White Saviorism and Pākehā Liberation / A.J. Hendry

“If you have come here to help me you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” ― Lilla Watson

In response to my work serving rangatahi who experience homelessness, I often get very well-meaning comments from people who come up to me expressing their appreciation that there is “someone like me, looking out for those young people.” The church/community/government needs to do more for them, it’s so sad that this happens they say. Other’s approach me with idea’s regarding how we can help them. Charities, programs, food drives, we can and must do more for those poor people. We being those of us who are more fortunate, who aren’t poor, or homeless, or fighting for our very existence. We being the ones who perhaps could save, rescue, help, the less fortunate others who pop up on the periphery of our lives.

What we never say, but often think, is that they are predominately Māori, and we, well we are us (which of course is to say we’re white).

I emphasis again, the sentiment is well meaning, and there is no doubt that it comes from a deep desire to do good. Yet, the more of these well-meaning conversations I’ve had, the more I’ve began to recognize a flawed and generally unhelpful narrative that sits beneath it.

I am going to name something; I know this will be uncomfortable for some people. I ask that you sit with the feelings that this kōrero brings up, explore them, wrestle with them, and let them take you on whatever journey it is you need to take. At the end, you may feel that I am wrong, and maybe I am, and that’s ok.

Sitting beneath this desire for us to help them, is the colonial narrative of white saviourism.

Now, what do I mean by that?

I mean that in our Pākehā dominated culture and society, the narrative of the White Saviour still looms large. It is a narrative we inherited from our tūpuna, many of us whakapapa back to the British Empire in some way or another, and when the Empire colonized the world, they did so off the back of narratives that positioned themselves as the saviours. They weren’t simply an invading force, murdering, pillaging, and occupying the nations, they had come to save the pagans, to provide them with knowledge, education, enlightenment, and salvation. They created a story which allowed them to commit some of the most heinous crimes in human history, and yet provided them with the security of knowing that they were the good guys, and whatever regrettable actions were taken – such as the erasure of indigenous culture, the theft and slavery of indigenous people and their resources, the forced occupation or genocide of indigenous peoples and their whenua – they did so for the betterment of the savages, and for salvation of humanity.

For those of us who are Pākehā, the chains of colonization are still locked deep within our psyche. We are colonizers, we continue to be so, these narratives so deeply written into our flesh that we do not even recognize that they are still with us, let alone the effect they have upon ourselves and others.

Nowhere is this more pronounced than within the Christian Community. We speak about our mission to the poor, about their need for salvation, and about the hope that is in us. We bemoan that they are not counted amongst our ranks, and question what we must do to get them through our doors. If only they would listen, if only they would believe, we know that we can make a difference in their lives. Beneath all of this is the colonizer christ, the white saviour made in our white image, he comes to the poor, to the lost, to the uneducated, he comes through us, the saviour’s, the ones who have so much to give.

All pākehā have this colonizer christ within them. A white saviour that comforts us with stories of our own messiahship. He teaches us that we are right, that our ways are superior, filling us with the divine knowledge our own predominance, inoculating us against the realization that our acts of charity are a farce, meaningless in the face of the system of oppression we uphold.

When I first began my journey into Youth Development, I became a Youth Worker because I wanted to help them. I felt compassion for those people that didn’t have life as good as me, sorry for those who lived in poverty, who were hooked on drugs, or were sleeping on our streets. Maybe I could help them, be a role model, support them to make better decisions in order to get their life back on track.

On the deepest level, I thought I could be their saviour.

What I missed, what I failed to understand, was the manner in which I was complicit in the people’s oppression. These narratives obscured my own involvement in the suffering of the people.

 I am Ngāti Pākehā, my whānau on both sides of my family came to this whenua in the 1800’s, we are a product of Ti tiriti, a product of the generosity of tangata whenua, we are tangata tiriti.

But, my whānau have failed to uphold our responsibilities to tangata whenua. We have been complicit in the construction of a Pākehā dominated society, one that privileges me, my whānau, and our way of being in this world. One that is so utterly Pākehā, that Pākehā ways of being seem like the norm, while any discussion of Te Ao Māori feels like separatism.

I got into this work, because I thought I could save māori, because I saw – from the outside – a slice of their suffering and thought that I could help them.  But, that is not why I am here now.

I am here, I remain, because as I sit with those my people have oppressed, I find that it is I who is being liberated. That my liberation, and that of my brothers and sisters I once thought of as other, is irrevocably intertwined.

I am being liberated from the colonial chains that have prevented me from fully recognizing the humanity of my brothers and sisters, and in turn, prevent me from recognizing my own humanity. The idea that I could save anyone was, and always has been mis-guided.

In fact, the more I sit with those my people have marginalized, the more time I spend learning from the wisdom of kuia and kaumātua that have been unhoused, and now reside on our streets, the more times I spend grieving with our rangatahi who have been displaced and abandoned by our society, the more I weep with whānau who suffer due to the colonial system my tūpuna enforced upon them, the more I see how it was me who needed deliverance, not them.

In fact, as I sit with those who suffer, as I am accepted by those who weep, as I grieve with those who grieve, I find that I am invited to join them, until them disappears, and only we are left.

Rather than being the one who saves, I am invited into solidarity with those I once named other, and as I take that step, I find myself on the path towards my own Liberation.

And so it is through our joint suffering that we become one people, tangata whenua, tangata ti tiriti.

This oneness does not require the sacrifice of our own uniqueness, rather it requires that both māori and pākehā come as they are, that the balance is restored, that what was taken is returned, that the table so long dominated by my people, and our ways, is given back to those who created it.

The world does not need any more white saviours, nor does it need our white colonizer christ. We, who are tangata tiriti, must kill this imposter. We have no need for him, for it is he who has led us Pākehā into bondage, into this belief that we were somehow greater, somehow superior to the rest of our human whānau. It is he who blinded us to the harm we were causing, while soothing our conscious, not allowing us to see how meaningless our commitment to charity was, in the face of the systems of oppression we both created and maintained.

Liberation will not be achieved through acts of charity, nor will it come from those who fancy themselves at the top. Liberation comes through the people, as the Divine acts through them to enact Justice in this world.

And so, we come to it.

For Pākehā to be free, for us to fully realize our own humanity, the colonizer christ must be killed. We must chain him deep within our flesh, murdering all semblance of what he once was, only then will we ourselves find Liberation.

And as the colonizer dies within us, let Ihu Karaiti rise within.

Let us acquaint ourselves with the brown, indigenous activist. Let us identify so closely with the one who became poor, who became outcast, who experienced our colonization, that we can only but weep at the harm we have wrought upon him.  

For what we did to tangata whenua, we did to the true Christ.

Tangata tiriti, this is our path to freedom.

We must learn to grieve.

We must face the harm our white delusions have wrought upon the earth.

And we must weep.

And in our grief, we will find our way back, we will rediscover our own humanity, and as we do, we will be awakened to the humanity of others.

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 a steering group member of Manaaki Rangatahi, a collective working to end youth homelessness in Aotearoa. He is also the curator and creator of When Lambs Are Silent.