Theories of Art, Performance and Society in Aotearoa 5

Theories of Art, Performance and Society in Aotearoa 5 The next thesis to be discussed refers to Goffman as do many of the writers considered here. But the topic is real life rather than theatre. Emma West’s Manu is my Homegirl: Navigating the ethnic identity of the Maori adoptee is a Master of Philosophy thesis from Te Ara Poutama, AUT. The great value of this thesis is that it challenges a range of categories including, Maori, Pakeha and biculturalism. A person shifts from one identity or construction of such, to another depending on the context; ‘the common theme that emerged from this research is that placing the Maori identity in binary opposition to the Pakeha identity can create challenges and a sense of marginalisation for those who share both Maori and Pakeha heritages.’ West 2012: 120 It is important to note that Emma West is talking about a fairly small range of people, those involved in closed adoption as children. At the same time her thesis is a brilliant exposition of strategies to do with identity in Aotearoa, strategies that seem to this reviewer to be applicable or at least worth considering in terms of the subjects of other writers discussed here. Like Billy T James, Kiri Te Kanawa and Mika Emma West is herself an adoptee. As described by Hamilton above Mika’s situation seems to have been like Emma’s while Billy and Kiri were adopted within Maori society. Using an interview process West looks at how adoptees use or do not use such things as te reo, tikanga and kapa haka along with other things to find and express identity and how they perform in everyday life. West’s subjects may be contrasted with Greenwood’s in that where identities might be clearly defined in Panguru this is not the case for West’s group. Having said that some of the latter group do come from the countryside. One of the refreshing aspects of this thesis is the combination of Social Psychology and Sociology. This means references to Liu et alia (2005) for example, and shows the value of working in a cross disciplinary context at the AUT. West uses this wider disciplinary reach t to break new ground. As always with something original there is the sense that something previously familiar but just out of grasp has been explained in such a way as to allow new questions. One such new question might be what happens where tikanga is adopted in performance work and in ritual by non- Maori? In her paper discussed below Mazer raises such a situation in a coda to her paper where she describes a university function after the Christchurch earthquake. The function follows tikanga and te reo is used but here are few Maori present. This example might be better understood after a reading of West’s thesis. People have been adopted across ethnic groups and so, in Aotearoa- New Zealand, have rituals and language all with an effect on identity and its expression. But the new question most often asked by Emma West herself is to do with the world of identities experienced by the Maori person who has grown up in a closed adoption. How is a sense of self found and maintained in the arts and in language and in everyday life? At this point Hamilton’s work on Mika might be reconsidered. Is the reworking of martial arts as bodily display by Mika and Torotoro an exploration of identity? Is it a reaction to ascription or prescription of identity? West (2012: 84) cites Erikson in Santock (2007) and the suggestion that delinquency is an attempt to establish an identity, although negative. Without exploring gender identity to any great extent West does spend a lot of well warranted time on Verrier’s thesis of a primal wound (Verrier 1993) occurring through the absence of a mother. Is what Mika and Torotoro do on stage a grounding of such questions in the body and dance? And is such grounding in the body to do with the way identity has been developed in this country through face to face interaction and bodily interaction as in kapa haka? The questions that Ryan Hartigan who is discussed later in this series asks about the haka and its international significance might also be related to West’s thesis but the latter is, generally speaking, about the New Zealand context. Some reviews of literature by West yield very good results. This is done against the general background of the standard texts like Berger and Luckman (1966) and a consideration of the research on Maori identity such as work by Durie (1995). There is other work on identity that is not referenced by West. One thinks of Veronica Tawhai's work on rawaho (Tawhai 2010), people who do not have direct whakapapa links to the area in which they reside and who are rendered invisible in certain respects, say when it comes to making submissions on the environment. Tangata whenua come first. The value in considering Tawhai’s work here might be that it shows how identity questions exist for Maori who have adopted new places to live and for those Maori who were there first and who adopted others into their territory. There is a complex of identity, genealogy, residence and other matters that stretches across the country and is, in effect, the context for West’s research as it is for most of the other work discussed here. There is the feeling reading West that people live in a jumble of world views. The clear lines of thought described, say, by Merata Kawharu (Kawharu in Selby et alia ed 2010) or clear and deep rooted notions of, say, tapu and noa might well exist in the minds of other people but for West, and, arguably, a lot of people in Aotearoa- New Zealand there is a mish-mashing of strategic responses which are enacted to get by in social situations rather than to demonstrate comprehensive understanding. Survival is all. It is interesting that the idea of ‘navigating’ as put forward by Emma West is used elsewhere, in the Whanau Ora context for example. At the same time the sense of navigation applies across the literature discussed here although West is using it in a much more extensive way so that instead of assuming that parties are secure in their cultural identity the assumption seems to be that just In case that is not so there might often be a need for reflection and then navigation, sometimes in an instant.. The very idea that people need to navigate an identity is important and possibly under researched. Is the navigation process itself part of the identity? Emma West’s thesis makes a number of challenges. She suggests the possibility of a new tribal identity for adoptees (2012: 119). There are in fact various expressions of this idea. For example in Tuturu pumau meeting house in Palmerston North there is a pou in one corner that stands for people who don’t directly relate to other pou, the other pou being for specific waka and hapu. There is the Ratana idea of morehu, of remnants. But West may have a place between the binaries of Maori and Pakeha in mind. At one stage West suggests that the term Maori might well be reviewed in its uses; ‘During this research I had a curious reaction to the external factors defining Maori identity and I wanted to disestablish th word ‘Maori’ from the common vocabulary.’ 2012:119 While West does not refer to it there might be a cross reference to Cheryl Te Waerea Smith’s idea of a ‘cultural cage’ here (Smith in Murphy ed 1993). While there is mention of Alcoff and Mendieta (2003) and a discussion of modern identities in this thesis there might be a commentary to follow looking at the way key identities shift over time. Emma West looks at the shifts in identity in the latter half of the twentieth Century and the early part of this one with respect to distinctions internal to the country of Maori and Pakeha and in between. When and how people became preoccupied with ethnic identities over time is an important aspect to be researched, one that Emma West's thesis evokes. The work of Franz Fanon (1963) on the psychological aspects of decolonisation in North Africa comes to mind. West’s thesis is extremely important and goes beyond the world of the person involved in closed adoption. The perspectives Emma West offers might be used, say, in a discussion of the work on display at Ora Gallery in Wellington, in places of cultural multiplicity and extensive ‘borrowing’ if such it be called (cf Cleave 2012). The chord that is struck resoundingly with this reviewer is the need to flick in an instant from one conversational or interactional context to another without missing a beat, the need to be simultaneously at home in several surroundings at once or almost at once. This process of navigation, as West calls it, through kinds or layers of identity is familiar to say the least. There is something of an adrenalin vortex here. Chris Laidlaw talks of how coaches would use war talk to fire the All Blacks up. The opposing team was the enemy; each match was a battle, each series a campaign and so on (Laidlaw 1999: 21). One wonders how deep this goes in Aotearoa. A whole generation of leaders, teachers, managers and rank and file, Maori and Pakeha, came back and out of World War Two to sort things when required in Aotearoa and this included matters of identity. Fred ‘The Needle’ Allen as a Rugby coach was not an isolated case. War might be sport but sport might be life. Did West as a Maori adoptee in a closed adoption grow up at a time when lines were being drawn in a duality known as biculturalism but experienced by West as a kind of terror? Was the only way the society in Aotearoa knew how to handle this was through a kind of war talk in which she was caught up? If so then there is an edge to the sense in which the word ‘navigation’ is used. I have suggested above by way of reference to the work of Veronica Tawhai that this might be understood as a process of negotiation and navigation through different kinds of adoption. These kinds of adoption are understood in interaction as when, for example people from one iwi go to live in the district of another then the kawa of that district is adopted by all who live there. Or when a Pakeha speaks Maori then that person is adopting the ways and manners of Te Reo, te reo me ona ahuatanga. As we go about our lives in Aotearoa we might find ourselves, momentarily or for longer in the fa’a Samoa, in a world of tikanga, in the East, in a world of Mandarin or in a general world, a world that is something of a thin veneer, the Pakeha world. West is of course talking of a much more intense personal situation, one where Verrier’s thesis of the primal wound in the absence of the mother applies. There are also important considerations of shame and identity made by West and her work may be read alongside Ryan Hartigan’s description of embarrassment and the haka below. Bibliography Alcoff L, and Mendieta, E., 2003 Identities,: race, class, gender and nationality. Malden MA, : Blackwell Publishers Berger, P. L. and T. Luckmann 1966, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge, Garden City, NY: Anchor Books Chow, Rey 2006 ‘Sacrifice, mimesis and the theorizing of victimhood (A speculative essay)’, Representations 94: 131–49. Cleave, Peter 2012 Dance and Identity in Aotearoa and the World, Campus Press Durie, M. 1995 Te hoe Nuku Roa Framework. A Maori Identity Measure Journal of the Polynesian Society 104(4), 461-470 Fanon, Franz 1963 The Wretched of the Earth, Grove Press New York Hemmings, Clare. (2005) ‘Invoking affect: Cultural theory and the ontological turn’, Cultural Studies 19(5): 548–67. Iwanek, M (1997) Adoption in New Zealand – past, present, future. In Adoption and Healing: Proceedings of the international conference on Adoption and Healing (pp 66-67), Wellington, New Zealand Adoption, Education and Healing Trust. Jackson, Steven and Hokowhitu, Brendan (2002) ‘Sport, tribes and technology: The New Zealand All Blacks haka and the politics of identity’, Journal of Sport and Social Issues 26(2): 125–39. Laidlaw, Chris 1999 Rights of Passage: beyond the New Zealand Identity Crisis, Hodder, Moa, Beckett Liu, J., McCreanor, T and Teaiwa, T. (Eds) 2005 New Zealand Identities: Departures and destinations, Wellington, Victoria University Press Santock, J W 2007 Adolescence McGraw Hill Tawhai, Veronica M. H. 2010 'Rawaho: in and out of the environmental engagement loop', in Maori and the Environment: Kaitiaki, Ed Selby Moore and Mulholland, Huia Publishers Verrier, N (1993) The Primal Wound: Understanding the adopted child, Baltimore MD Gateway Press