Why colonisation is bad for everyone

Monday, 9 March 2020

Sight of Endeavour replica being met by local iwi in their waka casts minds back 250 years, as Tuia 250 reaches Marlborough.

When we think about colonisation, we tend to think about the ways it has affected indigenous communities, and these have been overwhelmingly negative. Yet perhaps we're overlooking something. It is possible that colonisation also impacts negatively on colonisers, on their descendants and, in the case of Aotearoa, on more recent migrants whose ancestors may not have been part of the early colonisation process.

What would this look like? Given that most writing on colonisation focuses on the impact of colonisation on indigenous peoples, and that there doesn't seem to be a lot written about other impacts, we wanted to think about these issues.

I put the question to my Facebook friends – a mix of friends, family and acquaintances who identify as both Māori and Pākehā, with a number based in or hailing from overseas. How has colonisation impacted negatively on non-Māori, I asked. I received answers from people belonging to all of these groups.

Stuff cartoonist Sharon Murdoch's view of the Tuia 250 commemorations.

What is Pākehā identity?

The first group of answers suggested that colonisation had contributed to a lack of clear Pākehā identity.

* Pākehā and Māori should acknowledge all of colonisation's consequences

* What's in a name? How 'Pākehā' became corrupted**

The ravages of time and nature on Abel Tasman's statue in Nelson. The negative effects of colonisation on the colonisers themselves may be underestimated, writes Rebecca Kiddle.

The narrative that the only thing that makes New Zealand unique is Māori identity and culture is a pervasive one, woven throughout our society. It leaves many Pākehā who have been born here (as perhaps their parents have, and their parents' parents) with a feeling that they lack a sense of identity.

Rachel Kingi, a friend from secondary school, responded to my Facebook post saying that it became evident in conversations with a Pākehā friend that her friend lamented this lack of identity, and linked it to a lack of belonging and tradition. Kingi asked of Pākehā, 'What are their traditions?' She intimated that Pākehā are often proud of Aotearoa but don't feel they are part of the things that make Aotearoa special. 'They are proud of the uniqueness of Aotearoa but don't feel like they can own that.'

Glenn Colquhoun, a poet, doctor and Pākehā father to Māori children, writes that 'being exposed to things Māori has usually only made me more Pākehā'. He adds, 'It makes me ask what are those things within my own culture that define me? I see things that define Māori in spiritual and cultural terms but, when you are from a larger, majority culture, it is sometimes harder to see yourself, there is less contrast and fewer things to say this is who I am.'

Dame Jenny Shipley, the co-chair of Tuia 250 Encounters, says the upcoming commemorations for the arrival of Captain Cook 250 years ago will be very evenly handled, with both tangata whenua and Pākehā cultures celebrated.

Interestingly, Colquhoun notes, this often changes when Pākehā New Zealanders travel and live overseas. For the first time, they may be thrust into the position of being a minority. The new context forces Pākehā to 'start seeing themselves', and they often embrace aspects of Māori culture that they would not have embraced at home.

Living in the United Kingdom for seven years, this was definitely my observation. In order to exemplify their New Zealand identity, many Pākehā would wear pounamu pendants and do the haka in pubs and bars whenever the All Blacks played.

Although the project of colonisation works to overlay one identity and value set on an already existing one, it also seems to have resulted – some generations on – in many Pākehā feeling ill at ease with their cultural roots, traditions and sense of identity. When confronted with completely different cultural contexts, many look to Māori cultural identities to display their New Zealandness. Again, Colquhoun offers a useful frame through which to think about Pākehā identity:

'As an immigrant culture, it seems at times Pākehā are a book without a cover, one with the first chapter missing. For me, being Pākehā now is enormously exciting. It means we get a chance to write that chapter, or at least compile the stories that reveal it.

'Other cultures often come complete with mythologies of beginning but there do not seem to be enough celebrated stories that adequately define the journey that was to take place for us here. I think we came expecting to continue the way we always were – just in a new place. There didn't seem to be any need for explanation. We didn't expect the place to change us, to colonise us. That was our job.'

Colquhoun speaks of an exciting opportunity for Pākehā to build confidence in a Pākehā identity – one that sits alongside, not in combat with, Māori identities.

Clayton, Matthew Thomas, 1831-1922 The settlement of Wellington by the New Zealand Company, as depicted by artist Matthew Clayton.

The intergenerational trauma of the stiff upper lip

A relative in my Pākehā family who also has Māori heritage, Rachael Marwick, suggests a possibility related to the lack of identity: that settlers, or at least the descendants of settlers, carry with them intergenerational trauma. 'There's surely residual intergenerational trauma,' she says, 'associated with having left loved ones . .. that may have something to do with the culture of emotional reservation prevalent in older generations.'

Former Green Party MP Catherine Delahunty seems to agree, adding that many Pākehā descend from peoples who have been marginalised through history. This marginalisation in their original homes led many to come to New Zealand in a quest for better lives, a strident march towards material advantage that sometimes resulted in spiritual emptiness (with the latter surely having some relationship to intergenerational trauma). Few turned back to acknowledge their roots. Delahunty writes:

'The Pākehā contradiction comes from our origins, so many of us being the descendants of families starved out of Ireland, burnt out of the highlands of Scotland and made surplus people in the English class system. We, the children of cannon fodder and global capitalism, can barely acknowledge the loss of bones and sacred places left on the other side of the world.

'The severing from ancestors and from the land has brought us material advantage and spiritual emptiness. The denial of this condition assists us in our denial of the tangata whenua indigenous reality and justifies our control of resources. But it has required a weird forgetfulness.'

It seems that, for Pākehā. there may be at least three types of unacknowledged trauma that have arisen from colonisation; and, whether their ancestors were deliberately complicit or not, some of this trauma has filtered down to our current generation.

One of artist Michael Tuffery's series of paintings of 'Cookie' in Aotearoa.

First, it is traumatic for anyone to have to leave people whom they love, especially for those from a culture that is often stereotyped by its suppression of emotion. It must have been hard for their ancestors to come to Aotearoa understanding that they would likely never see their families and friends again.

Secondly, in order to get on, a semi-severing of ties to the motherland might have felt like the only option (though clearly many elements of 'home' were brought to New Zealand to recreate a home in this new place, such as grid-city layouts, the Westminster system and roast dinners, to name a few). As Delahunty points out, perhaps something was lost along the way, and that loss continues to pervade Pākehā whānau and the Pākehā character.

Thirdly, acting as colonisers – taking part in an often racist and inherently unfair process – is surely bad for the soul of Pākehā. Being brutal can't be great for a person's ongoing sense of self. This ongoing tussle with who one is would have only been exacerbated for those who came to New Zealand to get away from a marginalising class system that didn't afford them respect or opportunity in the country they came from.

'Yeah, but all that stuff happened three generations ago – it's nothing to do with us,' I hear you cry. A recent study in the United States suggests that not only can trauma travel across generations through behavioural influences, it may in fact change one's DNA.

Epigenetic researchers believe that genes are switched on and off during times of stress and trauma and these epigenetic changes are inherited by later generations, setting diseases in motion. It seems likely that leaving a homeland and forging new lives here in Aotearoa led to stress and trauma for settlers and, though not equal to the trauma of colonised peoples, it may well have had a negative impact on their descendants.

No-one moves forward easily if wounds aren't healed properly. At worst, they get infected, and at best they leave a scar.

Fearful and anxious Pākehā

An American friend and ex-colleague of mine, Jessica Sewell, lives in Charlottesville, Virginia (the site of the white supremacist rally in 2017 where a counter-protestor was killed by a supremacist who drove his car into a crowd). She argued in her response to my Facebook question that colonisation, which she equates to racism, can elicit fear in those being racist or doing the colonisation.

Sewell asserts that: 'Racism (and colonialism) feed on the fear of the other . . . Colonisers live in fear of what [might] happen … of contamination; of difference. This brain-numbing fear is visible in the words and faces of white nationalists …'

Closer to home, sociologist Avril Bell agrees that fear can breed among those exerting power over other groups, suggesting that Pākehā are often fearful of interacting with Māori on their terms. She says:

'Pākehā lack of acclimatisation to the Māori world means they are frequently anxious and fearful of engaging with Māori as Māori, fearful of being a minority within indigenous contexts and uncertain of their reception (will they be made welcome or not?), fearful of the exposure of their ignorance of indigenous cultural practices, discomforted by the reminder that they are not 'at home' within indigenous contexts, that they do not know things they should know as 'native' subjects, so that their own non-belonging/settler status is exposed.'

The problem with this, she says, is that the dynamic of fear keeps Māori and Pākehā from fruitful everyday interactions.

While it might be a privilege, one obvious downside of your worldviews always being understood by society to be 'normal' is that you are less likely to reflect, question and re-evaluate those worldviews, or be encouraged to do these things. Dominant cultures are often invisible because of the mere fact of their dominance; their thinking is ever present. But if your worldviews are never questioned, this will limit new personal experiences, thinking and innovation.

Following the earlier assertions of Colquhoun, if we really truly want to move forward, relinquishing power and challenging 'normal' might not be so bad. It may be scary, but there is much for all to gain.

* Imagining Decolonisation, published by BWB Texts, is available from Monday, March 9. The contributing writers are Bianca Elkington, Moana Jackson, Rebecca Kiddle, Ocean Ripeka Mercier, Michael Ross, Jennie Smeaton, Amanda Thomas.