SOFiA - Exploring Values, Meaning and Spirituality: Newsletter issue 165, Apr 2023
Book Review: Becoming Pakeha – a journey between two cultures, by John Bluck.
Publisher: HarperCollins (2022) 296 pages
This is an important book for all New Zealanders to read, with the General Election in October putting race relations in the spotlight. While written with a depth of academic research and writings, the personal story of the author’s life in the first eleven chapters, titled Walking Between Two Cultures, is a very readable introduction.
Parts Two and Three, titled Where We Are and Ways Ahead, covered in another eleven chapters, provide a historical framework for the history of the bicultural journey from earliest European settlements to a multicultural Aotearoa New Zealand today. The final Part Four, Finding a Shared Future, is a summary in two chapters: ‘The landscape has shifted’ and ‘Aotearoa as it just might be’.
John Bluck’s life straddled diverse worlds, not common in the life of the typical ordained church leader. He’s been a journalist, radio broadcaster, editor to two major church newspapers, tertiary lecturer, communication director with the World Council of Churches in Geneva. In the church he’s led rural parishes and senior episcopal roles, ending as Bishop of the Anglican Diocese of Waiapu based in Napier.
His post-graduate studies in Cambridge, Massachusetts in the late 60s, threw him ‘Into the cauldron’ (Chapter title) of the Civil Rights movement. He was present in Chicago in 1968 when Mayor Colin Daley allowed troops to turn their guns on protesting youth. In the 70s, working with the World Council of Churches, he experienced the furore created by the council’s Programme to Combat Racism. This international exposure to racial conflict prepared him well when he came back to New Zealand in 1984.
In the two middle Parts, the author discuses key issues in our bicultural journey, illustrating what he describes in the Preface in these words: ‘This is a book about the discomfort of being Pakeha; how they might live with that, get used to wearing the name until they find a better one, learn to laugh about it, and even to relax and enjoy it.’
To illustrate this approach, mixing the edgy and the humorous, I take Chapter Fifteen, ‘Call me by my name’. Bluck’s opening words: ‘Compared with Pakeha, Maori are very clear about where they belong and who they are collectively. They never have to debate what to call themselves as Maori, iwi by iwi. Pakeha, by contrast is an ambivalent name.’ He continues to explore the Maori origin of the name they gave to people of the other culture, describing it as a ‘gift’ from Maori to Pakeha. ‘And to see the word as a gift makes all the difference. In Maori lore, the giver continues to share in the benefit of a gift that’s been given. By accepting the name we accept a connection and an ever-evolving meaning.’ Using ‘New Zealander’ as an alternative name is just running away from the realities of living in Aotearoa.
A quotation from Michael King’s earlier and important book, Being Pakeha (1985), is supportive of a Pakeha ‘symbiotic relationship to Maoritanga’. Bluck’s acknowledgement, given in the Introduction, to other books and research papers, reminds us of his role as ‘journalist’. His sources are listed at the end of the book in the Bibliography of around seventy titles.
Cultural influences that enrich Pakeha and Maori include places and memories, sharing of food and music. Born in Nuhaka, where his father ran a trucking firm, he recalls tradesmen’s sheds, school bus shelters and old cream stands, ‘richer and more important than Pakeha imagine’. There is the generous feeding that Maori give to Pakeha, now reciprocated by Pakeha, quoting Edmonds Cookery Book as ‘the Holy Bible of feeding each other properly’. And, at the end of a sometimes fractious gathering of Maori and Pakeka, the band struck up and a vocalist moved among the tables as he sang ‘Bill Bailey, won’t you come home’. He writes, ‘The music had an electrifying effect on everyone and the tone of the conversation that night suddenly shifted, thanks to an imported song. It didn’t rely on everyone agreeing but spoke to the humanity we shared, and sparked a new desire to listen to each other.’
Chapter Fifteen concludes with comment on women’s use of language in building relationships. I quote in full, as it illustrates a strong confessional note, thoughtful self-analysis, as an undercurrent throughout this autobiography: ‘So much of the work on Pakeha identity has been framed in male terms, as Jock Philips’ significant work, A Man’s Country? (1987) made clear. Men of my era, especially those whose understanding of women was formed in the boys’ boarding schools, have had to be reconstructed and we’re still a work in progress. My wife has had to make that a lifelong task, and I’ve been helped, nudged and sometimes booted along by women parishioners, students and staff colleagues wherever I’ve worked. I’ve had to watch not only my language but also to rewrite it, and to know when to stand back and shut up. I’m learning, not well enough yet, because I’m surrounded by old, white men like myself who find this bicultural debate deeply troubling. I want to say to them: remember we had to reinvent ourselves to be able to work and live respectfully and happily with women, to trust and be trusted by them. Maybe Pakeha have to go through something similar with Maori.’
Chapter 17 titled ‘Promises, Promises’ is a succinct historical summary of the Government’s breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi, from its signing in 1840 to the occupation of Bastion Point in 1977/78. It concludes with the story of Hone Heke’s chopping down the flagpole at Kororāreka (later Russell) in 1844. Bluck writes, ‘Pakeha history has portrayed that as an act of violent aggression against the Crown. No mention is made of the fact that he owned the flagpole and had erected it to fly the flag of the United Tribes of New Zealand, a Confederation of Maori tribes based in the Far North. Once the Treaty is signed, the flagpole was used to fly the Union Jack, much to Heke’s displeasure. He saw the Treaty being dishonoured and wrote to the governor: ‘I cut down the flagpole firstly because it was mine, and secondly because it had neither breath nor bones/blood and could feel no pain.’
The second part of this chapter discussed the key role played by the missionaries in early Pakeha relations with Maori, and the deep spirituality on both sides, underlining the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi - as much a religious covenant as a legal document. This early partnership lies behind the drawing up, starting in the 1980s, of new ways of restoring a broken relationship. Bluck gives brief coverage to constitutional changes in the Anglican Church with three tikanga (obligations and conditions) in 1992 – Maori, Pakeha and Pasifika. More on this topic warrants other writers and researchers – telling the parallel stories of constitutional changes in the Methodist Church, Presbyterian Church and Catholic Church, not to leave out the stories of smaller Christian groups such as the Quakers. This revisit and enrichment of our dual histories is well underway and is finding readership in new publications.
This reviewer has always wondered why the secular media has not noticed and covered the pioneer work empowering Maori to exercise greater autonomy within their European colonial churches. This has led to varied models for partnership in ministry and mission, including self-governance for Maori. There are many lessons to learn, errors to avoid, and mutual blessings to share.
The final Part Four titled Finding a Shared Future gives the reader two chapters covering twenty-five pages. John Bluck’s projections, based on what is happening now, are overall hopeful. Topics include the growth in those speaking te reo, talented Maori having a public presence as journalists and columnists on radio and TV and in newspapers, in music performances and recordings, and as visual artists in carving, weaving, and clothing designs. Twenty-nine Maori politicians in Parliament! Maori and Pakeha are talking much more together, especially in policy and action discussions and legislation in Parliament aimed at bridging the gaps. The work has begun on a new bicultural history, reflecting the diverse iwi stories along with a similar diversity of European and multicultural stories. What a rich resource for education from early schooling to a myriad of lifelong learning!
The edgy topic, currently haunting our air waves and polluting our relationships, is the recent digital arrival in cyberspace, ‘an ugly feature of our landscape’. John Bluck writes of ‘those that wear the racist label deliberately, even proudly, as a chosen and deliberate attitude aimed at those less powerful and privileged. They must be named and shamed. There are others who give racist offence out of ignorance, misguided beliefs, years of being surrounded by people who think it’s okay, even funny. Getting such people to change is more about education than accusation and shaming, helping them see the destructive effect of their words.’
There are key names quoted, whose contributions over recent years are thoroughly deserving of wider readership: Moana Jackson, Judge Joe Williams and Dame Anne Salmond are key Maori names. Jackson’s contribution to Imagining Decolonisation (Bridget Williams Books 2020) is a good place to start. The chapter ‘The landscape has shifted’ includes wise words from Moana Jackson:
‘(Moana) Jackson suggests the way ahead might not be so much about decolonisation as an “ethic of restoration”, whereby we all work on finding the truth about our part of the story. That would involve rebalancing and rebuilding relationships between the cultures, restoring their independence and, in his words, rekindling faith in the “ought to be” in this land, to draw upon the same land-and-tikanga-centred way of ordering society that was envisaged in Te Tiriti.
How we talk about each other and hear each other’s stories will make or break our bicultural future. It will do what Ngati Kahungungu call mahi tuhono – the work that brings people together. Jackson has the qualities that this restoration work involves: the value of place and protecting the land, of tikanga that shape how we ought to be living here, of community and belonging and balance in relationships and of conciliation building a consensual democracy. There’s nothing threatening about that list, nothing that isn’t as good for Pakeha as it is for Maori.’
John Thornley