Ethnographic Edge

Introduction to Volume 6(2)

2023-12-16T18:02:14+00:00

"Before it is too late": Life, death, street performance and homelessness in Aotearoa New Zealand

2023-12-16T18:03:31+00:00

This article examines the creation of ‘Before It Is Too Late’, a collaborative performance project created with the Peeps- short for Peoples- living on the streets of Aotearoa, New Zealand, who identify as Māori (Indigenous New Zealanders). The Peeps face profound, persistent, unjust inequalities, inequitable mortality rates, and devaluation of their lives by the wider community. The performance project is centred on the Peeps’ perspectives and is informed by whanonga pono (Māori values) and tikanga (customs), the principles of community-based research, relational ethics, and critical performance ethnography. The project aims to initiate a conversation with health professionals to improve the quality of care provided and to ensure greater respect and dignity in relation to the death of Māori homeless people. We present the drama Before It Is Too Late that has resulted from this collaboration with the Peeps to open a transformative space for their voices, experiences, priorities, and rights to be heard and acknowledged.

Te Pepe Ao Uri Whāriki: The Development of Pūrākau Analysis Framework

2023-12-16T18:02:29+00:00

Wairaka was the daughter of the rangatira Toroa, who captained the Mātaatua waka navigating across the Pacific Ocean to Aotearoa, New Zealand. When the Mātaatua waka arrived on the shores of Whakatāne, the men disembarked, but when Wairaka saw that the waka was in danger of drifting out to sea, ignoring the tapu forbidding women from handling the waka. She decisively acted to save the waka, calling out, “Kia Whakatāne au i ahau – I will act the part of a man” to draw on the strength of a man. In doing so, she heroically saved the Mātaatua waka and all those aboard. Indigenous peoples have long preserved their historical accounts using a variety of oral traditions. For Māori, the sharing of pūrākau is one-way oral records have been retained, shared and used to teach or inspire.

“He kairangahau waahine, he whaangai ma matou kia kiia he uri nga Wairaka. We have adopted this group of female researchers in order that they emulate our ancestress Wairaka”.

These words were included in a letter of support from kaumātua to conduct our rangahau of the te kōti rangatahi o Mātaatua. While we were honoured to be embraced, we were equally mindful of our responsibility to emulate Wairaka. From the outset, our research has been influenced by powerful pūrākau like that of Wairaka. In this article, we outline how we have drawn on personal, iwi, hapū and whānau participant pūrākau together with our observations to analyse and re-present pūrākau as a self-reflection and reflexivity analysis tool in developing a framework.

Ethical Relational Space: Autoethnographic Reflections on Learning From Indigenous Mothering

2023-12-16T18:03:16+00:00

In this paper, I aim to centre and attend to the transformative possibilities and power of the intimate, everyday spaces of parent-child relationships in the journey of mental and spiritual decolonisation. Drawing on the concept of “Ethical Space” from Cree legal scholar Willie Ermine, I share what I have learned from insights and wisdom of Indigenous women mentors and writers centring mothering, parenting and family in the work of healing, decolonisation and resurgence. I share two autoethnographic vignettes of my own mental and spiritual decolonising journey, as this is interwoven with my experiences as a mother. My journey grew from, and continues to reciprocate within, the relationships and strength of Stó:lō Téméxw (Stó:lō lands and world) on the Pacific Northwest coast in lands now known as Canada. I particularly share from within my mentorship and friendship with Ts’elxwéyeqw matriarch Lumlamelut (Wee Wee Láy Láq), and in learning from the writing and teaching of Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, writer and artist Leanne Betasamosake Simpson. Both emphasise children’s honoured place in family and community and an understanding that governance, leadership, and respect for others’ self-determination begin in the cradle of family relationships. I begin to see how the ways of being my mothering passes on are part of what upholds the contemporary colonial reality – and to experience the cracks that make space for other ways of being to emerge. Through sharing pieces of my journey, I aim for readers to witness the power of opening oneself to look into the mirrors held up in relational spaces across differences, and call for a deep reflection on the cultural beliefs and socialisation that shape parenting and family life. From here, we can question whether the beliefs and ways we see in the mirror are who we want ourselves and our children to be/become and what we hope and dream for the collective future they are already part of creating.

Soil Within Us: An Autopedology of Migrant Family History and Mourning through the Medium of Soil

2023-12-16T18:03:01+00:00

Drawing on personal experiences, ethnographic observations, novels, videos on social networking sites, a poem, and a family diary, this essay explores the mourning of deaths in one’s family history and in the migrant community against the backdrop of political events, including the Russia-Ukraine war, and geological occurrences. Paying attention to how soil manifests itself in these events, the author investigates the potential of soil to serve as a medium for experiencing and coming to terms with the world. The study proposes a genre of autopedology in which the ethnographer writes about events through soil and undergoes the process of formation together with the soil. The essay travels a road of six signposts, from the embodied to the ontological, then to the destructive, to the decomposing, to the consumable and consuming, and finally to the mourning soil. It is shown that the soil within us offers the means to express and stand up against unjust deaths. The study is complemented by photography as a means of visualisation of the process of mourning with soil.

The Eke Tangaroa programme for Māori/Pasifika early career academics: Past, present, future

2023-12-16T18:02:44+00:00

This commentary reflects on Auckland University of Technology’s Eke Tangaroa programme, which aims to increase the number of Māori and Pasifika academic staff of the university and to support them in developing their research careers. The commentary has three parts, representing the past, present and possible future of the programme. The first part (past) is by the two senior professors who came up with the idea in the first place. The second part (present) is by the inaugural and current kaiurungi (navigator) of the programme, also the first author of this commentary. The third part (future) draws on a conversation with the Deputy Vice Chancellor Academic, who is responsible for the programme.