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This Pākehā Life: An Unsettled Memoir
This book is about my making sense here, of my becoming and being Pākehā. Every Pākehā becomes a Pākehā in their own way, finding her or his own meaning for that Maori word. This is the story of what it means to me. I have written this book for Pākehā - and other New Zealanders - curious about their sense of identity and about the ambivalences we Pākehā often experience in our relationships with Maori.
A timely and perceptive memoir from award-winning author and academic Alison Jones. As questions of identity come to the fore once more in New Zealand, this frank and humane account of a life spent traversing Pākehā and Maori worlds offers important insights into our shared life on these islands.
A timely and perceptive memoir from award-winning author and academic Alison Jones. As questions of identity come to the fore once more in New Zealand, this frank and humane account of a life spent traversing Pākehā and Maori worlds offers important insights into our shared life on these islands.
240 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2020
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582 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 59 reviews
August 14, 2021
My wife made me read this because I lacked (and still do) a collective identity, a resonance with being a NZer or defining myself in relation to race, place, or culture. This is despite experiencing and partially acknowledging the influences of privilege, ethnic/cultural ways of thinking, and social identity on who I am and how I live each day.
But this is about the book lol.
Alison's incredibly open and felt way of learning and self-discovery shone through in her homely writing tone and I was quickly completely hooked into her story and her experiences of being Pakeha despite almost nothing in her life bearing any resemblance to my own.
What she learned in her long life about herself and NZ has well informed my intellectual understanding of what it means to exist and relate in this complex multicultural country as a white person. Regardless, her story granted me no sense of place, I guess words don't posses that magic.
What I gained for my own journey was this. I was inspired by her openness, vulnerability, and sensitivity toward knowing herself as a relational person and part of a larger story. Whilst only my own experiences will inform my evolving sense of self, I am able to take these attributes forward with me in such a search. Exciting. Well worth the read both as a lost soul and a Pakeha.
But this is about the book lol.
Alison's incredibly open and felt way of learning and self-discovery shone through in her homely writing tone and I was quickly completely hooked into her story and her experiences of being Pakeha despite almost nothing in her life bearing any resemblance to my own.
What she learned in her long life about herself and NZ has well informed my intellectual understanding of what it means to exist and relate in this complex multicultural country as a white person. Regardless, her story granted me no sense of place, I guess words don't posses that magic.
What I gained for my own journey was this. I was inspired by her openness, vulnerability, and sensitivity toward knowing herself as a relational person and part of a larger story. Whilst only my own experiences will inform my evolving sense of self, I am able to take these attributes forward with me in such a search. Exciting. Well worth the read both as a lost soul and a Pakeha.
December 26, 2020
I knew when I saw this title in the school library that I had to read it.. even though it has sat on the bookshelf at home for three months. I, too, have been grappling with my understanding of my place in this land I call home and how to be in right relationship with tangata whenua in the 21st century. The author's journey resonates with me although there are naturally many differences. I'm two years younger than the author and grew up in the shadow of Maungakiekie rather than in a succession of country towns but the social and political movements she was involved in also had an impact on me. Like the author I have been blessed to have Maori whanau and colleagues who have helped me see situations and history through another lens. It is and has been discomforting and unsettling but it also gives me a stronger sense of who I am in Aotearoa, of the ways in which those Irish tupuna who came here in the 1860s still influence me, of the ways in which they and I have benefited from the colonization of this land, and that a more equitable future starts with owning the past and being ready to observe listen and enter into a dialogue with tangata whenua.
October 9, 2021
I identify with so many aspects of this.
I am pākehā, not New Zealand European. My being is shaped by this country. But, I am not Māori.
My family have benefited and made lives from the colonisation and mistreatment of Māori.
I am still working things out in my head.
I am pākehā, not New Zealand European. My being is shaped by this country. But, I am not Māori.
My family have benefited and made lives from the colonisation and mistreatment of Māori.
I am still working things out in my head.
August 13, 2021
I just inhaled this book in one sitting, and cried uncontrollably for ten minutes after finishing it about identity formation and multitudes of past, present and future self. This was powerful.
January 25, 2021
This book was well-written and compelling. I admire the author's honesty - there were some moments that I found a bit cringe-inducing, such as when she meets up with an old school friend who turns out not to have been a close friend at all, her memories of the girl's home based on Maori stereotypes rather than reality.
That episode was kindof indicative of a discomfort I had with the whole book - Maori as the other, with the structure of the book almost being "Maori I have met." In one sense, I kindof get it - the idea that any notion of Pakeha identity is by definition developed in relation/in response to Maori. But it also feels reductive. I think there are other intersecting factors/influences on Pakeha identity that also need to be considered for a more comprehensive understanding. It's also reductive for Maori, with the episodes recounted obliquely casting the Maori individuals as representative of all Maori - even though it is clear the author is not intending that.
Nonetheless, I related to the author's story. My grandparents were £10 Poms so much of her story resonated, with her voice as a 2nd generation Pakeha reminding me of my mother, also a 2nd generation Pakeha. Perhaps the 3rd, 4th, and 5th generations' stories will be different again? And what of Pakeha whose families have already been here much longer? The only conclusion I can reach is we need more stories, more tales of being Pakeha.
That episode was kindof indicative of a discomfort I had with the whole book - Maori as the other, with the structure of the book almost being "Maori I have met." In one sense, I kindof get it - the idea that any notion of Pakeha identity is by definition developed in relation/in response to Maori. But it also feels reductive. I think there are other intersecting factors/influences on Pakeha identity that also need to be considered for a more comprehensive understanding. It's also reductive for Maori, with the episodes recounted obliquely casting the Maori individuals as representative of all Maori - even though it is clear the author is not intending that.
Nonetheless, I related to the author's story. My grandparents were £10 Poms so much of her story resonated, with her voice as a 2nd generation Pakeha reminding me of my mother, also a 2nd generation Pakeha. Perhaps the 3rd, 4th, and 5th generations' stories will be different again? And what of Pakeha whose families have already been here much longer? The only conclusion I can reach is we need more stories, more tales of being Pakeha.
June 10, 2025
Very honest, confronting and insightful. Can relate to a lot of sentiments and experiences the author has had - including the uncomfortable and cringey ones. Would highly recommend to anyone trying to understand their identity and place in Aotearoa
October 12, 2021
A disarming book. Wonderfully well written for an academic( I read an interview with Jones in which she says this is a real bugbear of hers, how badly many academic writers write), a very clear, well crafted and unpretentious prose-style. Jones uses her life story and that of her parents and ancestors in the first part of the book and - as a pakeha NZer - I was able to use this to compare my own family story and it brought up a lot of memories and made me reflect on the similarities of our families journeys to NZ. The political struggles of the seventies and 80's were familiar. I remember writing an essay about Donna Awatere's Maori Sovereignty in 1986 in my second year at univeristy and thinking that while interesting and important that possibly it was a bit extreme....of course it was and this is a lot of what Jones seeks to address: the outlines and limits of her experience as a pakeha interacting with Maori political movements in real time as Maori political consciousness and decolonisation evolved. Even Donna Awatere rejected much of what she wrote later when she became a neo-liberal libertarian ACT MP.
It seems to me Jones is seeking to share a lifetime of thoughts and reflections about being pakeha and how it bumps up against Maoridom. This becomes especially pointed in her experiences at the university of Auckland where she faces criticism from more separatist colleagues who dislike her working in the Maori space and she writes about the issues this raises with great thought and clarity. I'm glad she's there to share her wisdom because many of us pakeha are a bit afraid to interact on Maori issues becasue we don't want to step on any landmines. The book is full of the everyday wisdom of the Maori women in her life, an old school friend ignores the strident young political Maori at her marae who tell her off for doing the wrong thing, her friend says she doesn't care, she grew up in the community and she has her own rules. Jones shares many examples of how despite the febrile political environment at times that with good will these things resolve themselves over time and the important thing is to be open minded and keep trying. I learned so much from this book, a real gem.
It seems to me Jones is seeking to share a lifetime of thoughts and reflections about being pakeha and how it bumps up against Maoridom. This becomes especially pointed in her experiences at the university of Auckland where she faces criticism from more separatist colleagues who dislike her working in the Maori space and she writes about the issues this raises with great thought and clarity. I'm glad she's there to share her wisdom because many of us pakeha are a bit afraid to interact on Maori issues becasue we don't want to step on any landmines. The book is full of the everyday wisdom of the Maori women in her life, an old school friend ignores the strident young political Maori at her marae who tell her off for doing the wrong thing, her friend says she doesn't care, she grew up in the community and she has her own rules. Jones shares many examples of how despite the febrile political environment at times that with good will these things resolve themselves over time and the important thing is to be open minded and keep trying. I learned so much from this book, a real gem.
August 19, 2021
I was looking forward to reading this book, and it is an easy read and makes some interesting points.
I came away with a feeling that the author has never quite found what she was looking for. And the relationship she so desired with Māori hasn't eventuated to the extent she would like. I often got a 'what can you do for me vibe' and perhaps that's the reason why.
I appreciate the author's honesty, particularly when recounting times she might look back on with embarrassment. We can probably all learn something from these annecdotes.
I came away with a feeling that the author has never quite found what she was looking for. And the relationship she so desired with Māori hasn't eventuated to the extent she would like. I often got a 'what can you do for me vibe' and perhaps that's the reason why.
I appreciate the author's honesty, particularly when recounting times she might look back on with embarrassment. We can probably all learn something from these annecdotes.
October 5, 2020
A European woman’s struggle to find her place within the racial divide that exists in NZ.
The author also puts to words a few of the “elephant in the room” feelings I’ve had growing up in NZ.
Pg 138 “ Like many New Zealanders who finally learn the facts of our country’s colonisation, I felt outraged. It was impossible to not be appalled by the violence, lies and threats of the settler government and British forces in the 1860s ...”
Although the author is an academic, the book reads more like a novel and is easy to get into.
I’m glad I read this book. We both live in NZ and I hope I get the chance to somehow meet this author for a korero.
The author also puts to words a few of the “elephant in the room” feelings I’ve had growing up in NZ.
Pg 138 “ Like many New Zealanders who finally learn the facts of our country’s colonisation, I felt outraged. It was impossible to not be appalled by the violence, lies and threats of the settler government and British forces in the 1860s ...”
Although the author is an academic, the book reads more like a novel and is easy to get into.
I’m glad I read this book. We both live in NZ and I hope I get the chance to somehow meet this author for a korero.
November 6, 2020
A library book that spoke to me so loudly I went out and purchased it.
I am on my own journey of balancing my pride in my forbears arriving and carving out a new life in a new land and my guilt at the way the Māori were treated and disadvantaged as this happened. There were several parts of this memoir that I want to highlight and write notes in the margin of the book of how I relate to them and how they relate to me (hence having to buy a copy). What the reviewers would call "zingers".
I thoroughly endorse this book as something that should be read by all.
I am on my own journey of balancing my pride in my forbears arriving and carving out a new life in a new land and my guilt at the way the Māori were treated and disadvantaged as this happened. There were several parts of this memoir that I want to highlight and write notes in the margin of the book of how I relate to them and how they relate to me (hence having to buy a copy). What the reviewers would call "zingers".
I thoroughly endorse this book as something that should be read by all.
October 30, 2020
This memoir is confronting and compelling. And beautifully written.
January 10, 2021
Well worth a read but one person’s unique experiences are hardly normative.
Well written.
Well written.
February 11, 2024
I find myself not really knowing what to say about this book. Alison has put much of what I have felt into words, as well as much that was at the edges of my consciousness. Being Pākehā is relational, complex, uncomfortable, but also home.
This book made me teary.
Authors:
Patricia Grace, Atholl Anderson, Witi Ihimaera, Judith Binney, James Belich, Anne Salmond, Vincent O’Malley
Linda Tuhiwai Smith - Decolonising Mehtodologies
Anne Salmond - Ontological Quarrels
Quotes:
Whakatāne:
At school, we had learned the story of this teenager, Wairaka, brave daughter of the rangatira Toroa, who saved the Ngãti Awa ancestral waka, Mataatua, on its arrival in NewZealand. The men had made it to shore but the waka, with the women and children aboard, was being pulled out to sea by the raging waves. Wairaka called out 'Kia whakatãne au i ahau!' (1 must act like a man!). She grabbed the paddles, which only men were permitted to use, and the other women followed her lead.
Together they manoeuvred the heavy waka to safety right there at the river mouth.
First book I’ve read where someone has been from Tauranga / gone to my school
a lecture by the poet e.e. cummings:
Damn everything but the circus! ... damn everything that is grim, dull, motionless, unrisking, inward turning, damn everything that won't get into the circle, that won't enjoy.
That won't throw its heart into the tension, surprise, fear and delight of the circus, the round world, the full existence ...'
The government also sent troops to Tauranga. In response, Ngäti Ranginui sent a letter to the British military camp asking, What is the meaning of the coming of the Englishmen to my place? ... Cease to come upon my piece of land? The officers took no heed: their forces not only killed the main leaders of Ngäti Ranginui, but the government confiscated almost 300,000 acres (120,000 hectares) of land, including the Bethlehem area. The New Zealand Settlements Act of 1863 had allowed the government to confiscate land from any tribes who resisted the Pakehä troops as they forcibly opened up land for settlement.
Terrible hardship followed these government actions. In 1898, a Crown official described the people of the Bethlehem as having only enough land 'to starve on. Even into the 1920s many in the region were close to starvation, and a 1936 surve of Mäori housing in the Tauranga area found one in three dwellings was 'unfit for human habitation'
Mt Eden jail - a place that looked like a medieval dungeon, and was originally a military stockade, built in 1857 to hold the armaments used against Mãori. Now, Mãori men were the majority of the inmates.
“I was far enough outside their lives to step quickly away”
“My view was that a more apt, and more hopeful, phrase might be white ignorance. Most Pakeha people seemed to know nothing about Mãori history, and they did not even know that they did not know. In my experience, Pakeh like my father who denigrated Mäori things knew nothing about Mãori. On the other hand, I too knew next to nothing about Māori, though my ignorance was tempered by curiosity and attraction rather than rejection and fear.”
[Is this just the difference between right wing and left wing white people? Both are largely ignorant, but that ignorance is tempered differently]
“I was judgmental about Mãori prayers to a Christian God, apt to dismiss them as simply colonised thinking. But being critical was not useful; being interested in the Mäori world did not require me to critique it.
Māori say karakia, whether addressing a Christian God or the atua, at almost any opportunity - and especially, in my experience, before eating, and at the beginning and end of meetings. As a confirmed atheist, I would make shopping lists in my head to pass the time during long prayers. But then I began to wonder about karakia. I felt, rather than understood, their significance. They were, I realised, not about an individual communion with God but were part of a collective social experience. Prayers at the beginnings of meetings served to slow down time, to draw together the people in the room, to bring a collective focus on what they were doing. The karakia called in all the forces of emotion, attention and knowledge needed to make the meeting a success. Regardless of the words and what they meant, the karakia became for me a few minutes to contemplate something I rarely recognised: the entanglements of elements of social life with the something else - the world outside us humans.“
“Most of all, I loved the constant enthusiasm for wordplay, and all the jokey made-up words that pepper Mãori language in common use: häwhe pai (half pie); miki api (mixed up), maka raoni (muck around); inawhi rumi (enough room); palani pi (Plan B); katie pie (kei te pai). My favourite was titautanga (tea towel tanga - rules of the kitchen).”
“The Mãori language has absorbed countless words from English just by simple and sometimes playful mimicking, like kau for cow, miraka for milk, pae kare (by golly) and hariru, a transliteration of 'how do you do?' for a handshake. Despite some scholarly disapproval, people just go ahead with transliterations and the everyday language changes. Tureiti (a transliteration of 'too late') is a common and funny way of describing a latecomer, allowing tardy students to laughingly introduce themselves as Ngäti Türeiti (from the tribe Türeiti). But not all new words are transliterations. Creative new vocabularies have emerged - a process that started from the first contact with the European world - to name modern technologies: computers are rorohiko, literally brain (roro) lightning flash (hiko); digital is matihiko, with mati meaning finger; waea pukoro is cellphone, from a transliteration of wire' and pukoro, pocket.”
“The Mãori language has no equivalent of 'to be' or 'to have' in its simple sense. I learned that the simple sentence 1 have no trousers' was 'käore oku tarau' (none my trousers), and was immediately intrigued. My trousers are in a state of not-being-had. And in English, we use a verb to connect a noun and its adjective: 'This apple is sour.' But in te reo, 'is' or 'are' or 'was' do not intervene: 'he kawa tenei aporo' (sour this apple). The apple and its sourness are one. Plus, the sourness, kawa, comes first in the sentence, as though the state is more salient than the thing. The apple directly possesses its quality of sourness.
I am interested in this apparent difference: between our English-language tendency to classify the object, and the Mãori-language tendency towards a sense of an object's agency (in these examples, the apple's own sourness and the trousers' own not-there-ness). In English we say 'she is beautiful.' In Mãori, 'he átaahua ia' (beautiful she). The beauty and she are indivisible.
The actor - she, ia - appears last in any such sentence, with the effect of foregrounding the state of things, rather than their naming.
Mãori speakers also much prefer a passive sentence structure that puts the action first, and often even omits the agent altogether: kua horoia ngã rihi (e au) (have been washedthe dishes (by me]). The language itself immerses us in being and doing. Passives soften the language: things happen, rather than I/you/he/they making them happen: 'words were spoken' rather than 'he spoke words'. This language structure has social effects. It expresses social ways of being; passives allow much to be said obliquely without identifying an actor, thereby avoiding direct confrontation, and protecting social collectivity.”
“We walk backwards into the future.”
“It seemed that the Pākehā students wanted direct access to the Māori and Pacific women's emotional and experiential lives, to their thoughts, feelings and cultures. It did not pass my notice that his was an echo of the perennial imperialist desire 'Let me on to your territory', with its extractive logic 'Let me mine you for my discoveries.' They wanted Mãori attention: 'Teach me! I need you to save me from what I do not know!' They wanted to be understood, not challenged, by Mãori.”
“I was forced to think about territory, and the way we Pakehã love to 'explore the backblocks' or 'go for a drive in the country, without thinking anything of it. If there is a public road, we'll drive down it to have a look, quite within our rights. Having forced roads through other people's lands, we just assume we can travel uninvited anywhere on an innocent whim, enjoying the scenery, and waving - in our famously friendly way - at the people who live near the road. It's ignorance of our history that allows us to behave like this.”
“I thought about how Mãori profoundly understood and understand the world as a series of never-ending, never-resolved relationships - between people, objects, time, space and on and on. I had come to realise that for Mãori, boundaries do not contain absolutes. As Anne Salmond put it, for Māori the world is not 'a singular entity, composed of arrays of bounded entities in different realms and on different scales' as it tends to be in dominant forms of Western thought.
Rather, boundaries are conceived of as thresholds, and it is the relationship between things rather than things themselves that have what she calls 'ontological primacy' - that is, relationships between people, and between people and things, are the foundation of Māori commonsense knowledge and encounters in the world. It is in the space between us as we face each other where everything happens, where there is energy of all sorts - the complex, fluid, shifting site occupied by the hyphen in Māori-Pakeha engagements.”
This book made me teary.
Authors:
Patricia Grace, Atholl Anderson, Witi Ihimaera, Judith Binney, James Belich, Anne Salmond, Vincent O’Malley
Linda Tuhiwai Smith - Decolonising Mehtodologies
Anne Salmond - Ontological Quarrels
Quotes:
Whakatāne:
At school, we had learned the story of this teenager, Wairaka, brave daughter of the rangatira Toroa, who saved the Ngãti Awa ancestral waka, Mataatua, on its arrival in NewZealand. The men had made it to shore but the waka, with the women and children aboard, was being pulled out to sea by the raging waves. Wairaka called out 'Kia whakatãne au i ahau!' (1 must act like a man!). She grabbed the paddles, which only men were permitted to use, and the other women followed her lead.
Together they manoeuvred the heavy waka to safety right there at the river mouth.
First book I’ve read where someone has been from Tauranga / gone to my school
a lecture by the poet e.e. cummings:
Damn everything but the circus! ... damn everything that is grim, dull, motionless, unrisking, inward turning, damn everything that won't get into the circle, that won't enjoy.
That won't throw its heart into the tension, surprise, fear and delight of the circus, the round world, the full existence ...'
The government also sent troops to Tauranga. In response, Ngäti Ranginui sent a letter to the British military camp asking, What is the meaning of the coming of the Englishmen to my place? ... Cease to come upon my piece of land? The officers took no heed: their forces not only killed the main leaders of Ngäti Ranginui, but the government confiscated almost 300,000 acres (120,000 hectares) of land, including the Bethlehem area. The New Zealand Settlements Act of 1863 had allowed the government to confiscate land from any tribes who resisted the Pakehä troops as they forcibly opened up land for settlement.
Terrible hardship followed these government actions. In 1898, a Crown official described the people of the Bethlehem as having only enough land 'to starve on. Even into the 1920s many in the region were close to starvation, and a 1936 surve of Mäori housing in the Tauranga area found one in three dwellings was 'unfit for human habitation'
Mt Eden jail - a place that looked like a medieval dungeon, and was originally a military stockade, built in 1857 to hold the armaments used against Mãori. Now, Mãori men were the majority of the inmates.
“I was far enough outside their lives to step quickly away”
“My view was that a more apt, and more hopeful, phrase might be white ignorance. Most Pakeha people seemed to know nothing about Mãori history, and they did not even know that they did not know. In my experience, Pakeh like my father who denigrated Mäori things knew nothing about Mãori. On the other hand, I too knew next to nothing about Māori, though my ignorance was tempered by curiosity and attraction rather than rejection and fear.”
[Is this just the difference between right wing and left wing white people? Both are largely ignorant, but that ignorance is tempered differently]
“I was judgmental about Mãori prayers to a Christian God, apt to dismiss them as simply colonised thinking. But being critical was not useful; being interested in the Mäori world did not require me to critique it.
Māori say karakia, whether addressing a Christian God or the atua, at almost any opportunity - and especially, in my experience, before eating, and at the beginning and end of meetings. As a confirmed atheist, I would make shopping lists in my head to pass the time during long prayers. But then I began to wonder about karakia. I felt, rather than understood, their significance. They were, I realised, not about an individual communion with God but were part of a collective social experience. Prayers at the beginnings of meetings served to slow down time, to draw together the people in the room, to bring a collective focus on what they were doing. The karakia called in all the forces of emotion, attention and knowledge needed to make the meeting a success. Regardless of the words and what they meant, the karakia became for me a few minutes to contemplate something I rarely recognised: the entanglements of elements of social life with the something else - the world outside us humans.“
“Most of all, I loved the constant enthusiasm for wordplay, and all the jokey made-up words that pepper Mãori language in common use: häwhe pai (half pie); miki api (mixed up), maka raoni (muck around); inawhi rumi (enough room); palani pi (Plan B); katie pie (kei te pai). My favourite was titautanga (tea towel tanga - rules of the kitchen).”
“The Mãori language has absorbed countless words from English just by simple and sometimes playful mimicking, like kau for cow, miraka for milk, pae kare (by golly) and hariru, a transliteration of 'how do you do?' for a handshake. Despite some scholarly disapproval, people just go ahead with transliterations and the everyday language changes. Tureiti (a transliteration of 'too late') is a common and funny way of describing a latecomer, allowing tardy students to laughingly introduce themselves as Ngäti Türeiti (from the tribe Türeiti). But not all new words are transliterations. Creative new vocabularies have emerged - a process that started from the first contact with the European world - to name modern technologies: computers are rorohiko, literally brain (roro) lightning flash (hiko); digital is matihiko, with mati meaning finger; waea pukoro is cellphone, from a transliteration of wire' and pukoro, pocket.”
“The Mãori language has no equivalent of 'to be' or 'to have' in its simple sense. I learned that the simple sentence 1 have no trousers' was 'käore oku tarau' (none my trousers), and was immediately intrigued. My trousers are in a state of not-being-had. And in English, we use a verb to connect a noun and its adjective: 'This apple is sour.' But in te reo, 'is' or 'are' or 'was' do not intervene: 'he kawa tenei aporo' (sour this apple). The apple and its sourness are one. Plus, the sourness, kawa, comes first in the sentence, as though the state is more salient than the thing. The apple directly possesses its quality of sourness.
I am interested in this apparent difference: between our English-language tendency to classify the object, and the Mãori-language tendency towards a sense of an object's agency (in these examples, the apple's own sourness and the trousers' own not-there-ness). In English we say 'she is beautiful.' In Mãori, 'he átaahua ia' (beautiful she). The beauty and she are indivisible.
The actor - she, ia - appears last in any such sentence, with the effect of foregrounding the state of things, rather than their naming.
Mãori speakers also much prefer a passive sentence structure that puts the action first, and often even omits the agent altogether: kua horoia ngã rihi (e au) (have been washedthe dishes (by me]). The language itself immerses us in being and doing. Passives soften the language: things happen, rather than I/you/he/they making them happen: 'words were spoken' rather than 'he spoke words'. This language structure has social effects. It expresses social ways of being; passives allow much to be said obliquely without identifying an actor, thereby avoiding direct confrontation, and protecting social collectivity.”
“We walk backwards into the future.”
“It seemed that the Pākehā students wanted direct access to the Māori and Pacific women's emotional and experiential lives, to their thoughts, feelings and cultures. It did not pass my notice that his was an echo of the perennial imperialist desire 'Let me on to your territory', with its extractive logic 'Let me mine you for my discoveries.' They wanted Mãori attention: 'Teach me! I need you to save me from what I do not know!' They wanted to be understood, not challenged, by Mãori.”
“I was forced to think about territory, and the way we Pakehã love to 'explore the backblocks' or 'go for a drive in the country, without thinking anything of it. If there is a public road, we'll drive down it to have a look, quite within our rights. Having forced roads through other people's lands, we just assume we can travel uninvited anywhere on an innocent whim, enjoying the scenery, and waving - in our famously friendly way - at the people who live near the road. It's ignorance of our history that allows us to behave like this.”
“I thought about how Mãori profoundly understood and understand the world as a series of never-ending, never-resolved relationships - between people, objects, time, space and on and on. I had come to realise that for Mãori, boundaries do not contain absolutes. As Anne Salmond put it, for Māori the world is not 'a singular entity, composed of arrays of bounded entities in different realms and on different scales' as it tends to be in dominant forms of Western thought.
Rather, boundaries are conceived of as thresholds, and it is the relationship between things rather than things themselves that have what she calls 'ontological primacy' - that is, relationships between people, and between people and things, are the foundation of Māori commonsense knowledge and encounters in the world. It is in the space between us as we face each other where everything happens, where there is energy of all sorts - the complex, fluid, shifting site occupied by the hyphen in Māori-Pakeha engagements.”
October 19, 2022
I've been wanting to read this for a while and I thought it was very good. Written by University of Auckland academic Alison Jones, it explores through absorbing, poignant and sometimes humorous personal history and story what it means (and has meant) for her to be Pākehā - that is, a New Zealander of European descent in Aoetearoa New Zealand, in relation to Māori.
It's important work. Once you begin to dig down a bit into this whenua, this land, and its stories, and be aware and start noticing and listening, questions about identity, relation and place (both locationally and culturally) become inevitable.
These kinds of projects are always going to carry a certain ambiguity arising from looking from a position that is inevitably 'outside' into an other way of being, a 'different culture'. And goodness knows, Europeans have long loved a bit of fascinated cultural staring. ("What are you looking at?" as I and others have had Māori say to us on occasion.) We're a bunch of bloody gawkalitises.
Jones seems to navigate those acknowledged pitfalls reasonably well. There are moments where, as another reviewer puts it, the book reads as a kind of "Māori I have met". But self-awareness helps a lot. It's honest stuff. The good, the bad and the embarrassing. I found it strangely permission-giving to further be and explore what it might mean for me to be Pākehā. Like I say, I think that might be important work... "to be Pākehā in all its complications," as Jones says.
"I was, as I described it to myself, trying to think in complex ways about being Pākehā as a relational identity. My job was, and still is, to unsettle the idea of who I am - who we Pākehā are, and can be - and to learn how to embrace difficulties rather than trying to resolve them. It remains stimulating work and in it I feel profoundly alive."
Recommended.
It's important work. Once you begin to dig down a bit into this whenua, this land, and its stories, and be aware and start noticing and listening, questions about identity, relation and place (both locationally and culturally) become inevitable.
These kinds of projects are always going to carry a certain ambiguity arising from looking from a position that is inevitably 'outside' into an other way of being, a 'different culture'. And goodness knows, Europeans have long loved a bit of fascinated cultural staring. ("What are you looking at?" as I and others have had Māori say to us on occasion.) We're a bunch of bloody gawkalitises.
Jones seems to navigate those acknowledged pitfalls reasonably well. There are moments where, as another reviewer puts it, the book reads as a kind of "Māori I have met". But self-awareness helps a lot. It's honest stuff. The good, the bad and the embarrassing. I found it strangely permission-giving to further be and explore what it might mean for me to be Pākehā. Like I say, I think that might be important work... "to be Pākehā in all its complications," as Jones says.
"I was, as I described it to myself, trying to think in complex ways about being Pākehā as a relational identity. My job was, and still is, to unsettle the idea of who I am - who we Pākehā are, and can be - and to learn how to embrace difficulties rather than trying to resolve them. It remains stimulating work and in it I feel profoundly alive."
Recommended.
November 13, 2024
There are a lot of good things in this book in relation to how Maori and Pakeha relate to each other in NZ, and I appreciated reading it, even if I didn't always find I agreed with Jones' arguments. Which is fine. We need to think about how the two main peoples of NZ connect without each of them losing their identity. It's probably been a pertinent book to read in the light of the two halves of yet another hikoi travelling from either end of the country to protest against the Treaty of Waitangi Principles Bill, in spite of it being at aimed at making sure that both parties are treated equally. That it's being promoted by a man of Maori descent should give it credence you think.
Jones says this book is for Pakeha 'New Zealanders curious about their sense of identity and about the ambivalences we Pakeha often experience in our relationships with Maori.' But my suspicion is that most Pakeha NZeders don't lack a sense of identity in this way. Even though we may not call ourselves Europeans anymore, and the word 'caucasian' seems outdated on census forms and such, we do have a broad heritage of our own which is built into our being. Pakeha are not a group of people who have no understanding of themselves at all. Like Maori, who don't need Pakeha to know they are Maori, Pakeha don't need Maori to know they are Pakeha. That we should work at relationship with each other within those parameters is the issue - and Jones does deal with this readily. That we should demean the Pakeha culture in order to see Maori culture as somehow superior is not the way out of conflicts. That we should raise each other up and appreciate each other is far more the way, using patience, listening and care for each other.
Jones says this book is for Pakeha 'New Zealanders curious about their sense of identity and about the ambivalences we Pakeha often experience in our relationships with Maori.' But my suspicion is that most Pakeha NZeders don't lack a sense of identity in this way. Even though we may not call ourselves Europeans anymore, and the word 'caucasian' seems outdated on census forms and such, we do have a broad heritage of our own which is built into our being. Pakeha are not a group of people who have no understanding of themselves at all. Like Maori, who don't need Pakeha to know they are Maori, Pakeha don't need Maori to know they are Pakeha. That we should work at relationship with each other within those parameters is the issue - and Jones does deal with this readily. That we should demean the Pakeha culture in order to see Maori culture as somehow superior is not the way out of conflicts. That we should raise each other up and appreciate each other is far more the way, using patience, listening and care for each other.
January 9, 2021
Thanks to Alison Jones for taking me one step further in my understanding of my identity as a Pakeha New Zealander and to my partner Keith for buying this for my birthday.
Alison's reflections cover a lot of ground - growing up in regional New Zealand in the 1950s and 60s, sharing the impressions she absorbed (sometimes accurately, sometimes not to her own dismay and astonishment) regarding Maori life and culture and also reviewing those impressions through her evolving understanding of life, historic and current events and society through a Maori lens, led by colleagues and friends she has made throughout her professional career as an Academic within the University of Auckland.
I could relate to many of her personal observations - learning an expression or word in te reo that expresses or describes something in a way no english word can, finding a relationship within the land that is more than simply a landscape. She has taken me further in my journey as a descendant of European settlers in understanding how the process of colonisation impacted and still impacts today, displacing, marginalising and suppressing. She offers insights into the role Pakeha need to play today (or not play) to enable Maori voices to be heard on their own terms and for the Maori world view to further permeate our culture and take us forward to, hopefully, a better place. But she offers no easy answers - our history is not easy listening and our future requires a te ao Pakeha reset which is uncomfortable to most of us, regardless of how progressive we may think we are.
Alison's reflections cover a lot of ground - growing up in regional New Zealand in the 1950s and 60s, sharing the impressions she absorbed (sometimes accurately, sometimes not to her own dismay and astonishment) regarding Maori life and culture and also reviewing those impressions through her evolving understanding of life, historic and current events and society through a Maori lens, led by colleagues and friends she has made throughout her professional career as an Academic within the University of Auckland.
I could relate to many of her personal observations - learning an expression or word in te reo that expresses or describes something in a way no english word can, finding a relationship within the land that is more than simply a landscape. She has taken me further in my journey as a descendant of European settlers in understanding how the process of colonisation impacted and still impacts today, displacing, marginalising and suppressing. She offers insights into the role Pakeha need to play today (or not play) to enable Maori voices to be heard on their own terms and for the Maori world view to further permeate our culture and take us forward to, hopefully, a better place. But she offers no easy answers - our history is not easy listening and our future requires a te ao Pakeha reset which is uncomfortable to most of us, regardless of how progressive we may think we are.
December 15, 2020
I placed this memoir under the Teachers category although this memoir isn't about really about teaching or teachers even though the author is a professor and researches in education, but it's more about learning than anything else.
Pakeha is the Maori term for European New Zealanders, or anyone not Maori or more generally anyone who is 'white.'
As a second generation english immigrant growing up in New Zealand, Alison is confused about her identity in the land. Only by relating to Maori and their relationship to the land can she find peace or the identity she is seeking.
She recalls her family is subtly racist and separates themselves from Maori, even though she grows up in two worlds. She then decides to place her son, even though he's regarded as Pakeha and she'd married a Pakeha, in a Kohanga Reo or Maori language kindergarten, hoping he would learn the language which she finds it difficult to learn and remember as an adult.
Her son, ends up being somewhat bullied and mocked when he finds out that he isn't actually Maori.
White liberal guilt? Or something else? This book is an interesting exploration about confronting people's ignorance about the past that is just beneath our feet in Aoteoroa.
Uncovering some skeletons in the family closet she makes some connections, but it's more of a tribute to a friendship she makes with a fellow Maori scholar who teaches her about Maori ways and a complex history that she had been ignorant of.
Pakeha is the Maori term for European New Zealanders, or anyone not Maori or more generally anyone who is 'white.'
As a second generation english immigrant growing up in New Zealand, Alison is confused about her identity in the land. Only by relating to Maori and their relationship to the land can she find peace or the identity she is seeking.
She recalls her family is subtly racist and separates themselves from Maori, even though she grows up in two worlds. She then decides to place her son, even though he's regarded as Pakeha and she'd married a Pakeha, in a Kohanga Reo or Maori language kindergarten, hoping he would learn the language which she finds it difficult to learn and remember as an adult.
Her son, ends up being somewhat bullied and mocked when he finds out that he isn't actually Maori.
White liberal guilt? Or something else? This book is an interesting exploration about confronting people's ignorance about the past that is just beneath our feet in Aoteoroa.
Uncovering some skeletons in the family closet she makes some connections, but it's more of a tribute to a friendship she makes with a fellow Maori scholar who teaches her about Maori ways and a complex history that she had been ignorant of.
January 23, 2024
A very honest account of being pakeha and relationships between Maori and Pakeha in New Zealand. Alison shares experiences which I could relate to and I appreciate her vulnerability in doing so. She also is careful to not over generalise about Maori/Pakeha relations and Maori culture.
I also really enjoyed learning more about the history behind different place names and how it is important for us to acknowledge it and be aware as Pakeha. I particularly liked this thought provoking statement after listing several places with their origin stories...
"The whole colonised world is like this, a series of monuments to colonial victors. What bothers me is not so much the naming or even the monuments. Most troubling is our collective wilful amnesia; we do not know who Cameron was, or what happened at Rangiriri, or Tuakau, or a hundred other points along a river, up a valley, on a plain or a mountain. Unless we seek them out, our histories (and particularly the Maori part of those histories) remain unremembered by the majority of the New Zealand population. How can we pakeha understand, let alone face Maori anger, if we recognise nothing of its origins?"
Every pakeha New Zealander should read this.
I also really enjoyed learning more about the history behind different place names and how it is important for us to acknowledge it and be aware as Pakeha. I particularly liked this thought provoking statement after listing several places with their origin stories...
"The whole colonised world is like this, a series of monuments to colonial victors. What bothers me is not so much the naming or even the monuments. Most troubling is our collective wilful amnesia; we do not know who Cameron was, or what happened at Rangiriri, or Tuakau, or a hundred other points along a river, up a valley, on a plain or a mountain. Unless we seek them out, our histories (and particularly the Maori part of those histories) remain unremembered by the majority of the New Zealand population. How can we pakeha understand, let alone face Maori anger, if we recognise nothing of its origins?"
Every pakeha New Zealander should read this.
January 12, 2022
I identified so much with this wonderfully written account of growing up in a white New Zealand surrounded by a (mostly) unseen people and culture and gradually becoming aware of the profoundly different world those ‘others’ inhabit. So much has changed since the sixties and Alison Jones’ chronicle of her unsettling engagement with Māori as a child, a feminist and pākehā academic is profound and engaging. I love the humility of revealing her mistakes, like the childhood friend who turned out to be something quite different and, near the end of the book, Jones’s mortifying and literal slap on the hand for questioning a kaumātua’s memory of events. The revelation that she is not the first generation Kiwi she thought herself to be moved me deeply, having had a parallel revelation of much deeper engagement with Māori by my own family than my terribly English parents would possibly have embraced. This is a book for every pākehā who wants to deepen their understanding of our place in this land, and of how relationships rather than solutions are the path to that knowledge.
March 16, 2021
I bought this book because it was by Alison Jones. I still remember Alison Jones's research that was published in 1991. "At school I've got a chance: culture/privilege: Pacific Islands and pakeha girls at school". At the time I was working in education and found her insights illuminating, helping me better understand how schools and teachers fail to help some groups of students despite their best intentions. I was looking forward to being similarly challenged and inspired by "This Pākehā Life" and wasn't disappointed. Her memoir is engaging and honest, by which I mean that she opens up about her mistakes, faux pas and differences of opinions with colleagues. I'll be re-reading and thinking about this book for some time to come and look forward to discussing it with others. I wish I'd picked it as my 2021 book group choice.
April 8, 2021
Firstly, I must say that I found this book essential reading for New Zealanders and indeed anybody who is struggling with their relationship with the indigenous people of their home country. Secondly, I don’t think our experiences are necessarily the same, that this book Is intensely personal so we may not arrive at the same endpoint.
I admire Alison Jones for writing such a timely and perceptive memoir as she traces her childhood as a child of English immigrants. One wonders if she would have become such an ardent social justice advocate if she came from a
longer line of NZ settlers? We can be thankful that she has committed herself to exploring her sense of identity to enable her to bring such perspective to an uncomfortable subject.
I admire Alison Jones for writing such a timely and perceptive memoir as she traces her childhood as a child of English immigrants. One wonders if she would have become such an ardent social justice advocate if she came from a
longer line of NZ settlers? We can be thankful that she has committed herself to exploring her sense of identity to enable her to bring such perspective to an uncomfortable subject.
February 7, 2021
Interesting look at the move from being NZ European to being Pakeha. Alison Jones using her own growth in knowledge and awareness of Maori culture to explain this transition. As a relatively recent immigrant and an academic she explains the experiences that changed her views and determined her sometimes uncomfortable position position in the academic world. The book is a personal and anecdotal account of this process. I felt at times her personal reflection was overdone and I could not identify with some of the reactions. However generally I really enjoyed this book and it helped me grapple with my own issues of being pakeha in this country.
August 7, 2023
Finished this some months ago, my memories are already a bit vague. I think I remember being struck mostly by how, after so many years of earnest effort, Jones was open about how she still so often felt at sea in te ao Māori, and struggled to really truly understand, relate, form full friendships. She struggled too with changing political slogans, and how to build a loving politics within them that accepts and deals with complexity. The honestly was refreshing if a little soul crushing, I guess; it spoke to the profound difficulty of what our 'nation' (if we should speak of it in that way) is.
February 4, 2024
"But taking relationality seriously throws into disarray our sincere dreams for answers and end points – and our assumption that, one day, we will wake up and all will be well. Relationships are never like that. They are contingent, fluid and always on the move, always in the process of being and becoming something. In the end, the most important things are ineffable, unexplainable, difficult, and sometimes even contradictory."
There's some really good discussions & ideas on Māori/Pākeha relations, some interesting glimpses on Alison's life... but somehow, it's missing something. I felt the end so rushed... I'd give it 3.5 stars if I could.
There's some really good discussions & ideas on Māori/Pākeha relations, some interesting glimpses on Alison's life... but somehow, it's missing something. I felt the end so rushed... I'd give it 3.5 stars if I could.
August 18, 2022
A totally relatable memoir about what it means to be Pākehā and a haumi (ally) of Māori. It's a life long journey of learning and making mistakes along the way but owning those mistakes and becoming a better ally in the process. I am of a different generation than Alison but some of her experiences echoed mine - the activism, the incredible life changing experience of learning Te Reo Māori and realizing you have learned a whole lot more than the language, and the gradual understanding of how to tautoko without taking over.
March 6, 2023
This book was a revelation, and gave me a new, intimate understanding of Aotearoa New Zealand history. I found it challenging in places, good challenging, challenging in the sense that it made me look at myself and my own personal family history and think, what does this mean, how as a Pākehā do I relate to Māori? Unsettling is a great word for it, to be unsettled by history, even just your own family history, and then begin the hard work of identity-making and meaning-making in a world that is more complex than your ancestors probably ever imagined.
Read
November 12, 2023This was an uncomfortable read, although it did make me think about the place I have been living in for the last 22 years.
Obviously I am racist (and sexist and classist - we all are), but I don't know what to do about it, beyond living my life as inoffensively as possible. Which is a cop out - but I'm tired! And ho, ho - all about me - when the thing that stood out most for me in this book was the notion of collectivism and community, as opposed to the individualism of Western culture.
I'm left with the urge to set out of the city and walk along a beach or through a forest.
Obviously I am racist (and sexist and classist - we all are), but I don't know what to do about it, beyond living my life as inoffensively as possible. Which is a cop out - but I'm tired! And ho, ho - all about me - when the thing that stood out most for me in this book was the notion of collectivism and community, as opposed to the individualism of Western culture.
I'm left with the urge to set out of the city and walk along a beach or through a forest.
January 25, 2021
Terrific. I was skeptical when I first saw this on shelves, not knowing anything about Alison Jones and imagining a worst-case scenario version of this book. Thankfully, I listened to a friend who exhorted its virtues and it may well be the most important book I read this year, an adjective that undersells its compulsive readability but not its impact on my personal understanding of my place in Aotearoa's society. Highly recommended to all Kiwis.
August 7, 2021
Really interesting, thought provoking, honest account of an activist woman’s development of her pākehā identity over a lifetime of grappling with Māori-Pākehā relatinships in Aotearoa New Zealand. I especially valued the insight that the Māori world view is based on relationships between things and people, whereas western models conceive of discrete people and things, and searches for answers and end-points.
October 7, 2021
Not since the pleasure of reading Being Pakeha and Being Pakeha Now have I had book that asks me to think critically about who I am and my place in Aotearoa. I often wonder what King would make of 2021 and the place we have moved to.
Jones makes you ask how far have we actually come? The personal nature of the narrative helps recall events and interactions in my own life. A challenge, a hurdle, a gem.
I borrowed this book; I will be buying copy of my own
Jones makes you ask how far have we actually come? The personal nature of the narrative helps recall events and interactions in my own life. A challenge, a hurdle, a gem.
I borrowed this book; I will be buying copy of my own
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