Living on the Fault Line – Aotearoa’s Bicultural Future
Author: John Bluck
Publishers: Quentin Wilson Publishing, Christchurch, 2025
In 2022 John Bluck published Becoming Pakeha – a journey between two cultures. In my review in the April 2023 SOFiA Newsletter I highlighted the author’s life, the historical framework of the bicultural journey, and key issues for race relations in Aotearoa New Zealand.Why is the new book necessary? The answer is given in the opening lines of Chapter One titled ‘More urgent than ever’. The key words are edited:
As life shaking as any earthquake, colliding harder than tectonic plates, the fault line of ethnic divide shapes everyone who lives here in Aotearoa New Zealand… Though earlier conversations have been restrained, they have been cranked up to alarming levels since the arrival of the 2023 coalition government. Led by Act’s David Seymour with New Zealand First singing along, a chorus of protest swells against ‘Maorification’, unfair privilege, reviews of te tiriti and a counter-protest from Maori and sympathetic Pakeha.
From the 300 page Becoming Pakeha to the 136 page Living on the fault line, the Reverend John Bluck issues a prophetic call that Aotearoa faces a tipping point.
The book is organised into three sections: Part One: Untangling our Heritage; Part Two: What Brings Us Together?; Part Three: How to Live on a Fault Line.
Part One looks at the history of our people. It discusses the choice of names we give ourselves: New Zealander, Kiwi, Pakeha, tangata tiriti. It explores cultural identities, contrasting the ease with which Maori own their iwi whakapapa with the competing and sometimes confusing assumptions made by Pakeha settlers.
In Chapter 4, A Heritage that Waits to be Valued: ‘We took the ground beneath our feet for granted and the stereotypes inside our heads were slow to change. Now time has run out. We need to read these signs more urgently than ever, come to terms with the racism and injustice of our history and learn to live as partner rather than proprietor.’
And then, as a bridge to Part Two: ‘But not all the mental images are bad and need to be discarded. Discovering identity is about cleaning up the house you come from, not burning it down. Repentance where it’s needed, but no self-destruction.’
Part Two digs more deeply into cultural ways that divide and unite Māori and Pakeha. Among the 11 chapters the headings tell us the focus: What about the weather? (climate change), Dressed up but not too flash (clothing fashions), Who speaks like that? (accents), Town and Country (the urban/rural divide), What’s for dinner? (food tastes), A Place to come home to (homelessness) Who’s the underdog (respect for the underdog).
The author explores the differing way that the ‘underdog’ image impacts on Pakeha and Māori. For Pakeha successes against the odds – from the sports field to the opera stage – are enjoyed ‘vicariously but are not straightforward’.
Bluck continues: ‘For Māori the underdog label seems to carry a different, darker resonance – the legacy of a history of dispossession and denial, borne by a whole people and individuals. That underdog description becomes an inevitable burden as successive governments treated Māori as a dying race and saw assimilation as the only sensible policy. It wasn’t until the 1970’s that the treaty regained centre stage and the tino rangatiratanga it promised was taken seriously again. The renaissance of language and culture that followed has created a tidal wave of confidence in being Māori. The explosive reaction to the coalition government’s policies is a testament to that confidence.’
Part Three’s heading echoes the book title: How to live on a fault line? In the 20 final pages, Bluck offers practical ideas on the way forward, which can only be through a diversity of co-governance communities. It’s exciting reading! Chapter 21 titled Honestly Speaking sums up the bicultural/multicultural history of Aotearoa in two pages.
Chapter 22 titled We’ve come too far not to go further explores co-governance with a return to the signing of the Treaty at Waitangi in February 1840 as the founding of our bicultural journey.
As Bluck writes: ‘More than being a legal document, the treaty was an act of mutual consent, following the orders of the Colonial Office, which said it had to be an ‘amicable negotiation with, and the free concurrence of the chiefs’. One hundred and fifty year later Justice Robin Cooke in the Court of Appeal in Wellington ruled that the treaty ‘created an enduring relationship of a fiduciary nature akin to a partnership’. And that’s not just a legal ruling. It’s a pithy summary of the spirit and intent of te tiriti. And it’s the heart and soul of what co-governance is all about.’
The steps taken by mainline churches starting in the 1980’s are covered – Anglicans and Methodists are mentioned. ‘But the dream of a uniting church that reflected the values of both the gospel and te tiriti had slipped away, with little sign of returning any time soon’. Bluck’s judgement is sobering: ‘Maori leaders were the bellweathers in this process, pointing the way ahead for two peoples forming one church in one nation. Pakeha were not ready or willing to listen.’
In this review I intentionally chose a summary of the skeletal bones of the 25 chapters with very generous quotations giving the spirit of the writing. The latter reflect the life experience of the author, including as director of communications for the World Council of Churches in Geneva (1976 to 1986), journalist positions with church publications in Aotearoa New Zealand, and postings within the Anglican Church from parish priest to bishop. His ability to straddle the secular and sacred worlds give his writings a unique quality.
There are many gems of writing and wisdom that readers of this timely book will relish – not the least the image of dancing the tango on the fault line!
A final challenge: ‘Chasing normality becomes a dead-end game when looking for a future Aotearoa. It’s going to have to be found through embracing our entanglement, living between as well as inside our different cultures, ensuring one doesn’t try to dominate and define the other. And that’s hard work.’ -- John Thornley