Indigenous Identity and Resistance: Researching the Diversity of Knowledge

273 Pages·2010·2.99 MB·English

by  Brendan Hokowhitu

Published by Otago University Press PO Box 56 / Level 1, 398 Cumberland Street Dunedin, New Zealand
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Email: [email protected]
First published 2010, Revised (ch. 6) 2011
Volume copyright © Brendan Hokowhitu, Nathalie Kermoal, Chris Andersen, Michael Reilly, Anna
Petersen, Isabel Altamirano-Jiménez and Poia Rewi 2010
Individual chapters copyright © individual authors as listed in contents list 2010
ISBN 978-1-877372-83-4 (print)
ISBN 978-0-947522-39-1 (Kindle)
ISBN 978-0-947522-40-7 (EPUB)
ISBN 978-0-947522-41-4 (ePDF)
Publisher: Wendy Harrex
Editor: Georgina McWhirter
Designed and typeset by Christine Buess Maps p. 91–2: Allan Kynaston
Front cover: J. Allen, ‘Prolongation of Rattray Street Jetty’, The Hocken Collections Uare Taoka o Hakena,
University of Otago, Dunedin, album 10, p. 26.
Back cover: Tipi outside Faculty of Native Studies, University of Alberta, Edmonton, 2007.
Ebook conversion 2017 by meBooks
LIST OF CONTENTS
Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Acknowledgements
Introduction Indigenous Studies: Research, Identity and Resistance
Brendan Hokowhitu
IDENTITY
CHAPTER 1 Mixed Ancestry or Métis?
Chris Andersen
CHAPTER 2 ‘My Poetry is a Fire’
Alice Te Punga Somerville
CHAPTER 3 Culture: Compromise or Perish!
Poia Rewi
CHAPTER 4 piko ka-sôhki-nitohtaman ka-nisitohtaman nêhiyawêwin You Must
Listen Very Hard to Understand the Cree Language
Naomi McIlwraith
CHAPTER 5 Resisting Language Death: A Personal Exploration
Hana O’Regan
CHAPTER 6 Towards a Model for Indigenous Research
Jim Williams
CHAPTER 7 Rediscovering the Hidden Heritage from Ancient Mangaia
Michael P.J. Reilly
RESISTANCE
CHAPTER 8 Indigenous Political Representation and Comparative Research
Janine Hayward
CHAPTER 9 Urban Indigenous Governance Practices
Shalene Jobin Vandervelde
CHAPTER 10 The Nationalist Gaze of an Aboriginal Artist
Nathalie Kermoal
CHAPTER 11 The Fiction of Post-Colonial Pacific Writers
Sina Vaai
CHAPTER 12 Neoliberalism, Racialised Gender and Indigeneity
Isabel Altamirano-Jiménez
CHAPTER 13 A Genealogy of Indigenous Resistance
Brendan Hokowhitu
Notes
Glossary of Māori Words
List of Contributors
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
University of Alberta
We would like to thank the Provost of the University of Alberta, Carl
Amrhein, for all his support, financial and otherwise, for the original Te Tumu
initiative in Dunedin, New Zealand (which he and his team took the time to
attend with us). As well, we thank Ellen Bielawski (Dean of the Faculty of
Native Studies at the University of Alberta) for her leadership and support in
the initiative in all its phases; Elder Florida Thunder for her wisdom and
advice on cultural protocols while in New Zealand; our colleagues at the
Faculty of Native Studies for taking up the slack while we were away in
Aotearoa/New Zealand but also for their assistance during the ‘Research as
Resistance: Exploring the Diversity of Indigenous Studies Approaches’
conference in Edmonton that produced many of the papers published in this
volume. Likewise, we thank the various academic units on campus at the
University of Alberta for their financial support of this conference. Finally, we
would like to thank Emily Snyder for her administrative assistance in helping
us with the Edmonton conference; her work was crucial to its success and we
thank her for her efforts.
University of Otago
We would especially like to thank Alistair Fox, former Pro-Vice-Chancellor,
Division of Humanities, and Acting Dean, Te Tumu. He provided financial
support for ‘Turoua ngā Whetū: Celebrating Indigenous Knowledge’, the
2006 colloquium of Indigenous scholars held here in Dunedin, the Te Tumu
staff who travelled to Edmonton, and, most importantly, ensured this
volume’s future at a time when its viability seemed in doubt. Our thanks to all
those who made the 2006 colloquium such an exciting gathering of
Indigenous scholars. Thanks, too, to everyone who helped with Te Tumu’s
visits to the University of Alberta, and those who contributed at various times
to the development of this volume. Janine Hayward wishes to acknowledge
the support of the Law Faculty, University of British Columbia, for their
support with this research. The editors thank all the contributors for their
passion and commitment. Our thanks also to archaeologist Atholl Anderson,
whose commentary helped in the revision of parts of Chapter 6 in 2011.
Finally, particular thanks to all those scholars who silently contributed to the
quality of this volume by acting as anonymous readers.

Turoua koutou katoa, ngā Manawa-taki-hā.
Patuki tahi he ngaru tai tawhiti, he ngaru tai tata.
He rōma mātauranga te māpuna i nuku.
INTRODUCTION
Indigenous Studies: Research, Identity and Resistance
Brendan Hokowhitu
This collection of essays stems from papers presented at two international
colloquia devoted to transcultural understandings of Indigenous Studies, with
a particular emphasis on Indigenous identity and resistance. The first was held
in New Zealand in 2006, hosted by Te Tumu School of Māori, Pacific and
Indigenous Studies at the University of Otago, Dunedin. The second, held in
Canada in 2007, was hosted by the Faculty of Native Studies, University of
Alberta, Edmonton. Both colloquia concentrated on bringing together
Indigenous Studies academics working in Canada, New Zealand and the
broader Pacific, in the hope of sharing, comparing and creating research
conversations that transcended the imperial boundaries of the colonial
‘nations’ in which we are located. The colloquia aimed at facilitating a
consciousness and space that would foster and enable discussion on what a
transcultural ‘Indigenous Studies’ discipline might resemble.
In this edited collection we hope to draw the reader’s attention to the
multifaceted nature of Indigenous Studies by specifically questioning in what
ways local Indigenous contexts relate to each other. First and foremost,
however, it is important to recognise that as a canonical field Indigenous
Studies does not exist. Its genesis has been ad hoc (yet organic) in the sense
that the amorphous concept of Indigenous Studies has arisen out of pre-
established local departments, such as Māori Studies in New Zealand and
Native or First Nations Studies in Canada. Such departments remain the
strongholds in the various local contexts, while Indigenous Studies per se is a
very recent auxiliary to localised core curricula. Typically, local departments
have developed as subdivisions of larger faculties that have their own
established canons, such as Anthropology. Indigenous Studies thus lacks any
semblance of a coherent genealogy from which it can build, in large part
because it has borrowed multilaterally from various disciplines, while trying
to account for a diverse range of Indigenous contexts. This is not to say that
local departments necessarily lack a coherent genealogy within their own
distinct context. However the broader genealogical incongruence and orphan-
like history suggests that the genesis of a universal Indigenous Studies is at
best embryonic.
Although the timing of this collection reflects a growing interest in the
conceptualisation of Indigenous Studies as a discipline, the will to move
beyond local Māori, Aboriginal or Native Studies departments to develop the
canons of Indigenous Studies remains ambiguous. A handful of Indigenous
scholars have attempted to conceive the underpinning tenets of a ‘universal’
Indigenous Studies, while others have conducted comparative work across
colonial contexts, theorised at a global level and/or examined the impact of
world events upon Indigenous people. Indeed, the inevitable impulse to
produce internationally recognised scholarship within Western academia has
compelled many Indigenous writers to theorise their local context via
dialogues understandable across colonial contexts. As pointed out by Linda
Tuhiwai Smith, ‘the movement has developed a shared international language
or discourse which enables Indigenous activists to talk to each other across
their cultural differences’.1 Yet such discourses are often epistemologically
limited because of the ontological importance of local contexts, languages and
cultures. Moreover, as an unfortunate consequence of the need to share
through ‘international languages’, often Indigenous Studies scholars find
themselves in the unenviable position of unearthing common-ground (i.e.,
‘Indigenous Studies’) within the ontological violence of colonialism and,
indeed, in the languages of the coloniser. In this catch-22 dilemma, inevitably
loss occurs. As Naomi McIlwraith outlines in this volume, ‘A common
struggle is to translate a concept from one language to another: some essential
quality in the original language escapes the colonial language’s ability to
express it’.
In this collection, as with the nebulous concept of Indigenous Studies in
general, ‘truth’ is situated locally. Truth becomes a lived concept beyond and
in resistance to the more detached scientific use of the term; beyond and in
resistance to the impersonal structures of research as a tool for ‘discovery’. It
is the subjective indigenisation of what has typically been conceived of as
objective, whether that be time, history or space, that will challenge the notion
of one monolithic knowledge. Indigenous truth here is not accidental or
objective, it does not come at the conclusion of an argument; it is a requisite
of Indigenous subjectivity. Ironically, the acceptance that truth is amorphous
must be an underpinning canon of the developing discipline of Indigenous