This blog post was written for a panel I was a part of for an Aboriginal Health Research Forum in 2017 in my capacity as a qualitative researcher. I re-found the text recently and felt called to share this here for those who desire to know more about my background, and who are ready to take responsibility for their own healing. Often when we begin the healing process, we need to face the impacts that intergenerational trauma have on our lives. We need to learn to forgive our ancestors, we need to understand the historical context and we need to step forward, strong in who we are… regardless.
I often write about identity and this is continually shifting and changing as I integrate aspects of myself and my culture into my work. I am Māori and Pākehā and I do not view my culture as static, nor is my identity.
The intent with which I shared these words in 2017 was as a mixed-race woman wanting to share hope for Aboriginal people in Perth who are facing what I often consider horrific and unfair treatment because of their skin colour, ignorance, fear, and misunderstanding. As with all stories and experiences I share, this is 100% my own individual perspective and how I have processed my own history. My family, aunties, uncles, Dad, sisters and brother may tell you a different perspective of their understanding of our history.
As I step forward into a new journey of teaching and sharing wānanga this speech is as relevant today in 2019, as it was in 2017 when I first shared it. I am deeply proud of my culture and I share from this place of pride and mana. Having said that, sometimes I do not feel that I acknowledge enough, the depth of damage that colonisation did for our people. The strength it took to continue practicing our culture, amidst fears of being put in jail, strapped in school, or uncertainty about how one could provide for their family are real.
When people are operating out of trauma, they do things that we cannot understand as we stand in a healthier place. When we consider that when left unexamined, this trauma is passed down through generations. At this time we are doing deep healing as a global community. I see this in my own healing journey and the journey of many clients I walk alongside.
The legacy of our ancestors walks with us all every day. I continually question how I can best share the wisdom I have been blessed to receive, to uplift those who feel called to this path. As I step onto this new path, I am sure that I will make mistakes. I acknowledge that despite all the blessings and transmissions I received, that I have often been merely a witness to the racism those who are darker than me have encountered.
Ko te mihi tuatahi ki te atua, nana nei nga mea katoa
Ko te mihi tuarua ki te whare e tu nei, tū tonu tū tonu mai
Ko te mihi tuatoru ki te tangata whenua ō Noongar, tautoko mai tautoko mai, whakamoemiti mai.
I thank our creator, to whom all things belong
The building that holds us here, standing here, looking forward.
To the Noongar people who are the traditional custodians of this land on which we stand.
And to you and all Aboriginal people who have shared with me, I am deeply grateful.
I speak today as a wahine toa, a strong woman who is white and Māori, and also an immigrant to Australia. I speak as a woman who one week ago was crying deeply for her cultural pain, and the pain that my being, and choice to embody the teachings passed to me as a healer activated in my Aunty.
Story can be a powerful teaching tool, and can help us to relate even with diverse backgrounds. It allows us to find common ground.
As we stand here on Noongar Boodjar, each one of you would have had a different reaction to me, this apparently white woman, speaking Te Reo Māori in Australia. While this is a normal custom in New Zealand. Some of you here may be curious. Others may feel triggered by how a white woman stands here speaking her reo. Or you may be questioning protocol and if it is appropriate for me to be speaking an Indigenous language on Noongar Boodjar. If you are from New Zealand, you may feel nostalgic for home.
So while today we have spoken a lot about the loss of trauma from children being stolen and the real implications, alcohol, drugs and abuse. These tragedies demand that deep healing take place and this deep healing is not able to take place if we are unable to acknowledge the deep wound of our split identity as Indigenous peoples. For many of us, our very being, our very choice of who we are, can challenge or offend others. Yet it is necessary work, when we are ready, to heal to come to terms with our identity.
So today I came here to share in the form of story. I stand before you today with an open heart, speaking the wisdom that I am now strong enough to share about my culture and journey. I recognise that my very being, as a white woman standing in front of you, can be traumatic for those who feel they did not have the opportunity to integrate their own culture, yet I stand here with an open heart, hoping that you receive it with the same open heart.
I enjoy story as an art form because they shift and change with time. Each time you hear them, you will find a different piece that you relate to, as well as pieces you may not. I invite you to take that which serves you, and disregard that which does not. Your unique experiences will inform how you interpret my sharing.
Today my story comes to you with my vulnerability, my awareness that my identity shifts constantly. Heeni Collins uses a term I like Ngā tangata awarua ~ coming from two rivers and my story is always told from these two perspectives of being Māori and Pākehā. I cannot be only one or the other, I always carry the privileges of both. When I was growing up, I was encouraged to identify as Māori, rather than Pākehā, this was a constant experience of cognitive dissonance because my skin was so white. Yet at the same time, I never felt only white.
I resonated with being Māori. I was Māori in my heart and soul from my earliest memories. I was called deeply from my soul to know my heritage and towards my calling from a young age. I was fascinated by the stories from my Nan, I could not get enough. My family used to joke that if my Nan walked over a cliff, I would follow her.
I travel on these two rivers. (Sometimes more). As I grow on my path and reach boundaries where certain aspects of my two cultures do not fit with me personally, I re-adjust and shift. This is part of the privilege that also being white has afforded me. I stand here acknowledging this whiteness allowed me to be encouraged to use my voice. But my voice also comes to you from a culture that is strong in whaikorero ~ the art of speaking. The way our old people would challenge each other was not always with weapons, although we have quite a reputation as a warrior race. But with our language, with our words.
I was also lucky enough to enter my first year of primary school in the same year that Māori immersion was introduced to primary schools. In hindsight, this was a deep privilege and a blessing. Also in hindsight, the enthusiasm of a young girl about learning a language that your father may not have learned must have been triggering to my father who is only now feeling comfortable enough to open up to me about his experiences. As were my incessant questions for my Nan about her culture… “Nan what is this in Maori, what is that in Maori?” My Nan who did not speak English until she was 7, may have felt guilt that her white granddaughter was learning the language, while she had made the choice not to teach her children “as it would make life hard for them… as it had for her.”
My Nan has passed now and I navigate paradoxes every day in the choices I make about how I was to express and share my healing gift in this world. Only now, many years after my Nan’s passing am I learning the right questions to ask, and a more respective way to ask them of my elders.
Whiteness is woven throughout our family line since the colonisation of Aotearoa, New Zealand and I often wonder…..
How did my tīpuna choose to identify? Did they actually love their white husbands?
How on earth did our tīpuna, or ancestors manage to navigate the space of being from two cultures?
How must they have felt as they didn’t grow up of the two rivers, like I did. But were forcibly placed into another culture?
And finally, how do we now talk between generations to our elders, let alone, between cultures?
Culture and people’s decisions are not straight-forward. The decisions our ancestors made, or were forced upon them, have many impacts on us in our current day lives – yet we may never be sure why they made the decisions they did. Nor how they felt about them. It is now that I am not hurting for my culture, and deeply feeling the pain of my family that I am able to stand steadily on my own feet and birth my own gifts into the world.
If you are only now beginning on your healing journey, know that initially, you will have to navigate the trauma of previous generations. Know that as you journey down your own river in this work, know that your changing identity will be your constant companion. For us whitefellas, we must not only interrogate our identity, but our privileges.
I don’t have the answers to how we heal collectively, except to know intimately your own inner mana, strength and mauri, life force. That is the gift that your culture has given you, and whilst it may not yet be proven by psychologists, our ancestors guide us from behind the veil, we are still singing their song. We are still sharing their energy.
Once you know that. People feel and hear you on a deeper level than your words, or your story, or your cognitive reasoning.
It is in this vein that I hope you have received some of the transmission.
Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou, I am grateful to have had the opportunity to speak with you all today.