Today Winston Peters made yet another of his extreme and uninformed statements about Māori and Pacific spaces at Auckland University. Comparing the creation of cultural safe spaces to the ‘Ku Klux Klan’. The Prime Minister has jumped in with The Herald noting “Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said he hasn’t seen “the detail” of the segregated sections but, at first glance, he said, they looked “totally inappropriate”. The ACT party it is noted have attempted to have the spaces closed down. (https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/university-of-auckland-stands-by-designated-maori-and-pacific-spaces-amid-backlash/L6BBRE7DINFMXEVUUI5EUCKLH4/). Such statements and the subsequent online racism that has been baited by these parties are another indication of the right wing, kuaretanga of this government. They are reflective of the growth of global racism that is being enabled by the denial of the inherent oppressive power relationships and colonising supremacism of the right wing stand being taken in this country. To throw terms like ‘segregation’ and ‘Ku klux klan’ at the creation positive and affirming spaces for Māori and Pacific Nations students is abhorrent. In just a few weeks Winston Peters as made repulsive remarks related to ‘Nazi Germany’ and the ‘Ku Klux klan’. One has to seriously question the capacity of a party leader who can make such offensive, violent, hostile statements, and to demean and trample the mana of his own whakapapa in doing so. Add to that the ways in which the Act party so readily throw around the term ‘segregation’ as an emotive term to further marginalise Māori aspirations. Segregation that ACT are referring to is based on acts of power and discrimination. The restriction of specific groups through domination and imposing power over them to stop their movement and access is segregation. The creation of safe cultural spaces is not segregation. So either ACT are extremely ignorant and/or lacking in any form of intelligence or they are deliberately seeking to create division and further embolden racism. I expect it is all of these things. As the Māori Paati have noted
“What we are seeing from the Act Party is only another attempt to misrepresent tangata whenua and paint the picture that Māori get preferential treatment. The assertion is damaging and inflammatory to their divide-and-conquer rhetoric that they have been pushing since the 2023 campaign,” a Te Pāti Māori spokesman said.
“Safe spaces for minority groups in universities aren’t new. They exist for equity groups such as students with rural backgrounds, migrant students, Māori, Pacific and our disabilities whānau. What we see here is another targeted attack on Māori tauira.
“Creating safe spaces to empower minority communities to thrive and achieve while creating a sense of interconnectedness should be celebrated.”
It only takes a bare minimal understanding of the origins of education in Aotearoa and its role in not only the cultural oppression of our people but the confiscation of thousands of acres of land nationally to fund the colonising assimilationist education systems to understand that mainstream universities have never been places of safety for Māori and Pacific Nations students, nor have they been safe places for many migrant communities, women, Takatāpui and LGBTIQ+ peoples. Universities in this country were founded upon colonial intentions and dominant Pākehā ways of being. That is a fact that has been well documented by many scholars. All of whom are much more informed, knowledgeable and evidence based than the uninformed commentators of ACT, New Zealand First and National parties.
University education is and has always been a site of struggle for Māori. Recent research highlights that Māori scholars continue to raise issues around the failure to increase the numbers of Māori staff within the university sector (https://e-tangata.co.nz/reflections/50-reasons-there-are-no-maori-in-your-science-department/). Struggle within the university occurs on multiple levels; culture; language; structures; staffing; access; retention of staff and students; resources. These struggles are not new but derive from a history of colonial imperialism. The university system has been founded upon a history of colonial oppression. We are often denied real knowledge about such a history. The struggle for the creation of safe cultural spaces for Māori reaches back to the 60’s and 70’s including the challenges laid by Ngā Tamatoa to the enabling of institutional and structural racism in the 1970’s. The University of Auckland itself benefited through the Auckland University College Reserves Act of 1885[1] where confiscated lands from Waikato, Ngā Puhi and Ngāti Awa was utilised to fund the development of The University of Auckland[2].
The University of Auckland was not the only university founded from colonial imperialism. Both Otago and Canterbury universities were developed as part of attempts to increase settlements in those areas[3]. Legislation was also passed, by the colonial settler government, for the confiscation of lands for the benefit of other universities. J.C. Beaglehole includes in the appendices to the publication ‘Victoria University College: An Essay Towards a History’,[4] a memorandum on the Opaku Reserve from Herbert Ostler the chair of the College in 1914. The memorandum outlines issues regarding the Opaku Reserve and Waitotara lands in South Taranaki. The Opaku Reserve was essentially 10,000 acres of confiscated lands that is located near the town of Pātea. Ostler notes that the land was confiscated from ‘rebel Natives’ and was through section 6 of the University Endowment Act 1868 set aside as a reserve for the endowment of a colonial university.[5] At that time however there was no university established in Aotearoa and the funds were placed into a Colonial University Fund. The first university was established in 1870 in Otago and it was deemed in Section 30 on the New Zealand University Act 1874 that lands in the Province of Otago reserved under the University Endowment Act 1868 would be granted to the University of Otago.
It was not until 1878 that the recommendation was made for the establishment of Colleges in Auckland and Wellington and it was suggested that those lands held in the North Island Reserves be put toward endowments for those colleges. By this time the Waitotara Reserve of 4,000 acres had been included in the schedule of lands via the New Zealand University Reserves Act 1875.[6] The Auckland University College Act 1882 established the University of Auckland, and the Auckland University College Reserves Act 1885 saw lands stolen from three iwi in the upper North Island, Ngāti Awa, Tainui and Ngä Puhi, vested in the Council of the Auckland University College. The Victoria College Act 1897 brought the establishment of what is now known as Victoria University in Wellington, which Ostler notes was to provide higher education for Wellington, Taranaki, Hawke’s Bay, Nelson and Marlborough. Section 38 of that Act set the Waitotara Reserve aside as an endowment however the Opaku Reserve was not included, instead the Opaku Reserve was in 1905 diverted to the Taranaki Scholarships Trust to provide scholarships for Taranaki scholars to any of the universities in the country.[7]
Given the colonial beginnings of the university system and the dominance of monocultural ways of operating it is not surprising that being a Māori academic in the university sector can bring us into conflict within our institutions. This is a direct consequence of the differing cultural values and expectations, and the dominant power relationships the continue to place Pākehā and western knowledge forms over mātauranga Māori. In terms of cultural spaces Andrea Morrison noted that Māori ‘space’ is a notion that refers to physical, cultural, spiritual, spatial and temporal concepts. In the university context it also relates to constructions of theory and disciplinarity[8]. Creating ‘space’ then for Māori within the university must happen on all these levels. As Andrea Morrison has argued the unequal power relations that exist in the university context for Māori means that this is not, and has never been, an easy task. The creation of safe spaces for Māori within those contexts took many years of struggle by Māori within, and outside of, the university sector.
In a symposium, in the early 1990’s, by Māori scholars and allies within the Research Unit for Māori Education[9] a range of papers were delivered regarding the need to create space for Māori within educational institutions, in particular within the university setting. Linda Tuhiwai Smith argued that the struggle for Māori academics is that of creating both the space and the conditions for Māori knowledge to be engaged.[10] The notion of space is a very broad one in Māori terms, when engaging an idea of creating space we are not solely talking of spatial and temporal notions but are encompassing physical, intellectual, social, cultural and spiritual ways of being. That puts a considerable challenge in front of Māori academics within university structures. Linda Tuhiwai Smith argued that in fact the structural struggles are critical to creating space,
Although at a social level it is important to make students feel comfortable by claiming a culturally appropriate space to work in and by developing support mechanisms for Māori students this does not begin to address the underlying structural issues which are concerned with what students are required to learn, how they learn and how this learning will serve them in their own practice. It is in their control over what counts as knowledge that the power of traditional intellectuals is paramount.[11]
The control over knowledge, what constitutes valid knowledge and how knowledge is selected has been outlined in some depth by Michael Young.[12] This work has been related directly to Māori Education by Graham Hingangaroa Smith (1997) who draws upon key questions posited by Young in regard to knowledge and the ways in which unequal power relationships between colonised and coloniser leads to the suppression of Indigenous knowledge. Graham asserts that questioning the basis of what counts as knowledge, how knowledge is produced and whose interests are served by that, exposes the myth that knowledge is neutral and therefore reveals that power underpins the ways in which education is constructed.[13]
The imposition of Pākehā knowledge and ways of being has been our experience since colonisation. It is evident that within university settings this is manifested in many ways. The history of State education systems within colonised countries highlights that schooling was utilised as a mechanism for the denial of Indigenous languages and culture. This plays out across all dominant mainstream educational settings, including in the university and wider tertiary sector. The struggle over affirmation of Māori knowledge and Māori contributions to the University is ongoing. The need for culturally safe space for Māori and Pacific Nations students is ongoing and will be until such time as the impacts of structural and institutional racism on our people is no longer being experienced, and dealt with, daily.
Māori academics, both staff and students, struggle within the universities of this country. Many Māori staff and students in the academy are cognisant of the need to struggle and to be committed to a long-term vision to transform those places and spaces. The university is a site worth struggling over in that as we have been reminded it has been built off the confiscation of our lands, and therefore built on the back of our people. As such, we have as much right to be in those spaces as anyone. We also have the right to have spaces that are safe culturally and where there is some respite from dealing with the structural racism that continues to live within such institutional walls. The struggle is one that is necessary as w Māori scholars seek to create spaces that are healthy for future Māori staff and students. There are many Māori academics over the past 100 years that have striven for similar outcomes and who in doing so have been successful in creating many changes in university settings.
A key element in the denial of Māori space is the positioning of dominant cultural capital. Where all groups have their own inherent cultural capital, Bourdieu identifies that the dominant group’s cultural capital that is given validity and provides the basis for a whole range of societal structures and systems.[14] That is the case in the education system in this country including within universities. Dominant cultural capital is also used to diminish and trample the mana of The statements by Peters, Luxon and Act are reflective of their ignorance in seeing that 99% of spaces in the University system are founded upon being Pākehā. That the system itself is grounded upon an assumption that Pākehā and western ways of being are the ‘norm’ that Māori and Pacific Nations staff and students must learn to ‘fit into’. The creation of cultural spaces for Māori and Pacific Nations students is a struggle that has been fought over many generations. In 1926 Apirana Ngata proposed the study of Te Reo Māori and the first appointment eventuated with Maharaia Winiata in 1949 (https://teara.govt.nz/en/maori-studies-nga-tari-maori/print). That is the history that we are dealing with. It is the history that informs the ways in which universities have been established. It is the history that Māori students and staff deal with in terms of the embedded racism within the institutional structures that they study and teach in daily. It is what has informed the structural racism that emboldens personal racist attacks experienced by Māori within the institutions. The creation of safe cultural spaces for Māori, and our Pacific Nations relations, is the minimum of what needs to be done for Māori and Pasifika students to not only survive within institutions, but to have support and thrive in ways that enable them to contribute to the transformative visions of their people.
[1] Auckland University College Reserves [1885:1], New Zealand Statutes 1885,Government Printer, Wellington: 411
[2] Mead, L.T.R., 1996 op.cit.
[3] Morrison, A., 1999 op.cit.
[4] Beaglehole, J.C. 1949 Victoria University College: An Essay Towards a History, New Zealand University Press, Wellington
[5] Ostler, Herbert cited in Beaglehole, J.C, ibid:291
[6] ibid.
[7] Beaglehole, J.C. op.cit, also see Taranaki Scholarships Trust, 1958 Avery Press Ltd, New Plymouth
[8] Morrison, A., 1999 op.cit
[9] The Research Unit is now known as the International Research Institute for Mäori and Indigenous Education and is located at The University of Auckland.
[10] Smith, Linda Tuhiwai 1992(c) ‘Ko Täku Ko Tä Te Mäori: The Dilemma of a Mäori Academic’ in Smith, G.H. & Hohepa, M.K. (eds) 1993 Creating Space in Institutional Settings for Mäori, Monograph No. 15, Research Unit for Mäori Education, University of Auckland, Auckland
[11] ibid:10
[12] Young, M.F.D. (ed) 1971 Knowledge and Control: New Directions for the Sociology of Education, Collier McMillan, London
[13] Smith, G.H. 1992 ‘Tane-Nui-A-Rangi’s Legacy:Propping up the Sky Kaupapa Maori as Resistance and Intervention in Smith, G.H. & Hohepa, M.K. (eds) 1993 Creating Space in Institutional Settings for Maori, Monograph No. 15, Research Unit for Mäori Education, University of Auckland, Auckland
[14] Bourdieu, P. & Passeron, J., 1977 Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture, Sage, California