Colonisation, hauora and whenua in Aotearoa Moewaka Barnes, Helen; McCreanor, Tim
Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand,
11/2019, Volume:
49, Issue:
sup1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Colonisation has deeply harmed Maori communities, seriously and consistently undermining their vitality, aspirations and potentials, particularly since the 1860s, at inestimable cost to the entire ...nation. The British arrival in Aotearoa commenced a relationship between two very different peoples that has profoundly influenced their distinct and collective fortunes ever since. Despite manifest breaches of te Tiriti o Waitangi, this relationship has centred settler interests ensuring that Maori sovereignty has been displaced in favour of colonial hegemony, entrenching longstanding, preventable inequities in health and other important domains of social life. In this paper we trace some broad indicators of relational health and wellbeing in Aotearoa and consider how Maori thinking about whenua, health and wellbeing might lead healing opportunities for people and whenua. We outline ways in which a unified, dynamic, relational Maori concept based on whenua as the determinant of health could contribute. We believe this could expand, strengthen and revitalise prevention, protection and promotion approaches, to counter the injustices of colonisation, contribute toward health equity and move toward just, sustainable shared futures for the benefit of all New Zealanders.
To arrive in Aotearoa, we traversed thousands of miles. Waka hourua were our papakainga and te ra filled with wind to carry us. Finding our way, we drew on knowledge of oceans, skies and winds. ...Creatures of the sea and air showed us the way and signs and signals of this world and between and across worlds guided us. We made our homes in Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa, making lives for ourselves, drawing on long held matauranga. Our science, our scholarship is embedded in te tai ao and the survival and wellbeing of our people. We continue to find our way, drawing on long held matauranga and adapting and developing new knowledge. In this article, I attempt to centre being maori, exploring what it is to work and write with colonisation at the margin, rather than the defining determinant of who we are and how we differ. I face the challenge of writing as a Maori scholar, to claim rangatiratanga in our practice and representations of these practices.
Background and aims
Quantifying the health burden of alcohol has largely focused upon harm to drinkers, which is an underestimate. There is a growing literature on alcohol‘s harm to others (HTO), but ...it lacks the systematic transfer of HTO into a comparative risk assessment framework. This study calculated disability‐adjusted life years (DALYs) for fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD), interpersonal violence and traffic injury due to another‘s drinking.
Design
This study is a disease burden analysis, using modelling of DALYs for New Zealand in 2018.
Setting and participants
The study took place among the Aotearoa/New Zealand population in 2018.
Measurements
The involvement of others’ drinking was obtained from prevalence, alcohol‐attributable fraction studies and administrative data. Disability weights (DW) for FASD were adapted from fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) weights using a Beta–Pert probability distribution; for interpersonal injury, DWs used hospital events linked with injury compensation; for traffic injury, DWs used hospital events. Populations were stratified by ethnicity, age group and gender. A descriptive comparison was made with a previous estimate of DALYs for drinkers.
Findings
In 2018, 78 277 healthy life years were lost in Aotearoa/New Zealand due to alcohol's HTO. The main contributor (90.3%) was FASD, then traffic crashes (6.3%) and interpersonal violence (3.4%). The indigenous population, Māori, was impacted at a higher rate (DALYs among Māori were 25 per 1000 population; among non‐Māori 15 per 1000 population). The burden of HTO was greater than that to drinkers (DALYs HTO = 78 277; DALYs drinkers = 60 174).
Conclusions
Disability from fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) appears to be a major contributor to alcohol's harm to others in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Taking FASD into account, the health burden of harm to others is larger than harm to the drinker in Aotearoa/New Zealand, and ethnicity differences show inequity in harm to others. Quantification of the burden of harm informs the value of implementing effective alcohol policies and should include the full range of harms.
This article explores how affect and discourse intertwine. We analyse a corpus of newspaper editorials and comment pieces from 2013 to 2014 concerning Aotearoa New Zealand's national day ...investigating how affective-discursive practices are mobilised to ‘cover the nation’ and ‘settle space’. We identify pervasive formulations of ‘bitter Māori’ and ‘indifferent Kiwis’ and the canon of affective-discursive repertoires and subject positions routinely set up as part of continuing white settler (Pākehā) cultural projects. A second objective is to contribute to the development of theory and method in studies of affect. We argue against non-representational perspectives and for a practice viewpoint that can work with entanglements of semiosis and embodied affect. Concepts from social psychological studies of discourse are applied in preference to ‘structures of feeling’, ‘affect economies’, ‘emoscapes’ and ‘emotion styles’.
•Explores the ‘emotion canon’ found in reporting of New Zealand's national day.•The ways this reporting ‘covers the nation’ supports white settler cultural projects.•Outlines an affective practice approach in contrast to non-representational approaches.
ABSTRACTTe ao Māori approaches to restoring wellbeing in relation to people and te taiao are proliferating in Aotearoa New Zealand. While climate change is a critical lever nationally and globally, ...it sits in the background of Māori initiatives and worldviews. Drawing on participant interviews, this paper follows the work needed for Māori to reconcile with the concept of climate change. Considerable ‘work’ was needed to move through various processes in the face of contrasting concepts and worldviews. This firstly involved remembering and honouring mātauranga and the values and actions embedded in Māori knowledge systems. Participants then had to make sense of the relationships between the concept of climate change and Māori concepts. Finally, participants provided examples of the actions and leadership that Māori take in this field. The concept of climate change had considerable traction and leverage; however, it frames and constrains efforts to effect planetary healing locally, nationally, and globally. Acting on more expansive and relational understandings can slow both the drivers and effects of climate change.
Alcohol consumption and heavy drinking in young adults have been key concerns for public health. Alcohol marketing is an important factor in contributing to negative outcomes. The rapid growth in the ...use of new social networking technologies raises new issues regarding alcohol marketing, as well as potential impacts on alcohol cultures more generally. Young people, for example, routinely tell and re-tell drinking stories online, share images depicting drinking, and are exposed to often intensive and novel forms of alcohol marketing. In this paper, we critically review the research literature on (a) social networking technologies and alcohol marketing and (b) online alcohol content on social networks, and then consider implications for public health knowledge and research. We conclude that social networking systems are positive and pleasurable for young people, but are likely to contribute to pro-alcohol environments and encourage drinking. However, currently research is preliminary and descriptive, and we need innovative methods and detailed in-depth studies to gain greater understanding of young people's mediated drinking cultures and commercial alcohol promotion.
This paper investigates affective–discursive dimensions of nation‐building via commemorations of nationhood within Aotearoa New Zealand to ask about how these assemblages construct feeling ...trajectories for citizen participants. We report auto‐ethnographic analyses of participation in specific Anzac Day war remembrance events that occurred in the capital city Wellington. Analyses point to the ways in which engagement in the choreographies of commemoration constructs varied emotion‐laden subject positions for participants and how these psycho‐social differences index and evoke contrasting memorial politics. We conclude that while the differences in affective ambience at different events may prompt citizens towards nationalistic or more conciliatory identity politics, the ceremonies create space for participants to feel and enact diverse affective practices.
Our New Zealand-based research provides new insights, drawn from focus group and interview data gathered from 18- to 25-year-olds, about how alcohol use and technology converge in drinking and ...drunkenness while online. Alcohol consumption is a key source of harm and damage to population health, particularly for young people whose engagement with web-based communications may be exacerbating problems. Participants' talk around alcohol and SNS use is complex, with expressions of caution and regret, juxtaposed with accounts of fun, excitement and pleasure. Sharing, narration and elaboration of experiences of alcohol use online reinforce the social nature of risky drinking practices. The interface of social media and alcohol use is attracting novel forms of alcohol marketing that penetrates virtual and offline spaces, undermining conventional public health policies, approaches and tools for reducing population-level alcohol consumption.
This article explores affect, colonial privilege, and the cultural politics of national commemoration in Aotearoa New Zealand. Based on focus‐group interviews around two major national days, we ...examine means through which feelings and emotions are deployed in ways that enable the reproduction of social advantage. Situating affect within patterns of relationship, four interrelated affective‐discursive practices are explored. In relation to Waitangi Day, agents tend to work under the rubric of anger and confusion. For Anzac Day, being grateful and moved shapes the interaction, although participants often indicate preferences towards “having a day off.” Given the colonial context in which these practices circulate, analysis observes the associated freedom and ease by which affective‐discursive privilege is (re)produced. Often incongruent and rarely challenged, privilege allows associated actors to do what they want, when they want, however they want. This affective climate authorizes the ongoing reproduction of, and justification for, membership to a higher‐status ethnic group of which unearned opportunities and entitlements remain its everyday, expected currency.
PDF
