Colonisation and violence

Colonisation and violence

Colonisation is an ongoing process that we are all participating in, whether as perpetrators, beneficiaries, victims, or all three. At the same time, the systems that support and are supported by colonisation create the conditions for violence to thrive in Aotearoa. We are all impacted by this, Māori disproportionately so.

Colonisation is an oppressive relationship between two peoples or nations, where one has chosen to dominate and make the other its subject and colony. Colonisation is not inevitable. Two peoples (or people) can live together,  trade and learn from each other without one choosing to oppress or abuse the other.

There are two parts to understanding the importance of colonisation for ending violence:

1. Colonisation is violence
2. Colonisation creates the conditions for violence.

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Colonisation is violence

Colonising violence includes physical violence, for example, sexual violence particularly targeting Māori women, attacks on Māori settlements, mass incarceration, taking children from whānau, and abuses while in ‘state care’.

Colonising violence also includes the ongoing centring of the coloniser’s institutions, comfort, safety and  desires, and disregard of Indigenous Peoples’ institutions, comfort, safety, desires and even survival. Moana Jackson (1992: 2) describes this as, “a story of the imposition of a philosophical construct as much as it is a tale of economic and military oppression.”  Examples include:

• prioritising the coloniser’s desire for land over the health, safety and survival of tangata whenua and Māori relationship with land
• prioritising the coloniser’s laws, science, religion and language over the survival of tikanga, mātauranga and reo Māori
• prioritising the coloniser’s understandings of family, gender, and children over the health, safety and survival of Māori women and children, and Māori systems of whānau and whakapapa
• prioritising the coloniser’s understandings of law, crime and punishment over the health, safety and survival of tangata whenua and Māori systems for safety and wellbeing.

Moana Jackson (1992: 6) describes colonisation as an attack on the Indigenous soul:

Colonization demanded, and still requires, that Māori no longer source their right to do anything in the rules of their own law. Rather they have to have their rights defined by Pākehā; they have to seek permission from an alien word to do those things which their philosophy had permitted for centuries”.

Their rights as tangata whenua defined by Māori law have been replaced by a Pākehā concept of aboriginal rights exercised within, and limited by, the Pākehā law. Their political status, as determined by shared whakapapa which underlay the exercise of rangatiratanga, has been replaced by a common subordination to a foreign sovereignty.

Ani Mikaere describes some of the ways Māori women specifically are endangered by colonisation, the consequence being that, “For Māori women, colonisation has resulted in a lethal combination of oppression by race with oppression by gender.” Her conclusion (p 138) includes:

• A challenge for non-Māori, “to understand what it means to be the coloniser in Aotearoa so that they are able to comprehend and come to terms with Māori demands for self-determination.”
• A challenge for Māori, “to rediscover and reassert Māori philosophies, Māori law in their daily lives... For if this is not achieved Māori whānau will become no more than brown mirror-images of Pākehā families. Māori cultural integrity will be lost, assimilation by the coloniser complete.”

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Colonisation creates the conditions for violence

Colonisation creates the conditions for violence to thrive in Aotearoa in several ways.

Puao-te-ata-tu: The report of the Ministerial Advisory Committee on a Māori Perspective for the Department of Social Welfare (1988) and He Whaipaanga Hou – A New Perspective (1987) were two groundbreaking reports that examined the over-representation of Māori in social welfare and justice systems by centring Māori experiences and understandings. Both identified the ongoing impacts of structural oppressions embedded in the state’s legal, economic and social systems as the root of the problem.

Nearly 40 years later, He Waka Eke Noa was the first comprehensive study of violence centring Māori experiences, kaupapa and mātauranga. The report describes the New Zealand state as “built on multiple forms of violence: patriarchal, ableist, racist, colonial, neo-liberal, and economic.” Its findings are consistent with Puao-te-ata-tu and He Whaipaanga Hou: the origins and reproduction of family violence can be understood as a cumulative impact of the state’s structures embedding colonialism, racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, ableism and deprivation; and deficit based (othering) understandings and approaches entrench those systems and the violence they uphold.

Consistent across each of these reports is the finding that: “Honouring, enacting and upholding Te Tiriti o Waitangi is considered a critical part of the solution to the underlying systemic issues that sustain violence.”(He Waka Eke Noa: 18)

Te Aorerekura, the national strategy to eliminate family violence and sexual violence, identifies that a right treaty relationship provides a foundation for ending violence and growing toiora whānau:

The Treaty of Waitangi |Te Tiriti o Waitangi, te ao Māori, and whānau-centred approaches are central to Te Aorerekura. They provide a unique perspective for Aotearoa New Zealand about how family violence and sexual violence can be eliminated and how safety and wellbeing can be realised for all people.

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Key Resources

Moana Jackson. 1987. He Whaipaanga Hou – A New Perspective. Department of Justice. Policy and Research Division. Wellington

John Rangihau. 1988. Puao-te-ata-tu: The report of the Ministerial Advisory Committee on a Māori Perspective for the Department of Social Welfare. Department of Social Welfare. Wellington

Moana Jackson. 1992. The Treaty and the word: the colonization of Māori philosophy. In Graham Oddie & Roy W. Perrett (eds.), Justice, Ethics, and New Zealand Society. Oxford University Press. pp. 1-10

Waitangi Tribunal. 2014. He Whakaputanga me te Tiriti = The Declaration and the Treaty: The Report on stage 1 of the Te Paparahi o Te Raki Inquiry Wai 1040.

Ani Mikaere. 2016. Like moths to a flame? A history of Ngāti Raukawa resistance and recovery. Te Tākupu, Te Wānanga o Raukawa, Ōtaki

Ani Mikaere. 2017. The balance destroyed. Te Tākupu, Te Wānanga o Raukawa, Ōtaki

Leonie Pihama, Ngaropi Cameron, Rihi Te Nana. 2019. Historical trauma and whānau violence. NZFVC Issues Paper 15.

2021. Te Aorerekura: The enduring spirit of affection. The National Strategy to Eliminate Family Violence and Sexual Violence.

Leonie Pihama, Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Shirley Simmonds, Ngaropi Raumati, Cherryl Waerea-I-Te-Rangi Smith, Billie-Jean Cassidy, Rihi Te Nana, Betty Sio, Herearoha Skipper, Bernadette Lee. 2023. He waka eke noa: Māori cultural frameworks for violence prevention and intervention. Tū Tama Wāhine o Taranaki, Taranaki

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