Shame, Privilege and being Pakeha / A.J. Hendry

I am Pakeha.

There was a time when being identified in such a way would have made me feel unsettled. I’d grown up being told that the word Pakeha was a racist term meaning “white pig”. So identifying in such a way would have made me feel slighted.

But, not anymore. Today I wear the name with pride. It is part of my heritage. It is part of who I am.

By Pakeha I mean that I whakapapa back to those who voyaged to this whenua after the signing of our treaty. My ancestors voyaged to Aotearoa joining what perhaps could be described as the “first mass European immigration” into the newly established town of Auckland.

We set up roots here and made this whenua our home.

And though I am proud of my heritage, and proud of the family to which I belong, I also struggle with the shame that comes with acknowledging my ancestral roots. I have no knowledge of whether any of my whanau were involved in the Land Wars, but I do know that they benefited from its occurrence.

I am Pakeha.

This means I am privileged.

Privilege.

Another term I would have struggled with at one point.

What does it mean to be privileged?

Now if this question is new to you, then you likely grew up swimming in privilege yourself. As a result of reading these words you may feel uncomfortable. Perhaps you feel that the term doesn’t apply to you. Or perhaps you just don’t feel like privilege exists. You might also be Pakeha, and perhaps – like I once did - you just don’t see how you have been privileged in any way over and above anyone else.

Now before you click back to FB or go search for another cat video, if this describes some of the thoughts and feelings you’re having right now, I wonder if you’d mind hearing me out?

My relationship with the word privilege started much the same. I hated it.

I grew up in a family that was constantly struggling to keep itself above the bread line. So, when people would talk about white privilege I used to think “well if it exists, where’s mine?”

I associated privilege with material wealth, and I definitely was not seeing that manifest in my life.

That is until I was able to step outside of my own bubble of experience and listen to the experiences of others. I began to listen to my Maori and Pasifika friends and I began to hear their stories, stories of prejudice and discrimination, stories that seemed so impossible to believe, because they were a completely different experience of NZ than the one I had been privileged to have.

And as I listened to these stories and started to pay attention to what was going on around me, my understanding about what it meant to be Pakeha in Aotearoa changed.

I started to understand that white privilege had very little to do with material wealth. It was about something far more important than money.

To be privileged in Aotearoa means that you live in a country that has designed its systems to operate and think the way you operate and think. Our school system, justice system, even our political systems have all been designed to work for me.

Why do you think Pakeha do so well in our education system in contrast to our Maori or Pasifika children? Is it because Pakeha are naturally more intelligent than Maori and Pasifika kids?

Absolutely NOT!

It is because the education system has been designed to work for Pakeha. It has been built by Pakeha, and functions in a way that benefits the learning and development styles of our Pakeha young people. Yet it produces the opposite result for many of our Pasifika and Maori rangatahi.

Inequality and oppression in this nation has been allowed to continue because we have not yet fully owned the privilege we enjoy as Pakeha.

It makes us uncomfortable to think we could hold some responsibility, or benefit in some way from the wrongs of our past.

But unless we do, we will not be able to change the fundamental flaws that uphold these systems of oppression within our society.

If we are serious about transforming this nation and working towards a more equal and fair society than it starts with us. It starts with facing the tough realities of our past.

We – Pakeha – must deal with our greatest shame. We must confess our sins. We must ask forgiveness for the wrongs of our ancestors.

At the point of repentance, we will find the first step on our journey towards reconciliation.

I understand that for many of my Pakeha brothers and sisters these words will be hard to hear.

They will be even harder to take hold of.

To acknowledge the truth hidden within our past would mean we would also have to deal with the guilt and shame that goes along with it. And as a people, as Pakeha, shame has always been something we have struggled to know how to handle.

But, I believe this land can heal. I acknowledge that for many of us these are difficult realities to face. But, if we find the courage I believe we will discover something truly magnificent.

We will discover what it means for two peoples to truly come together as one. A nation that is able to celebrate both its diversity and its commonality. A nation where both parties come to the table as equals, where the mana of Maori and Pakeha alike has been restored.

A nation that can truly say that the greatest beauty found within Aotearoa New Zealand, is not our forests or our rivers, or even the sound of our native wildlife at the crack of dawn. But, the shared unity and love that exists between our peoples.

That will be a nation we can truly be proud of.

Aaron Hendry