Ella Young considers the ethic of restoration and warns about slipping into roles that are just noise.

I recently re-watched Justice Williams' speech at the annual Māori in Governance summit in 2022.^[1] I observed as our first and (so far) only Māori Supreme Court judge speak to a room full of chief executives, board chairs, trustees and business owners. His Honour retold some of our colonial history and explained the state that Māori communities have been left in. 

Colonisation wreaked havoc on our culture, identity, land, and autonomy. It has perpetrated violence, exploitation, and systemic oppression, displacing our communities and erasing our histories. The long-lasting impacts of social inequality, cultural disruption, and economic challenges persist today. This story is not new to us. 

We are now in a space of untangling ourselves and our collective identity from this colonial grip. We have Māori MPs, judges and business owners. Māori work in governance, in education, in medicine and in trades. Māori are in the arts and working abroad. We are moulding our Māori identities as we embed ourselves in this Pākehā world, morphing around, through and within these occupations. 

Since leaving university, I have found myself wrestling with my role in this movement towards an Aotearoa hou, a place where Māori are thriving and tino rangatiratanga is realised in all spheres of our lives. I have been thinking about what it means to be a Māori professional working in the legal sphere, particularly as we work towards a decolonised future at a time when our political climate is so charged. 

In this speech to the Māori in Governance summit, Justice Williams explained a bifurcation he had noticed in the Māori world. His Honour notes that although there are those brilliantly pursuing business and policy based things, what about our relatives? Māori men are still seven  times more likely to go to prison than non-Māori, that figure is eleven times for Māori women. His Honour said that although he was supportive of all the brilliant success, there is a risk this world will forget itself. If our Māori values are so important, what happened to whanaungatanga – to know who our relations are, to have them walk into our homes without having to ask? 

Although we may feel we are playing an important game within our work, Justice Williams brought our roles as Māori professionals sharply into focus. “Our work must centre around the reconstruction of our people. Anything else is just noise. If you’re not doing this, then you’re part of the problem”. This was a stark reminder of the framework we should be running our decision-making through. Are our roles spaces where we are truly able to centre the reconstruction of our people, or building the skills we need to go on to do that? If not, are we content with that contribution?

In his book Imagining Decolonisation, Dr Moana Jackson describes decolonisation as ‘the ethic of restoration.’^[2] He explains this ethic as one where colonising structures are not just dismantled or culturally sensitised, but something that truly provides for balanced relationships, acknowledging that interdependence cannot exist without iwi and hapū independence. These concepts of restoration and reconstruction paint a clear picture of the work we have been tasked with.

I think we must all reflect on Justice Williams' message frequently enough to keep from becoming part of the damage that was done to our people, to not slip into roles that are just ‘noise.’ As law graduates, we have had incredible access to education and been given the tools to contribute to our people in a significant way. There is a challenge to us all to never become satisfied with our personal successes alone, but to choose restoration in all that we do. We have a choice to live out our careers, whatever they may look like, in a posture of reconstructing our communities, our culture and our identities.

Ella has chosen to include the below poem by Debbie Broughton as it beautifully adds to the kōrero about our Māori identities and our relationship with the law. They share whakapapa to Taranaki Mounga and Broughton is an alumna of Te Herenga Waka and Ngā Rangahautira.

But for Ngā Rangahautira and Māori lecturers - Debbie Broughton

Twenty years the planted, nurtured

Trained, pruned, grafted me

Only to find a native plant

Will always a native be. 

JC Sturm, ‘In Loco Parentis’

which reminds me of 

seeing that blue willow

plate, cracked and sunken in the 

earth at Te Aro Pā

visitor centre, and thinking, shit, 

Mum would kill us if we broke 

her blue willow china 

 

which reminds me that Wikipedia 

says the blue willow pattern in chinoiserie

‘the European interpretation and imitation

of Chinese and East Asian artistic traditions’

which makes the blue willow

pattern seem innocent and arty 

 

which reminds me of the voice artist 

who was instructed to pronounce 

Waimate the ‘white way’ 

which is not really innocent and arty

 

which reminds me of that lecture 

about us and intellectual property 

when the lecturer went down the (brown) back row 

and made us answer her questions 

one by one 

 

which reminds me of that legislation lecture 

about Pākehā law 

is the law 

blah blah parliamentary sovereignty 

blah blah rule of law 

then he asked if there was any other source of law . . .

coz now we have the burden of proving him wrong? 

 

which reminds me of when that Pākehā law student 

said the English came to New Zealand 

to ‘civilise the Māoris’

and we said nothing 

 

which reminds me of the

Māori Land Law assignment 

I wrote in the wharekai at Owae Marae 

and how the lecturer who marked it 

has never had and will never have 

Māori land in his whakapapa 

 

and also whark Pākehā law and whark Pākehā law school 

 

which reminds me of how I lost my 1B5

with all my Māori Land Law lecture notes 

somewhere between Parihaka and Te Aro 

which goes to show, you can’t really learn about 

Māori land by going to 

Māori Land Law lectures 

 

which makes me wonder 

if I didn’t leave my 1B5 in that Piggy Packer van

if I left it instead at Parihaka 

and if by 1B5 was found in a hundred years’ time 

ripped and sunken in the earth 

would the person who found that 1B5

think I actually agreed 

with those lecture notes

I’d scribbled? 

 

coz, shit . . . if so, then I really need to stop dropping things 

Ngā kupu āpiti - Notes

[1] Joe Williams, New Zealand Supreme Court Justice “Te Tiriti Futures” (National Māori in Governance Summit 2022, 16 June 2022).

[2] Moana Jackson “Where to next? Decolonisation and the Stories in the Land” in Moana Jackson and others Imagining Decolonisation (BWB Texts, Wellington, 2020) at 149.

Author: Guest Author

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