that if we talk of minority groups as though they are hard edged, well-defined groups, and reject the possibility of merging into each other, then we end up where Kukathas has positioned us.

I'll take the rosy tinted glasses off now....

Posted at 5:08AM on 12 Jan 07. Permalink.

Deborah,

I agree, up to a point. Nations don't seem to do that well where they have sharply individuated cultures. But that is not the case here. There are diverse cultures, some more isolated than others, but none so isolated as Kukathas imagines. Like he and you suggest, cultures are not billiard-balls that crash off each other when they come into contact. They're more like... er... balls of paint, which... um... come into contact and take some of the colour of the other, or might merge to create another colour completely. Speaking totally metaphorically.

The major problem I see with our current debates is that these commonplaces about cultures are being used to discredit the Treaty and Maori rights, when nothing of the sort flows from them. Cultural apartheid is a bad idea; therefore we must abolish the Maori seats (note who 'we' is...), and so on.

What Brash/English et al argue is that there can be only one stream of political authority in a nation. What the Treaty recognises is (a) that political authority can be conditional, and (b) that a nation can have multiple streams of political authority, so long as they can ultimately be reconciled. There is nothing inherently illiberal or undemocratic about the Maori seats and they acknowledge that many people in New Zealand still belong to a culture that sees itself as part of the wider nation, but only because that nation gives (minimal) recognition of one of their continuing streams of political authority. If you look at the demands of indigenous people around the world, you see the same demands for political autonomy. And if you look at the legal and constitutional position in the US and Canada, you see that that's roughly what they get, to a far greater degree than here.

Posted at 8:15AM on 12 Jan 07. Permalink.

I was once called "that tauiwi fella" on a marae, and not in a very nice way.

At least there's some useful content left in the Urban Dictionary "Smile when you say that"

Posted at 9:40AM on 12 Jan 07. Permalink.

Not snippy :o)

That's a great breakthrough. Last time I investigated Vic Uni courses they were not only charging a small fortune (now it's $300 per term of weekly evening classes; still quite steep I think to learn one's native language, but maybe you do get what you pay for) but you had to enrol as a student which turned out to be more paperwork than there was for the entire course I was actually interested in. Now it appears they have reduced it to a straightforward online form - marvelous!

We were thrilled to find & enrol in a "Samoan as a Second Language" course recently - only to discover that the course's premise was to "learn how to preach the scriptures" in Samoan. Bugger. Not really our priority, in fact most off-putting.

There is a Samoan course @ Vic, but it costs roughly the same as a trip to Samoa, which is more fun.

Posted at 10:03AM on 12 Jan 07. Permalink.

E, i've done stage one of the Vic Uni course (paid for by work), and i'm thinking of shelling my own money for the 2nd stage. pretty useful.

RB, i think pretty much *any* term can be used as a put down, e.g. "oh, so you're *rich and successful* are you..." if someone on a marae is going to be an asshole, then an asshole they'll be. that said, i agree, 'tauiwi' shits me a little. it kind of stinks of 90s-pc-revisionism.

i am a new zealander.

that term in itself distinguishes me being of european descent, formerly colonial, likely to have ties with maori. in a way we are all new zealanders, like our tea-planter cousins dictate, but the content of being a new zealander is bigger than the stingy, racist diatribes you find scattered about remuera.

and if you give juha a guest post, how about mark b. as well, i've a sneaking suspicion he's at harvard.

Posted at 10:20AM on 12 Jan 07. Permalink.

ok, debs, i myself can post all day because i took a week off work. why? to write a play.

it'll doubtless be awful.

as we both agree i think we wrote the same phd, but in different disciplines (and i've an inkling mark b. is writing a similar one as well).

i agree that a little "assimilation" isn't a bad thing, but disagree that assimilation is the term for what you're describing. this is because assimilation always involves the absorption of the minority into the majority, and that's whether its a deliberate (i.e. political) process, or a voluntary cultural blending.

absorption means that a minority can no longer self-perpetuate because it has lost all distinctiveness. and i'm certain it's the threat to self-perpetuation that most threatens nzl maori.

i agree with mark that cultures and nations don't have static edges, but are porous, meaning that when you place them in proximity like you have in nzl, you get cross-pollination as you suggest. this is a good thing.

the trick is finding some way to maintain the healthy cross-pollination, while also maintaining some semblance of cultural distinctiveness for all groups. i.e. new zealanders stay new zealanders, and maori stay new zealanders and maori.

so far nzl has been very good at this, with our sensible blend of informal reinforcement and quasi-constitutional methods?

PS. i've always thought kukathas is just a cog in the larger machinery of liberal group rights. he contributes to the general argument that all cultural groups in a nation-state have to be liberal (or as liberal as possible) for said nation-state to function, viz. kymlicka.

Posted at 10:33AM on 12 Jan 07. Permalink.

The next question would be how does a state fit together and reconcile the various different “streams of political authority” in such a way that operates as an effective over-all unit while preserving in reality the autonomy that the constituent units would like. That is the issue in NZ, and I do not think our current structure of government is really suited to being forced into contortions so as to fulfil this.

So we probably need to start afresh, if in fact we ever decide to undertake such a project. However I am not so sure anyone person or group would ever have the political will or ability so as to open and drive such a wide-ranging undertaking – a constitutional reform project outside of a crisis situation is kind of a hard sell, as it should be.

Posted at 11:53AM on 12 Jan 07. Permalink.

Ben, you're right that our current structure of government isn't conducive to personal jurisdiction or territorial autonomy. We don't have federalism, so dividing up sovereignty seems dangerous to us. And so all that's left are the Maori seats, devolution, corporate structures and any non-state authority that the state does not subvert. Politically, for the 'foreseeable' future, that's the most that we can expect.

In terms of starting afresh, Canada had a little turn around in its policy towards First Nations when it finally figured out that they had unextinguished aboriginal title rights, and after an assimilation policy fell stillborn from the press (well, actually it was torn apart by Harold Cardinal in The Unjust Society and others). The result, after a long period of constitutional soul searching, was the constitutional protection of treaty rights and aboriginal rights, a federal self-government policy, a Royal Commission, and eventually, the negotiation of self-government agreements. Of course, the situation was different, and it was more like a crisis in many ways. Like you say, it's not going to happen here anytime soon.

But (i) it is an example we might point to that the sky doesn't fall on liberal democracy if there is a little (or even quite a lot of) differentiated citizenship, and (ii) it's weird we never mention it in our constitutional debates, given we took a lot from Canada's example when creating our Bill of Rights Act 1990.

Che- Nice detective work. I am doing an LLM at Harvard.

Posted at 12:14PM on 12 Jan 07. Permalink.

The problem with the Canadian example is that so long as the Supreme Court (or whomever your final arbiter of choice is) is selected by a federal government that is not representative of all the streams of political authority then the rights / authority of the minority streams are in effect really at the gift of the federal government.

Mark, how is Harvard going? (You are the same Mark from Vic law school right?)

Posted at 12:32PM on 12 Jan 07. Permalink.

On the "pakeha" thing: I though Michael King had dealth with that. The entire population of the planet read Michael King, right?

A very nice person also just got me the "Best of Whim Wham" (goverment name Allen Curnow). There's a nice response to an MP calling the term a vulgarism in a Treaty bill debate. Don't have it with me, and it would be a bit naughty to copy the whole thing out, but aside from casting aside variou spurious derivations, there was one memorable bit describing the 'vulgarism' as "older than the poet Byron".

Assimilation - if it helps anyone, I read an interesting model in "Critical Mass" a book about using physics-style modelling for social science (and an interesting overview of the history of social science).

The idea was if neighbouring zones oin a grid shared the same value for one of several characterisitcs (analogous to cultural features) they could make the value for another one equal every turn.

As I recall, you tended to end up with one dominant culture (set of values), perhaps with one or two ghettoes unable to communicate with the majority.

Not a excellent model for the purposes, I'd have said, be interesting.

Posted at 12:37PM on 12 Jan 07. Permalink.

Ben,

The problem with the Canadian example is that so long as the Supreme Court (or whomever your final arbiter of choice is) is selected by a federal government that is not representative of all the streams of political authority then the rights / authority of the minority streams are in effect really at the gift of the federal government.

sure, that's why the Supreme Court doesn't really want to decide what self-government is, and why it didn't. It wanted to leave those negotiations to the federal, provincial and tribal governments. Which then came to a compromise, and created self-government agreements that hopefully do represent a confluence of the streams of political authority in their parcelling out of sovereignty between these three levels of government. Whether the self-government agreements really recognise the political authority of First Nations to an acceptable degree really depends on the kinds of bargaining chips that they have over the other governments - in British Columbia, it was probably a combination of some sense of the justice of self-government, combined with the looming fact of huge tracts of unextinguished aboriginal title.

Harvard is great. If you like reading and writing yourself to death...

Posted at 1:00PM on 12 Jan 07. Permalink.

mark, just guesswork.

and i'm inclined to agree and disagree about the canadian. the main variable that distinguishes canada from here is territorial separation as you indicate (often the tribes/bands negotiating with the crown have very distinct parcels of land). the system works because on 'indian land' the majority knows what goes, in a 'when in rome' kind of way.

what i have read about canada suggests that off the reservation though, things aren't so rosey.

OTOH nzl is too intermixed to really have that idea work at all. the differentiated citizenship really has to be wrapped up inside a universal, shared vernacular.

so the political authority we're talking about almost *always* comes back down to the rights and obligations of maori and crown under the treaty, and within the same sovereignty, i.e. back to square one, because it is representative of all parties.

furthermore, it's really not all that hard to interpret. 1. crown's in charge, 2. maori get the final say over their own culture and things they think are important, 3. everyone has equal rights.

it's not rocket science.

Posted at 1:18PM on 12 Jan 07. Permalink.

Listening to a first nation bloke lecturing on Nat Rad a whiles back, I got the feeling one issue in Canada was the state imposing their own strict genetic definition of nativeness the wasn't that helpful and would see them bred out of existence in fairly short order.

Sorry if I sound wildly vague today. I'll work on it.