gracehowardprocess-blog

[gracehowardprocess-blog]

Insight of the perspective of Maori culture in Aotearoa

[gracehowardprocess-blog]

“How would you describe your personal feminism right now? Centred around my family that is the most at risk of violence: my trans sisters, my disabled squad, my brown and black babes, other gender non-confirming people of colour with less privilege and institutional access than I have. My feminism is less about me and more about using my platforms for my friends. But personally, I am trying to be more internal with my creativity though until media gets it a little more "right," — so I'm not used as, like, a "feminism" explainer for publications. Publishing is deeply patriarchal! So really my feminism is personal, my publishing political.

What does intersectionality mean to you? A frank conversation about race, gender, class, ableism, fighting against transphobia, internalised misogyny, etc etc. Put all those words aside, though. It's about systematic unlearning. It's about unlearning and relearning through realities that never occurred to you. You have to continually understand [that] you know so little. It means listening and being there for the people who need community. It means understanding the nuances of humanity.”

- Arabelle Sicardi

[gracehowardprocess-blog]

Late Night Brainwaves!!!

When I think about cultural identity (particularly indigenous identity) I begin the think about the multifaceted nature of it, the intersections where cultural identity starts to morph into something new, something hybrid, sheer fabrics overlapping to create to new hues. what kinds of colours do these overlappings create, at what point do they no longer look anything like they did originally? where does cultural identity fit into gender, race, ableism, sexuality, ageism? What types of people represent these new hues? 

 What kind of format does this take shape in? What kind of vessel can I build through design that allows for the story telling of these experiences of hybrid hues? A publication/book/website How do these people express their experiences already? How can I explore this further? Story telling is important because: hearing about other people's experiences makes you feel... understood, educated, human, informed, less scared of the unknown, connected, empowered, inspired, accepted

When I started this project I found it hard to find a starting point, when your coming from a place of 0 knowledge it's hard to know when to hone in on a certain area. I decided that instead on drowning in this huge sea of information, that I apply my own interests into the mix. Something that really intrigues me is the idea of intersectionality and the idea of evolving identity and identity growth. I was so set on trying to fix a problem, trying to find a solution for this problem. But the best solution was just to explore the idea rather than focus on a physical solution. The best solution could be just to talk about it more, share stories etc.Chat conversation end

[gracehowardprocess-blog]

when love meets politics, what better way to fight hate and fear with love? if love was the core of all our decisions, what would our world look like? 

could love be substituted for empathy or understanding in the right context? if we involved more understanding and empathy into New Zealand politics would our country be better off or worse off?

“Che Guevara wrote in a 1965 letter: ‘At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality.’”

“Our societies lack love because of the structure of the economy, which harnesses exploitation and greed while also taking away the time that people need for truly loving relationships. Societies lack love because of an unequal social structure that leaves people wounded, lonely and distant from each other in supposed communities. And they lack love because of the patriarchal, white-supremacist and related oppressive forces that create conditions of violence, insecurity and distrust.”

“As hooks puts it so succinctly: ‘Without justice there can be no love.’ A radical politics of love is therefore bound to a commitment to redressing historical wrongs and other existing injustices.”

“A radical politics of love is not passive. It does not license pushover politics. Recall that justice must be done before love can be completely realised. And sometimes love itself requires anger, conflict and confrontational action. There is no inconsistency, then, between a radical politics of love and the calling out of racism, or direct action against sites of racism, capitalism and oppression. Nor does a radical politics of love have to distort the meaning of love.”

[gracehowardprocess-blog]

Question Journey Map

This is a journey of the questions that I asked to show where I am currently with my project. It shows the trigger point where i began to question the education system until the point where I’m at now: “How come I only know one of the national languages?” “To create better, more meaningful relationships with Maori culture, will having more conversations accelerate/ enhance this?” “If you are from New Zealand, or live in New Zealand is Maori culture automatically a part of your cultural identity?” “What kind of representation do we currently have in New Zealand of the experience of being a Maori person in New Zealand?” “What kinds of cultural identities exist in New Zealand?”

[gracehowardprocess-blog]

Questions that I have for my Project:

What does New Zealand history mean to young adults?

What kind of New Zealand history do you find to be interesting?

How can I get young adults to empathise with NZ History more?

How do young adults currently interact with historical places/ days/ holidays/ occasions?

Why does history play such as important role in our lives?

How can I create more meaningful relationships between history and young adults?

[gracehowardprocess-blog]

1.brainstorm: ideas/ words/ thoughts/ visuals/ emotions around land ownership in new zealand regarding colonisation and new zealand history.

2. hashing out my idea and beginning to put it into a design context.

[gracehowardprocess-blog]

Questions for land applicants

“In 1899 the 48,000 acres (19,500 hectares) of the Waikakihi run was purchased by the government under the Land for Settlements Act 1894. When the land was divided up, ballot applicants were required to answer questions to ensure that the new owners would be capable family farmers.”

http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/interactive/17932/questions-for-land-applicants

[gracehowardprocess-blog]

Māori women at land court meeting, Tokaanu, 1914

Under the Native Land Court acts of 1862 and 1865, the courts were able to grant certificates of title to the ‘owners’ of Māori land. This law introduced the concept of absolute ownership into Māori society and made the transfer of Māori land possible. Because use of the land was often shared, the European concept of ownership brought about considerable confusion and conflict. These Ngāti Tūwharetoa women are waiting for a land court hearing at Tokaanu, near Lake Taupō, in 1914.

http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/photograph/17890/maori-women-at-land-court-meeting-tokaanu-1914

[gracehowardprocess-blog]

“Traditional Māori society did not have a concept of absolute ownership of land. Whānau (extended families) and hapū (sub-tribes) could have different rights to the same piece of land. One group may have the right to catch birds in a clump of trees, another to fish in the water nearby, and yet another to grow crops on the surrounding land. Exclusive boundaries were rare, and rights were constantly being renegotiated.

Early settlers such as missionaries, whalers and traders were hungry for land. Often a Māori chief would allow Europeans to settle on a piece of land in exchange for goods, but did not imagine that this meant granting them absolute ownership. Instead Māori saw it as a transfer of particular rights, while their own rights remained untouched. Māori were keen to attract Europeans for trade, and land transactions were common.

In the late 1830s some Māori realised that, to the settlers, these transactions meant absolute and sole ownership. During this period the number of ‘sales’ rapidly increased because settlers and investors feared that such purchases might no longer be available once New Zealand became a British colony. By early 1840, on the eve of the Treaty of Waitangi, Europeans claimed to own more than 66 million acres (27 million hectares) – more than the total area of the country.”

“As Māori came to realise the absolute nature of land ownership in European eyes, they began to question past sales. In particular, they challenged sales by individual chiefs of land that was traditionally used by groups.

By 1862 most of the South Island, and about one-quarter of the North Island – including large areas of the Wairarapa, Hawke’s Bay and Auckland – had been purchased by the Crown. Another 3.5 million acres (1.4 million hectares) were confiscated in the New Zealand wars of the 1860s.”

“The 1862 and 1865 Native Lands Acts recognised that Māori had rights to uncultivated land, but only if these were specified in a certificate of title. Native land courts were set up to decide which individuals or communities should be recognised as owners and given certificates, bringing Māori landholding into absolute ownership. Once given title, many Māori then sold their land to Pākehā. By 1939 only about 3.5 million acres (1.4 million hectares) of land remained in Māori title.”

“For Pākehā, as for Māori, land ownership was the most important political issue in New Zealand during the 19th century. This was only partly because of its economic importance – owning land had immense cultural and ideological importance to settlers and their descendants, as it did to Māori.”

“Before emigrating, many settlers from Britain and Ireland had held very small plots of land or been landless labourers. They had seen how people had suffered when deprived of land during clearances, when tenant farmers were evicted, and when public commons were enclosed. They were very aware that ownership brought independence and power. The desire to be a freeholding farmer was a powerful theme of settlement and land policy.”

“Wellington province granted smallholders areas of 40–200 acres (16–80 hectares) on deferred payment, on the condition they improved the land (a system also used in Hawke’s Bay). There were provisions for settlements such as the Hutt Small-Farms Association, the Foxton Special Settlement and the settlement of Scandinavians in northern Wairarapa. However, Wellington also gave sheep and dairy farmers the right to buy land in blocks of at least one square mile at the low price of 7s. 6d. per acre. A small network of merchants and farmers connected to the provincial government quickly came to control very large areas, especially in the Wairarapa.”

“Land ownership in the 1880s

While some sharp inequalities of land ownership remained, access to some land was very widely distributed by the 1880s. In 1882 more than 71,000 individuals were listed as freeholders – about half the adult male settler population. About 47% of freeholders owned land worth less than £250. Despite a large increase of adult males between 1882 and 1902, the rate of land ownership remained constant at about 50%. When Crown leaseholds are added to the total, approximately 60% of adult Pākehā men had access to land over those two decades. Even small areas provided opportunities – smallholdings allowed wage-earning families to grow enough food to feed themselves and profit from the sale of any surplus produce.”

“Freehold versus Crown leasehold tenure

By 1935 land ownership had stabilised and would remain largely unchanged for the next half-century. 32.5% of the land area of New Zealand was freehold, 26.7% was under Crown lease or licence, 23.4% was in public reserves, and the rest was either Māori land (6.8%), Crown land available for disposal (2.8%), or unfit for settlement (7.8%). In Northland and Auckland three-quarters of the occupied land was freehold and one-quarter leasehold. In the South Island, one-fifth of the occupied land in Otago, and two-fifths in Canterbury, was freehold. Pastoral farming, still a major agricultural activity, relied on Crown leasehold land.”

“Māori as major landowners

Following Treaty of Waitangi settlements, some tribes became major landowners again, either by the direct return of Crown land or, more commonly, because Māori had first right of refusal of surplus Crown land. Ngāi Tahu became the largest landowner in the South Island after the Crown.”

[gracehowardprocess-blog]

Class Exercise: 17/03

During our tutorial, we were asked to bring in a object that has some sort of relevance to our project and explain it to a group of people. I brought in a book from the library “Maori: a photographic and social history”. As a group, we were asked to come up with a few key words that describe/ represent our topic:

Controlled Narrative

Suppression/ Erasure

Perspective

History

Going back to go foward

[gracehowardprocess-blog]

‘Maori: A Photographic and Social History’

“Maoris have long been amused or offended by the notion that Maori history began with the arrival of Pakeha New Zealand”

“History does not come with the birth of literature... History is the story of the human occupation of a place compiled from surviving evidence.”

“’Maori’ meant ‘normal’ or ‘usual’... There was no need to distinguish such ordinary people from others until the land was shared by others” (p37)

Maori mythology stood as a source of measure, “it gave them meaning and continuity”, “it offers clues to the manner in which they viewed the world and the puzzle of their existence in it.” (p39)

“It was the inability of most Europeans to distinguish between Maori and European expectations in this process- or even to admit the existence or the validity of Maori expectations -that led to most of the difficulties between the races in the nineteenth century” (p46)

“Organised colonisation of New Zealand began in earnest in the late 1830s.” (p48)

Regarding the Treaty of Waitangi, The British Government for keen to take the next steps to colonise New Zealand and decided that they wanted to get consent form the native inhabitants. The treaty seemed to be drafted hastily and there was a lot of confusion due to the differing languages. “The missionary Henry Williams equally hastily translated in into Maori, but in so doing he virtually rewrote it, apparently so as to make it more acceptable to the Maoris who would debate its merits” (p48)

“The Te Ati chief Wharepouri told Edward Jerningham Wakefield at Port Nicholson that he had expected about 10 Pakeha to settle there, one for each pa; when he saw 1000 who stepped off the first New Zealand Company ship at Petone, he panicked. ...It seemed like as alien invasion” “Previously European settlement had taken place on Maori terms, with Maoris in control of the process. Slowly Maoris close to European coastal communities in the 1840s began to realise the extent to which their identity and customs would be swallowed by the mighty influx of foreigners.” A metaphor the Maori oratories began to use for this was the power of saltwater to contaminate the fresh water. “(a nice metaphor this, because European flesh was reputed to taste markedly more salty than Maori)” (p48)

“On 8 July 1844, The Bay of Islands Ngapuhi chief Hone Heke chopped down a flagstaff at Kororareka. Although he had signed the Treaty of Waitangi, Heke had become disenchanted with the effects of European colonisation. He believed the flying of the British flag deprived chiefs of their mana and Maoris of their land. He announced his determination to remove this symbol of Maori subjugation and called on the Governor to raise a Maori flag in its place” “On January 10 the following year, Heke cut down the new flagstaff. FitzRoy offered a reward on his capture and sent more Imperial troops.” (p49)

“By 1860 the European population in New Zealand surpassed that of Maori for the first time, and it seemed to some chiefs that tribal culture and the mana of traditional Maori society would be entirely erased if steps were not taken to preserve them. And for some a prerequisite for conservation was a ban on further land sales” (p49,50) “A series of meeting in the North Island in the 1950s canvassed the idea that Maori should unite under a king. The movement... arose from the fact that the presence of Europeans had created a sense of ‘Maoriness’ (and it was in this decade that the word Maori came to be used for the first time by New Zealand Polynesians to describe themselves). It also arose to belief that the key to apparent European superiority lay in their unity under their own monarch, it was argued, they would be able to match European confidence and cohesion, retain their lands and preserve customary lay and traditional authority.” “Wiremu Tamihana of Ngati Haua, remembered as the Kingmaker, voiced this view and Potatau’s raising-up ceremony: ‘The Maori King and the Queen of England to be joined in accord; God to be over them both.’” (p50). “Many settler began to voice the opinion the only war could erase Maori disloyalty and open up land for further settlement. In this atmosphere, war did indeed break out. Fighting began in Taranaki where government officers had bought land from a minor Ati Awa chief not entitled to sell it.” (p50) 

[gracehowardprocess-blog]

This writer talks about racism in New Zealand, and how it supposedly “doesn’t count as real racism”. New Zealand is looked at to be progressive, but in reality we are not. She states several examples within mainstream media that are overtly racist but are overlooked, an when they are confronted are brushed aside as being over-dramatic and that people should be focussing their energy toward ‘real racism’. Ignoring malicous and painful historical events and belittling racist acts within mainstream media is extremely damaging.

[gracehowardprocess-blog]

An interesting/ racist personal story from the perspective of a colonial man. Not sure of the year this was written, but is written proof of the colonial gaze and a representation of colonial ideologies surrounding Maori in New Zealand and indigenous people in general.