A new book by a Faculty of Education lecturer at The University of Auckland delves into the experience of being a New Zealander of Maori-Pakeha descent.
Walking the Space Between (NZCER Press) is written by Melinda Webber (Te Arawa/Ngapuhi/Pakeha who is a lecturer in the Faculty’s School of Teaching Learning and Development.
Ms Webber examines how she has come to state her ethnic identity as Maori, despite having strong Scottish heritage on both sides. The book contains detailed interviews with six others about the complex nature of straddling two distinctly New Zealand ethnic groups—Maori and Pakeha each with their own prescriptive criteria for inclusion. Their stories reveal how some people of mixed Maori descent sit on the margins of both groups, forever negotiating the right to be included. Ideas - often unspoken - about who is considered a "real Maori" in the Maori world, and the "right kind of Maori" in the Pakeha world, play a prominent role in shaping their sense of in-between-ness.
Ms Webber says that feeling is often exacerbated at school, where Maori students are expected to tick certain boxes, such as being good at sport and speaking te reo. For her and those she interviewed, it was not until they were older and in tertiary education that they realised they could work out their own identity and that it could be fluid rather than fixed.
"The older I get, the more I’m sure about my right to decide what being Maori means for me and my family and my child, and to enact that, regardless of how different it is to what other Maori do," she says. "Identity is shifting, our culture is shifting."
Ms Webber says there is a need for a more robust debate in New Zealand about ethnic identity, particularly when more and more people have transnational or mixed-heritage backgrounds. As a teacher educator, she would like to see trainee teachers being taught to better understand what they bring to the classroom, through an examination of their own identities.
"If you are going to teach a diverse range of students, then as a first step you have to understand yourself and the lens through which you see the world."
Melinda Webber’s interview from Bfm: http://www.95bfm.com/assets/sm/188038/3/rsl.mp3
