In this guest post, Prof Dame Anne Salmond provides a comment on Arcia Tecun’s recent piece, “A Dark Perspective of Anthropology,” offering another perspective on how to combat racism in Aotearoa. If you would like to continue the conversation and contribute to this series, please contact our social media manager for more information.
This is a fascinating post. Its good that these matters should be passionately discussed.
I agree with most of the analysis, but have a slightly different take on how positive change is likely to happen.
From earliest colonial times to the present, as Arcia Tecun has argued, Māori have led their own struggles for freedom.
In letters and speeches and petitions, they have brilliantly deployed concepts such as tika and justice, mana and honour, truth and pono.
Resonances between Māori ideas and Western concepts such as fairness and freedom have been used to seek leverage, and traction.
For these non-violent strategies to succeed, though, there have to be people on the other side of the debate who will listen.
This requires a degree of empathy, and respect. In that regard, 'black and white' versions of history (from either side) don't help. Often, they simply incite alienation and disrespect.
These are difficult questions. If the answers were easy, racist attitudes would have been eliminated by now.
In our small, intimate society, fighting racism is one thing. Creating a non-racist society in Aotearoa may be something else altogether.
I'm not sure how this can happen, but drawing on different aspects of ancestral legacies to create new kinds of relational framings looks promising.
This is already under way, in legal approaches that recognise te mana o te wai in Aotearoa, the rights of waterways to thrive and prosper; or ancestral places like the Urewera; or Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa, the Pacific Ocean.
Maybe the toughest, and best challenge will be to rethink our relationships with each other, as different kinds of people who live together in ways that are tika, and have mana.
As someone who also cares deeply about anthropology, and this country, I hope that we can find ways to smash through ancient habits of mind that deprive others of freedom, happiness and life chances.
The question is, how to do this.
Who knows? But its great to see a new generation of anthropologists tackling these questions.
Nā reira, kua pau te hau. Time for others to take over the debate.
