P4 The Empire we’re in: Covid and White Supremacy / A.J. Hendry
This is part 4 in a series where we will be exploring and imagining how faith communities, and our community in general, may need to evolve in order to adapt to our changing times. You can find part 1 here, part 2 here, and part 3 here.
This week thousands of protesters gathered at the steps of parliament, demanding an end to the Public Health Measure’s that the Government has put in place.
Beneath all the speeches and the demands was a deep desire to get back to normal.
To return the world to the way things were.
To get on with living life as if Covid never happened.
And yet during these Covid lockdowns some things have not changed. Inequality and injustice remain a fixture within this nation.
Homelessness, poverty, suicide and social exclusion, these are normal realities within New Zealand.
For in New Zealand, some have, and others just don’t.
In New Zealand, some struggle to survive, and others have far more than they need.
Kids dying in cold and damp homes is normal in this country. People feeling isolated and alone, overcome by depression, and unable to access mental health services, this is normal in this country. Teenagers living on queen street, denied the right to housing, excluded from society, this is normal in our country.
I have no interest in getting back to normal.
It never left. And it isn’t working.
The way we have organized our communities, our society, isn’t working. Inequality is not an accident, it’s a consequence.
And yet, Covid has given us all an oppurtunity to pause. To rethink, reimagine, to revaluate.
It has become clear to me that the only way to change the status quo is to change ourselves. As communities – whether those of faith, or not – we have an oppurtunity to examine whether the way we have organized ourselves is working.
From where I stand, I believe the answer is clearly not.
Naming the Empire within Aotearoa
Though we have been conditioned in the West to accept that there is a division between the sacred and secular, the world we live in is very much shaped by deities and practices which shape us as a community, defining and directing our values, and shaping us into the sort of people we have become.
Here in Aotearoa New Zealand, we live in the far reaches of the Western Empire. And like any Empire of old, we have our own god’s that require worship and sacrifice. These deities may not be carved from stone or marble, yet they are very much present within our society, and their demand for service and sacrifice is absolute.
White Supremacy, Individualism and Consumerism.
These are the chief Principalities and Powers of the West. It is they who govern our lives, structuring our very existence, writing the script that humanity must walk. It is also, perhaps, the narratives set by these three Powers that have caused the most harm to humanity, at least within our current time.
White Supremacy
The world we live in here in Aotearoa, is one shaped by the Colonization and Domination of the British Empire. New Zealand arose out of the ashes of betrayal, the Crown failing to uphold its commitments under Te Tiriti, and the church, equally unable to live up to the promises it made, failing in its role as ally of the people, and instead becoming an advocate of the Crown and beneficiary of the Empire’s exploitation of the whenua.
It is hard for many of us who are pākehā to acknowledge, but our place in this whenua came through the rape, murder, and exploitation of tangata whenua. Our ancestors took the whenua, dispossessing māori of their inheritance, and triggering an avalanche of trauma, poverty, and homelessness that would reverberate through the generations. Pākehā in general, and the Pākehā church specifically, directly benefited from the actions of the crown. Many acquired stolen land and built-up wealth that is still benefiting us today. On top of this, the Crown set itself up as the power within the whenua, setting up a colonial government to rule, denying tangata whenua their right to Tino Rangatiratanga in violation of its obligation under Te Tiriti. This colonial structure at its core has its roots within the rot of White Supremacy and White Superiority, it is a system designed for the Colonizer, one which assumes that the Colonizer’s ways of being are superior and right, and thus relegates mātauranga māori beneath it. This act perpetuates and continues to cause harm, both to māori and pākehā alike.
I want to pause here for a second for my pākehā whānau. I know that for many of us this kōrero is confronting. It’s easier to shy away from these words. When we think of White Supremacy, we think instantly of the Klu Klux Klan, or perhaps the Christchurch terrorist, we dissociate ourselves. We aren’t like them, we’re nothing like them.
I understand that. My tūpuna came to these shores after the signing of Te Tiriti, our whānau built lives for themselves in Tāmaki Makaurau and the Waikato. Knowing what little I know about the histories of these lands, and what occurred in the name of the Crown in these regions, it is hard to deny that my ancestors created space for themselves in this whenua through the exploitation and murder of māori. I’ve wrestled with this; I continue to do so. I understand that this is not a reality that any of us want to face. And yet it’s undeniable.
And so, when we speak of White Supremacy, we remember this. And yet, we are not solely speaking of acts of gross violence and abuse. We are talking about a society that places Whiteness and White ways of being in this world, as the norm. It is a society that was built to serve pākehā, and continues to do so.
We’ve seen this during the pandemic. The vaccine rollout is an example where decisions were made that served the majority, while māori – despite being at a higher risk due to existing inequalities of both contracting Covid, and dying from it – were left behind. The decision being made to go with a more general approach, in spite of the advice and warnings of māori health experts and leaders who had consistently argued that for the roll out to be truly equitable, it needed a targeted approach specifically for māori. And we know the result. Week’s out from moving to the traffic light system, where our restrictions will ease, and our unvaccinated whānau will be at the greatest risk, māori and tangata moana health professionals and communities’ leaders are having to work against the clock to support as many people as they can to access the vaccine. A situation they did not have to be in if their voices, and knowledge of their people and their communities, had been listened to from the beginning.
But, White Supremacy is more than this one example. White Supremacy is the assumption that White ways of being, that pākehā ways of doing things are just the norm. Where Māori must fight to be heard and to have their mātauranga acknowledged as valid. And yet our entire society, our political system, our schools, our justice system, our laws, the very form and structure of our government, have all been built with the assumption that European way’s of doing things are not just right, but simply the normal way things are done. When this worldview is challenged, it is met with cries of separatism, segregation, and demands that we are one people.
And yet that oneness only ever goes so far.
Consistently, being one people fails to translate into ensuring that all of us have access to safe and stable housing, to enough food to eat, to medical care, and education and employment opportunities. No, consistently, it is our māori whānau who are disempowered and denied the support needed to break the cycles of poverty and homelessness that our pākehā tupuna created through colonization.
It doesn’t have to be this way. But we choose to make it so, by consistently making decisions to maintain the status quo, while pushing already marginalized groups further and further to the margins.
Normal never left
As we bring this part of our conversation to a close, I’m left reflecting on this desire to return to normality.
Normal means such different things to so many different people. This week I was walking down K’rd looking for a couple of young people we were hoping to house for the night. As I walked down the street there was a sense that some normality had returned. Retail stores had opened their doors and the hustle and bustle that so characterizes K’rd was beginning to return.
And though that may have felt like a return to normality to some, for others, there is a feeling that normal never left.
You see this street happens to be home to many of our elders and our young ones. And though lockdown disrupted a lot - this normal at the very least - remained.
The normality of inequality didn't go anywhere. Rather, it has only become further entrenched.
Poverty, homelessness, social isolation and exclusion, is normal within Aotearoa.
As our country begins to open up, we have an oppurtunity to reflect on what we want the future of "normal" to become. For myself, I dream of a day when it is normal for every one of our whānau to have enough food to eat, a safe place to live, and a supportive community to Love and care for them.
How we achieve that dream is what this series is all about.
Renouncing White Supremacy and finding our way to becoming a people that can truly honour Te Tiriti is a vital step. In part 5 we will and begin wrestling with the other two deities of the Western Empire we find ourselves in. Individualism and Consumerism…
A.J. Hendry is a Laidlaw College graduate, and now a Youth Development Worker and housing advocate, working in the Youth Housing and Homelessness space. He leads a service supporting rangatahi experiencing homelessness and is also an advocate working collectively to end youth homelessness in Aotearoa. He is also the curator and creator of When Lambs Are Silent.
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