#pakeha

Gosh I love New Zealand whites

This voice inside of me has lost its breath

All of the things I never said out loud… they will remain inside of me

What lies at the base of these debates is our view of the nature of personhood. Such views of course are not a provable hypothesis of sociolinguistics or any other academic discipline. They are a premise, a prime based on our own belief system. My belief is that a person is indeed more than a static bundle of sociological categories — although to say that someone is male, or Pakeha, or middle class does tell us something about that person.

But I also believe that a person is more than an ever-shifting kaleidoscope of personas created in and by different situations, with no stable core — although to say that we appear as child to our parents, employee to our boss, partner to our partner does tell us something about the person. We do not recreate ourselves moment by moment out of nothing. We are not a tabula rasa. We bring to the present the shapings of our past, of our relationships, of our environment. Yet we are more than the sum of those things. 

Waitangi Day is our National Day. It is a day of celebration, comiseration and, hopefully, reconciliation. The Treaty of Waitangi, signed on this day in 1840 between the British Crown and the United Maori Tribes, was supposed to usher in an era of partnership, guaranteeing the rights of both parties.

I tried to include their year of travel and country of origin wherever I could. There are a few missing pieces (at least right now!) but I’m going to spend some more time on those when I feel like it.

As of now, I can directly and confidently trace my ancestry back to England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland on my dad’s side; and England, India, Sweden, and Wales on my mum’s side.