Undigenous: Be Quiet And Know Your Place

ABSTRACT

In this perspective I endeavor to offer a transpersonal reflection of the work of decolonization from the standpoint of a minority-cisgender-female-White-settler-migrant. This work, the work of decolonization, is not the same for all of us, it depends on our place in the globe and our “baggage” as beings who inherit the past while living in the present but deeply committed to changing our future. Academics are professional braggarts who boast expertise and proficiency; indeed it is the hallmark of a knowledge broker to imply they have something (something VERY important and heretofore undiscovered) to pro-claim (as if knowledge was property). I cannot speak for others (nor would I) but I would like to share my perception and reflection of being an economic migrant and peace educator working toward decolonization in Aotearoa/New Zealand.

Acknowledgments

I acknowldge the Ngai Tahu peoples who hold Mana Whenua at the University of Otago in Dunedin and all Tangata Whenua of Aotearoa/New Zealand. I sincerely thank Dr. Heather Devere (Kaiāwhina Māori) and Dr. Jenny Te Paa Daniel (Mareikura) of the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies for comments and encouragement, nga mihi.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/opinion-miller-black-panther-ally_us_5a92ac97e4b03b55731d1442.

² Biculturalism is a worldview that separates humanity into Indigenous and non-Indigenous.

³ Aotearoa is the Indigenous Māori word for the land called New Zealand since colonization.

⁴ Whereas primary socialization, as a process of social learning takes place mostly in the home, secondary socialization takes place in public spaces such as schools.

⁵ See Quijano (2000).

⁶ Aboriginal is another term for Indigenous Peoples and describes inhabitants of a land at the point of colonization.

⁷ But I do not have Pākehā privilege. In 2018, I taught a course on peace education in the midst of immigration limbo. My (and my family’s) current visa was expiring and my new visa application was several months late in being processed. The semester, for me, was a complete blur of anxiety, uncertainty, and fear. I marked midsemester essays waiting for the “6 day” deportation e-mail from Immigration New Zealand. I was completely powerless, and my story is not unique; people all over the world go through this all the time. Because of the delay and potential deportation, my MP instructed me to purchase parallel visitor visas for my whole family, at a cost greater than the original application sent in. I was then granted the original visa (before expiry) and I spent months paying back a work colleague who had kindly lent me the money to pay. I was not refunded for the duplicate application. Being an economic migrant is expensive, labyrinthine, and difficult. It is fraught with insecurity and dehumanizing nativistic authority and you can do everything right (just as you were told to) and still have no recourse.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Katerina Standish

Katerina Standish is a Senior Lecturer and Deputy Director at the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Otago in New Zealand. She is the author of Cultural Violence in the Classroom(Cambridge Scholars Press), co-editor of Conflict Transformation, Peacebuilding and Storytelling (Lexington Press) and she is the creator and co-author of the theory and practice manual Yogic Peace Education (McFarland & Company). Dr Standish has been a community peacebuilder for over two decades and specializes in personal peacebuilding (intervention of violence of self). Her past research and publications have included content related to asymmetric warfare and women, gender and violence, ethnic conflict, peace education and phenomena of deliberate life-ending acts. She is interested in decolonization, personal peacebuilding and violence transformation and she is originally from western Canada.