Navigating one’s identity at university can be a tricky task for many. You’re away from friends, family and the familiarity that comes with home. You’re finally off in the big wide world, free to experiment and figure out who you really are. But for Māori students, the experience of navigating our identities is much more complex and challenging, especially in a westernised, Eurocentric institution like university.
Ōriwa (Kāi Tahu, Kāti Māmoe and Waitaha) is a fourth year politics student here at Otago. They said that “You always have a feeling of not being Māori enough in some spaces, and then feeling too Māori in others. I feel like I live in two worlds, and that I don’t feel confident belonging to either.” For Rutene, a fourth year music and sociology student, the experience is one which is “confusing, a frequent cultural identity crisis”.
The first challenge that comes with navigating Māori identity while at university is within the university system itself. Academia is rooted in Eurocentric, Western thought, with this form of knowledge being considered naturally right and correct compared to that of indigenous knowledge. “You definitely become more aware that everything is designed for the Western world, academics are rooted in Western perceptions of knowledge,” explained Ōriwa, who has struggled to incorporate Māori knowledge throughout their studies. “For Māori, knowledge is passed through orally, so even if I use knowledge from my own whānau, for example, I still have to find an academic source to verify it, which continues to perpetuate that only Western knowledge is valid within academia.” Ōriwa also notes that, as a politics student, indigenous identities often come up in lectures and tutorials, becoming some sort of debate, which further exacerbates feelings of discomfort. “Our lives become a fun little debate for non-Māori, so they can be the devil’s advocate disguised as political philosophy. It becomes exhausting attending tutorials.” Ōriwa says that these attitudes make them “dread” any mention of indigenous land rights in academic spaces.
Rutene (Ngāti Porou) echoes a similar experience to this, saying he finds the notion of having to ‘prove’ something in academia contradictory to mātauranga Māori, further reinforcing the notion it’s a ‘lesser’ system of knowledge. “When you read a lot about Māori history and compare it to the philosophy of imperial thought, that translates into colonialism. When you compare that to indigenous thought, you have to ‘prove’ something,” he explains. “The European system, it needs to be written down to be valid, but for us, we can see in our whakapapa, in the ground we stand on, our ambitions.”
Marewa (Ngāti Whare, Ngāi Tuhoe) who is currently undertaking a Masters of Politics, says that being Māori in an European system is “challenging” at times, and that “it’s been a bit of a culture shock, coming from Rotorua where people and institutions are much more connected to, and have normalised understandings of te ao Māori”.
For Māori students, the challenge of navigating identity continues when we come up against stigmas, stereotypes and negative discourses from other students. Some questions can be innocent but invasive. Others can be just straight up confrontational, aggressive, racist or ignorant, causing further feelings of displacement and anxiety. “From other students, I have heard and been confronted with negative discourses around Māori receiving ‘special treatment’ around scholarships. I have also heard backlash about Māori students entering into medicine,” says Marewa. Ōriwa echoes a similar experience, particularly during their time in law school. “Law students were the worst, it was always ‘oh why do Māori get easy entrance’ or ‘learning about Te Tiriti isn’t important’.”
Rutene mentions that some stigmas and stereotypes are not as obvious, and instead come out in microaggressions. “There’s this sense of anxiety that’s ingrained in your experience, and you think it's normal until you open your eyes and realise with the microaggressions, you don’t realise it’s happening until afterwards,” he explains. “I’ve had breathas skate past me being like, ‘fucking little Māori boy’, it’s whack. I’ve noticed that in the mind of society, I look Māori.” But Rutene feels his identity is challenged when it comes to te reo. “I can only speak very basic te reo, so when people ask ‘how much can you speak’, it feels like I don’t have that part of myself.”
But on the other hand, if you don’t “look” how Māori are supposed to, this creates more challenges in regard to navigating identity. When you don’t live up to the expectations or stereotypes imposed upon you, this means that many feel as though they can pick apart our identity, determining its validity. “[Being white passing], I experience the generic ‘what percentage are you’?” says Ōriwa. “I also get told, ‘you’re not Māori because your dad is Pākehā’, or, ‘you are not Māori enough because you cannot speak te reo fluently’; literally anything you can think of has been said to me”. Despite these setbacks, Ōriwa has made a conscious effort to not give energy to these comments. “I have always had a lot of whakamā about my identity, however, learning more and more about where I come from and who I belong to makes me more confident in my Māoritanga.”
Marewa tells a similar tale. “I have also struggled with keeping up appearances so that others could not view me as ‘less than,’ or I’ve had the opposite experience, where I’ve been called a ‘wannabe white girl’.” Alongside this, Marewa says that there's an expectation she’s “knowledgeable on Māori affairs,” but as some people might not be aware, just because we’re Māori doesn’t mean we have a perfect record of history. Colonisation and the erasure of our culture played a part in that. “It’s friends asking for help with their te reo classes and expecting me to know when I don’t have the knowledge that they’re looking for. Many people don’t know I actually had to take first year Māori classes to learn te reo.”
Marewa says that this experience has “severely impacted” the confidence she has with identity, and that she carries a great sense of responsibility that perhaps Pākehā students may not have. “As I am one of the few in my family to complete highschool, let alone continue on to university to do a Master’s degree, I feel an enormous sense of responsibility and pressure to contribute back to my community back home, especially with learning about the inequities that exist for Māori that I know my whānau are not aware of.”
Rutene, Marewa and Ōriwa all have advice to impart. For Rutene, he encourages other Māori students to visit home to connect with their identity, as well as not sink to social pressures. “That thing of keeping your fires burning on your tangata whenua is so true, I believe that if you are Māori, you should find some way to express that. For me, it's reading and learning my history, and it’s given me hope to take up the language.” Marewa’s advice is to encourage Māori to learn to reo, and to join Te Roopu Māori in order to connect and grow relationships throughout their university journey. “Every Māori is either going or has gone on the journey of reconnecting with their Māoritanga, it is difficult, but you are not alone in that,” says Ōriwa. “Don’t feel like you have to blend in with the European system. You don’t have to partake in anything because it’ll make you feel less othered, if you have a genuine belief in your love for your culture, no matter how disconnected you feel, you’ll find liberation within yourself. It’s coded into your blood.”
Don’t feel you have to blend in with the European system, you don’t have to partake in anything because it’ll make you feel less othered, if you have a genuine belief in your love for your culture, no matter how disconnected you feel, if you acknowedget that, i believe that you are maori and that you will find some facet in which you can express that, for me its reading, the history, thats been the most liberating thing for me, which has given me hope to take up the language.