Reframing Power

When I was doing my degree I was shocked awake to what an appalling treaty partner Pākehā had been in an old book that I found in the library, by a character I had never heard of previously: one Bill Sutch (1942). The book was called "The Quest for Security in New Zealand", and I have no idea how this slim little stapled together pamphlet was still on the library shelves. It must have missed many, many library culls.

At the time I was researching the 1894 Arbitration and Concilliation Act, digging back into the economic history of Aotearoa for an industrial relations paper. I sat down to flick through this book and was pulled in from the start. Meticulously researched from council records, Sutch (1942) showed how Māori were forced off their land and into penury by instruments such as rates, fines, and revaluations. As a result, Māori became increasingly geographically AND economically marginalised: forced onto poorer land, in poorer locations. We created our own ghettos. Whakama.

This book changed my views about the nation New Zealand was, and the stories we told about ourselves. It reframed for me who held the power, and why we needed to strive for change, equity and justice every day. And that change did not necessarily need to be a route march - although I could understand those who have lost much wanting it to happen faster - but that it just needed to be better. Little by little.

This book shook me. While the library book went back, I eventually purchased my own copy. I read this author's other works, and found most of them challenged my thinking. And while I did not agree with all his views, I found the thoughtful and scholarly nature of this author's work compelling.

I realised through this experience that we could not let past injustice go. Until we restored what we had stolen, the hurt would still be there. We would not heal.

As Treaty partners, we Pākehā still "have promises to keep, And miles to go before [we] sleep" (Frost, 1923)... or perhaps, in a less colonising way, He mahi kai hōaka, he mahi kai tāngata ("just as work consumes sandstone, so it consumes people", or, worthwhile tasks take much hard work; Tikanga Māori, 2016).

Sam

References:

Sutch, W. B. (1942). The Quest for Security in New Zealand. Penguin.