ETHICAL REMEMBERING - HOPE AND ACCOUNTABILITY

This is the final in a series of extracts from Cook and Ethical Remembering, in which Tina Ngata of Ngāti Porou, distils years of discussions with rangatahi on the subject into ten guidelines for teaching what has happened in Aotearoa over the past 250 years ago.  This week, the last four guidelines are covered.

Guideline seven:  GIVE OUR TAMĀRIKI AND RANGATAHI HOPE.  Discuss clear actions they “can take to resist imperialism and dismantle the Doctrine of Discovery.

Teach them about the strong leadership already being shown in this space … calling upon the Vatican to rescind the papal bulls [and] impress upon them the importance of promoting the Indigenous perspective.

“Dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery and Imperialism holds great benefits for [everyone], so consider discussing the promise of a post-Doctrine of Discovery future [and] what actions could be taken by the Vatican, by governments, by communities and at an individual level.”

Guideline eight:  PREPARE THEM FOR DIFFERING POINTS OF VIEW, (EVEN RACIST ONES).  “Provide all sides of the argument. Many Māori are participating in the TUIA250 celebrations and it’s important to understand their reasoning.  Groups like Hobson’s Pledge and white supremacist groups also support the commemorations and the return of the Endeavour replica, and it’s important to look at the correlations and contrasts between these positions and compare them to those who oppose.”

Guideline nine:  DISCUSS ACCOUNTABLE RESPONSIBILITY.  “It’s very easy for people to learn of this history and fall into the trap of resenting non-Indigenous peoples, or indeed Christianity. Listen and watch for clues as to how children and young people are responding to the information before them.  

“Shawnee/Lenape scholar Steve Newcombe makes an important and helpful distinction between Christianity as a faith and Christendom as the amalgamation of church and state, an alliance between monarchies and the church which resulted in the ‘divine right’ of monarchs to do as they wish.  Discuss how many non-Indigenous people have been forced away from their homelands through Imperialism. Accountability rests with all of us to speak to the harms of Imperialism.”

Guideline ten:  PROMOTE ETHICAL REMEMBERING BY DISCUSSING “how colonialism, as a construct, rests upon … fictions to justify its own importance, centrality, and beneficence. It’s … important to deconstruct those fictions [and] to understand how [they] are transmitted [through] statues, currency, education, media, entertainment, place names, memorials and events like TUIA250. 

Discuss a more ethical remembering of who we are and what is important in order to set a pathway for who we want to be in the future.

“Pose similar scenarios for comparison:  Would it be appropriate to ‘balance’ the evils of the Holocaust with workshops on Hitler’s other, more redeeming characteristics?  When confronted with the horrors carried out by the conquistadors, is it at all appropriate to celebrate what an excellent navigator Hernan Cortes was?  What version of history has dominated our worlds up till now? What counts as ‘important’ history and what is the right way to remember painful histories?”

MAGIC VS LOGIC

What does ((((2 x 2) + 1) – 54) + (1.5 x 3)) x 2 equal?  My calculator tells me the answer is not a positive outcome.  But apparently that’s only in the logical world of whānau, hapū and iwi. 

In the magical world of local government, it seems that (((2 laws x 2 local bodies) + 1 resource consent application to discharge higher levels of nutrients into our waterways) - 54 opposing submittors) + (1.5 supporting submissions x 3 days of hearings)) x 2 independent commissioners = 1 resource consent granted and issued.

The background to this clash between logic and magic is that, for almost a decade, the Far North District Council operated in breach of its resource consent to discharge treated municipal wastewater from its treatment plant at Taipā into the waterways.  Put simply, it was putting more tiko into the water then it was allowed to under the consent that the Northland Regional Council originally gave it.

During that entire time, both FNDC and NRC effectively ignored the concerns of the hapū on whose stolen land the plant is built, and who depend heavily on the affected waterways which are now seriously degraded.  In doing so, the two Councils breached both the Resource Management Act and the Local Government Act.

So, having breached the laws, they get punished, right?  Wrong.  Apparently, in the magical world occupied by these Councils, not only does their lawbreaking not get punished, it gets rewarded.  Now, that’s just not right.

Logically, hapū have always opposed the discharge of wastewater into the waterways.  They fought long and hard against the treatment plant being built on their whenua in the first place because they knew it was going to be bad news for them and the environment.  But, at the time, the Councils had their say and got their way.  Then, they left the hapū to deal with the tiko outcomes. 

One of the basic requirements of all humankind is drinkable water.  But, many factors of modern life, including globalization, population densities and pollution are leading towards a critical shortage and forcing all of us to think more meaningfully about water purification and reuse.

Over the past few years, the hapū and their partners have searched for and tested a range of treatment options with a view to finding one capable of effectively and affordably purifying wastewater enough to enable land application.

Those tests have showed that electrocoagulation is the most logical option.  The technology and test results have been shared with both Councils, along with clear evidence of the current technology’s failings.  Perhaps predictably, both Councils have rejected it all and, on 26^th August, a consent was issued.

An appeal seeking to overturn that consent has now been filed in the Environment Court.  Magic has its place, but not in tiko treatment.  If humanity is to survive, we must have drinkable water and logic must prevail over magic.

ETHICAL REMEMBERING - UNDERSTAND THE LANGUAGE

TUIA250 is the government-funded programme marking 250 years since Captain James Cook of the British navy first visited Aotearoa.

The word ‘tuia’ is a Māori verb.  Its English translations include ‘to lash’, ‘to bind’, ‘to lace together.’  But in the case of the Cook commemoration, the Ministry of Culture and Heritage paired it with the English noun – ‘encounters’.  Whether they intended to infer that ‘encounters’ and ‘tuia’ mean the same thing, that is what they are promoting, and it is neither correct nor ethical.

In her article, Cook and Ethical Remembering, Tina Ngata of Ngāti Porou distils several years of discussions with rangatahi on the subject into ten guidelines for teaching what happened 250 years ago.  Guideline one is to ‘know the story’ and I covered that last week.  This week I cover three further guidelines starting with guideline two which is to ‘ANALYSE AND UNDERSTAND THE LANGUAGE’.

As Ms Ngata notes, it is really important “to analyse and understand the language long used by the colonising culture as a tool to mask and minimise colonial crime while demonising Indigenous resistance … [because] words like ‘encounters’ and ‘arrival’ function to neutralise the fact that an armed military vessel arriving without invitation to claim lands, killing people while doing so, is actually an invasion.”

Guideline three is to ‘FOCUS ON IMPERIALISM, RATHER THAN INDIGENOUS CULTURE’.  Imperialism is a wide reaching machine that continues to deliver harm across the globe.  So, it’s vital that our future generations be equipped to identify it and take on the challenge of addressing it. 

Many people still struggle to recognise Cook or his superiors as invading white supremacists.  But any project that is based upon a sense of entitlement to the lands and lives of non-white people is clearly white supremacist and imperialist.

As Ms Ngata says, “Ignoring the impacts of imperialism will not make it go away.  Instead it will merely leave a vacuum for imperial apologists to fill.”

Guideline four is to ‘CONTEXTUALISE OUR STORY IN THE GREATER STORY OF IMPERIALISM’. 

Ms Ngata notes that, “Cook’s invasion has a level of relevance at a national level for us.  But, at an international level, ours was just one of many nations between the 15th and 18th centuries that were severely impacted by Imperial expansion.”

Understanding how the Doctrine of Discovery initiated the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, as well as the expansion of Empires across the African continent, North and South America is essential for any student of colonial and imperial history. But Ms Ngata sounds a note of caution here to “be mindful that this is harrowing history.  So, we need to undertake this discussion in an age-appropriate way with careful observation of how the information is ‘landing’.”

In coming weeks, I will cover the six remaining guidelines distilled by Ms Ngata.  To conclude this week’s kōrero, while we cannot change the past, we can and must analyse and understand it before we commemorate it.