“When Am I Supposed to Teach Māori and Find the Time to Learn it?“: Settler Affirmations in Aotearoa New Zealand Schools

MacDonald, Liana; Smith, Avery; Funaki, Hine

doi:10.1007/s40841-021-00222-3

Cited by 6 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…There are times when gig venues replicate pervasive settler-colonial dynamics which structure many other spaces in society. These dynamics can make the idea of openly calling out racism and embracing Māori identity feel uncomfortable (MacDonald et al, 2021;Stewart et al, 2013). This has led Cee to experience apprehension around performing "Mana", both within and outside of punk venues:…”

Section: Centring Te Ao Māori Through Punkmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Music as Critical Social Theory: Developing Intersectional Feminist Praxis Through Music in Aotearoa (New Zealand)

Trotter-Simons

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This thesis explores music as critical social theory, by looking to how intersectionality, praxis, and music might be interwoven in an Aotearoa (New Zealand) context. Through deploying a range of methods situated in reciprocity, intersectional understandings of positionality, and art as enquiry (Allen, 2012), this thesis explores the musical critical social theories of four Aotearoa-based musicians, Sam Howard-Tawhara, Nikau Te Huki, Marika Pratley, and Cee Te Pania, to build a conceptual framework for developing intersectional feminist praxis through music in Aotearoa. Inspired by Collins’s (2019) recent writing about intersectionality and critical social theory, the thesis begins by conceptualising how intersectional feminism as praxis might be deployed to understand music as critical social theory in the neoliberal, settler colonial context of Aotearoa (New Zealand). Drawing from intersectional applications of positionality and standpoint, the thesis addresses hegemonic whiteness and settler-colonial legacies which impact upon listening and other elements of musical practices and relationalities. Accordingly, my theoretical framework proposes an intersectional feminist praxis shaped by feminist and queer notions of musical affect and resonance. Through analysing the aesthetic and affective dimensions of collaborators’ musical performances, and through the intersectional theoretical framework of the thesis, I propose six integral threads of an intersectional feminist musical praxis rooted in Aotearoa. The first examines the relationship between Blacksound and racial erasure in the creation of popular music, and local and global manifestations of white supremacy (Morrison, 2019; Maultsby, 2016; Norris & Mire, 2022). Drawing from Henderson (2018) and Shilliam (2015), I consider how a practice of naming one’s musical whakapapa or genealogy might be a step towards disrupting both unwitting and ambivalent forms of participation in racial erasure and commodification of Blacksound. Secondly, I propose how an affective love politics might inform the nurturing of the relational webs which make up one’s musical whakapapa or genealogy. Third, I discuss hope within musical resonances, and its vitality to driving praxis. Fourth, I connect hope to honouring both the relational possibilities in Te Tiriti o Waitangi and recent transformative constitutional work in Aotearoa. Fifth, I conceptualise an intersectional ethics of care in hearing music as critical social theory and for moving towards concrete solidarity, beyond the limitations of benevolence (Barber, 2020). Finally, I reflect on how these aspects of developing intersectional feminist praxis come together to engage with two interrelated questions: how music might be simultaneously a site to resist and a site of resistance, and how might the university simultaneously be a site to resist and of resistance. This thesis develops these six threads of intersectional feminist musical praxis in Aotearoa, offering a conceptual provocation inspired by resonant critical theories of the four collaborators in this project.

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Section: Centring Te Ao Māori Through Punkmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Their hesitancy to perform "Mana" in certain contexts may reflect the reality of hegemonic whiteness of punk scenes in Aotearoa. This may lead to Indigenous participants feeling simultaneously hyper-visible and invisible (MacDonald et al, 2021;cf. Douglas, 2014;Young, 1990).…”

Section: Centring Te Ao Māori Through Punkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Music as Critical Social Theory: Developing Intersectional Feminist Praxis Through Music in Aotearoa (New Zealand)

Trotter-Simons

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“…In order to place my research questions in academic and historical context, below I describe the academic texts and theories, from anthropology, education, and occasionally history, which form the basis of my theoretical framework, considering their connections to each other and the ways they 2020). MacDonald, Funaki, and Smith (2021) discuss how the legacies of denial and silence affect teachers and the influence whiteness has on their approach to Māori histories in particular. Together, these three texts provide a discussion of the state of Aotearoa New Zealand's histories, how those histories manifest in and affect the present, and examples of how students and teachers have responded to learning their histories.…”

Section: Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Together, these three texts provide a discussion of the state of Aotearoa New Zealand's histories, how those histories manifest in and affect the present, and examples of how students and teachers have responded to learning their histories. The descriptions and theoretical analysis of racial bonding as an attempt to maintain whiteness and White dominance in MacDonald, Funaki, and Smith (2021) allowed me to recognise the lack of these settler affirmations in my own fieldwork and led me to a deeper analysis of my data, uncovering the related phenomenon of 'settler silences' which I discuss in Chapter Six.…”

Section: Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In their article, Uncanny Pedagogies (2021), Kidman and MacDonald discuss the uncanny quality of violent colonial histories for Pākehā and the influence of the settler-colonial crypt. This discussion addresses many of the ideas explored in Kidman et al (2022), MacDonald MacDonald, Funaki, and, such as discomfort, difficult histories, Pākehā struggles with violent colonial histories, and the legacies of forgetting and silence in New Zealand history (Kidman and MacDonald 2021). Their discussion of the settler-colonial crypt, using Derrida's (1986) metaphor of the sealed crypt, describes the way Māori histories (and the Pākehā role in those histories) are hidden and silenced (MacDonald and Kidman 2021).…”

Section: Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Being 'Good' in the Classroom: Whiteness and Moral Liminality in the 2023 Aotearoa New Zealand Histories Curriculum

Griggs

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This thesis explores how Year 10 social studies students and teachers at Kāpiti College, a secondary school in the North Island of New Zealand, are affected emotionally by whiteness and the White desire to be ‘good’ when learning about colonisation. The influence of whiteness is invisibilised and normalised in the 2023 Aotearoa New Zealand histories curriculum, influencing students and teachers to think of whiteness as ‘neutral’. The new curriculum was introduced to primary and secondary schools in 2023 and was adopted early by Kāpiti College in 2022. Emotional reactions to colonial topics and the effect of whiteness in New Zealand schools have been the subjects of previous research (MacDonald, Funaki, and Smith 2021; MacDonald 2020; Manning 2018; Bell and Russell 2021; MacDonald and Kidman 2021; Harcourt 2020). My research builds on this through an investigation of the influence of the 2023 Aotearoa New Zealand histories curriculum in maintaining and obscuring whiteness. Data was collected over eight weeks of fieldwork with five Year 10 social studies classes at Kāpiti College, using classroom participant observation, teacher semi-structured interviews, one lunchtime focus group with students, and an anonymous student survey. This thesis explores the effect that the dominance of whiteness had on the emotional responses of my participants. This included Pākehā students and teachers and their desire to maintain White innocence, tauiwi students who sometimes bought into that whiteness and did not see their settler stories reflected in the classroom, and Māori students whose anger and sense of injustice were silenced by whiteness. Using Thomassen’s (2014) discussion of liminality, Fassin’s (2013) discussion of resentment and ressentiment, Applebaum’s (2010) discussion of whiteness, and Abraham and Torok’s (1986) cryptonomy, I argue that teachers and students experience varying types of discomfort. These include the desire to be ‘good’ and the resulting moral liminality which influences them to self-censor and become silent. Pākehā teachers and students are unsure how to be ‘good’ in response to the violent histories of colonisation, attempting to suppress uncomfortable emotions within the classroom environment, thus maintaining whiteness and coloniality through silence. Māori students’ emotional expressions are limited by White silences and the omission of Māori resistance histories, disregarded in the name of ‘neutrality’.

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State Education and Historical Reappraisal: Changes to the Draft Version of the Aotearoa New Zealand’s Histories Curriculum Content

Burns

2023

NZ J Educ Stud

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English-medium state schools in New Zealand have been directed to begin implementing the new Aotearoa New Zealand’s histories curriculum content from 2023. In response to the draft version of the curriculum document, Bell & Russell (Bell and Russell, New Zealand Journal of Educational Studies 57:21–35, 2022) highlighted the centrality of Māori histories and critical engagement with colonialism within the document and argued implementation could inaugurate “a new phase in narrating the nation” (p. 21). However, changes to the draft version have created more flexibility for teaching and learning to avoid the most challenging and transformative aspects of the curriculum content. This article employs Deleuze and Guattari’s (Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia (B. Massumi Trans.). University of Minnesota Press.) concepts of the assemblage and deterritorialization to analyse the changes to the draft and explore the relationships between historical reappraisal and state education. These changes provide a locus to examine the workings of the state education assemblage and gain insights into where efforts can be directed to support transformative history education in Aotearoa.

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“When Am I Supposed to Teach Māori and Find the Time to Learn it?“: Settler Affirmations in Aotearoa New Zealand Schools

Cited by 6 publications

References 21 publications

Music as Critical Social Theory: Developing Intersectional Feminist Praxis Through Music in Aotearoa (New Zealand)

Music as Critical Social Theory: Developing Intersectional Feminist Praxis Through Music in Aotearoa (New Zealand)

Being 'Good' in the Classroom: Whiteness and Moral Liminality in the 2023 Aotearoa New Zealand Histories Curriculum

State Education and Historical Reappraisal: Changes to the Draft Version of the Aotearoa New Zealand’s Histories Curriculum Content

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