Decolonizing methodologies to counter ‘minority’ spaces

Māori living in Āotearoa New Zealand are strongly connected to their communities, through woven threads of genealogy [whakapapa], spirituality [wairua], language regeneration [Te Kōhanga Reo, and Kura Kaupapa Māori movements] and a distinctive Treaty of Waitangi [Te Tiriti ō Waitangi] legacy that informs relationships, expectations and guidance from past and future generations. These are part of a holistic orientation towards the force of communities and family [whānau] being able to sustain individuals-within-community. For example, utilizing whakapapa (connected layering) is about engaging in the narrative of what it means to be Māori; a stabilizing cultural identity that many non-Māori [Pākehā] find challenging to understand. Abroad, Māori are still a ‘minority culture’ as they are in NZ, and they often find themselves dispersed from the major forces of the above connectedness and unique epistemological tradition. There are touchstones to place and Indigeneity that become even more significant as they provide a means to resist the bifurcation of the self from the environment, and the individual construct from the collective. They become a crucial part of countering the diasporic anomie of being ‘away from home’. Being a member of the Māori diaspora living in Australia, I use an auto-ethnographic lens to undertake a profound decolonizing methodology in naming stories from the present and privileging stories from the past, in order to deliberately reclaim heritage.