Webinar: ‘Decolonising pedagogy: How can teaching in the social sciences be more inclusive and respectful of Indigenous peoples and their knowledge?’

6/9/2022

Monash University asked me to join a panel on decolonising public policy and public administration pedagogy. Here’s a transcript of he whakaarotia.

Tihei mauri ora

E ngā mana whenua, tēnā tatau

E rangatira ko Deidre tēnā koe

E aku whānau e huihui nei i te rā, tēnā koutou katoa

Whakarongo ake ki te tangi a te manu

E karanga nei, tui, tui tuituia

Tuia ki runga

Tuia ki raro

Tuia ki roto

Tuia ki raro

Ka rongo te ao

Ka rongo te po

Tuia ki te kāwai tangata

I heke mai i moana nui a kiwa

I moana nui a kiwa roa

I moana nui a kiwa pamamao

I te hono ki wairua

Ki te whai ao, ki te ao marama

Tuutuuru whakamaua kia tina, tina haumi e hui e taiki e.

Ko Deborah Te Kawa toku ignoa.

Nō Ngāti Porou ahau

For those who cannot see me, I am a middle-aged Māori woman with grey hair and black glasses. And I am sitting in front of a silver kowhaiwhai pattern on black background. I am bringing you warm pacific greetings from Aorangi on the western side of Tumu-Whenua (Rarotonga).

To begin, I want to mihi to Diedre O’Neill and Michael Mintrtrom. Their paper “Policy education in Australia and New Zealand: towards a decolonised pedagogy” is an important addition and a welcome invitation.

Tonight, I want to offer a working definition of decolonisation and then explain why it matters – at least to public management and public policy in Aotearoa-New Zealand.

Decolonisation is conventionally understood to refer to the political upheavals that ended the European colonial empires and the establishment of nearly a hundred new nation-states across Africa, Asia, and the Pacific in the third quarter of the twentieth century.

I’m not sure. My working hypothesis is that decolonisation is a process. In public management terms, it’s a process of ensuring the institutions are of the place they seek to stand.

In Aotearoa-New Zealand, some of us examine institutions for their whakapapa to ensure they sit comfortably on this whenua while ensuring they create equitable access and outcomes for tangata whenua – however they decide to organise themselves.

This definition places the power relationship at the centre of public management. It draws on the work of the Waitangi Tribunal and courts in examining the Māori and Crown relationship.

It’s a working definition and a draft framework. I invite you to try it out and see if it works.

So why does decolonisation matter in public management? Why is it essential to use the framework of whakapapa, whenua and whānau when examining public institutions?

Here are six possible reasons in no particular order.

First, where the settlers bought a contractual constitutional culture to Aotearoa, Māori viewed Te Tiriti as an agreement to kinship. So, from the point of view of the rangatira who signed the Treaty and the diplomats who supported that decision, they never ceded sovereignty. Fair to say that Aotearoa has been living with this skirmish since 1840. Our institutional landscape is full of arrangements that promise autonomy and sink without a trace. A definition and working theory of decolonisation matters, if only to understand past lessons.

Second, demands for sovereignty or rangatiratanga have grown and not diminished. The public policy attempts to assimilate Māori have been unsuccessful. Demands for new institutional arrangements grow, but they don’t lessen. As mentioned above, if public policy advice is practical, it needs to develop working theories and concepts for these matters.

Third, the tribes are more influential than ever and significant economic and political actors and social service providers. On 30 June 2021, Māori ethnic population was 875,300 or 17.1 per cent of the national population. It’s a population that is younger and still growing. At our last census, we had an exciting development where people who used to identify as pakeha are now identifying as Māori. It’s cool to be indigenous.

Fourth, and most importantly, COVID confirmed how unfit the public service was in serving Māori and whānau needs and how well-placed Māori and iwi providers were. Our health system could get some vaccinated, but not all. And not all were, more often than not, Māori, Pacifica or people living rurally. A decolonised state theory might help the state be much more efficient and effective: ‘one-size-fits-all’ service provision is expensive and quite limited. It often falls short of those in most need.

Fifth, Aotearoa has just undergone one of the biggest health reforms in its history. It has reformed the institutional landscape. It has disestablished 20 DHBs, improved the Ministry of Health, and replaced them with seven new institutional arrangements.

• A policy Ministry.
• A Ministry focused on equity of access and outcomes for disabled people.
• An agency focused solely on public health.
• Health New Zealand. A single delivery agent.
• Hauora Māori Advisory
• Māori Health Authority. An independent entity with powers of strategy, policy, co-commissioning with Health Zealand, commissioning, and monitoring Health NZ and others (social determinant agencies).
• Iwi/Māori Partnership Boards.

The glue that keeps these arrangements working together are the Crown’s Te Tiriti obligations and the current Government’s commitment to equity of access and outcome. Even more than that, those last three arrangements, the Hauora Māori Advisory, Māori Health Authority, and Iwi/Māori Partnership boards, form a virtuous circle of accountability.

I am not sure whether this is the emergence of indigenous public management. Still, I am sure it is an attempt to decolonise our health system. Our health workforce includes 253,000 people. The sort of proposals in Diedre and Michael’s paper would assist that workforce to be successful.

Finally, most of the public management literature talks about colonisation and decolonisation as a thing of the past. Much of the public management and public administration literature assumes away the ‘settler or imperial state’. That diminishes the domain. Without an examination of the settler state, we are inhibited from exploring new models. There are some exceptions, which I hope to share with you in the question-and-answer session.

In the meantime, I finish where I started. A mihi to Deirdre and Michael for their paper and their invitation. And an invitation to you to begin the work. It involves how we teach and when we teach. It involves the deliberate use of indigenous academics and authors, and research. It also consists in using indigenous methods. Finally, it involves a careful interrogation by academics visiting lands that are not theirs to ensure they are not infringing and acknowledge on whose lands they stand.

Āpiti hono tātai hono, rātou te hunga mate kia rātou.

Tātou te hunga ora kia tātou.

Tēna koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.