My Account
The complex and increasingly polarised state of relations between Māori and Pākehā is put under the microscope in a new book by Pākiri author John Bluck.
Becoming Pākehā is part memoir and part cultural analysis, written in a readable and accessible style, with as much amusing anecdote as societal dissection. It follows Bluck’s life from growing up in a Māori village in the 1950s through his career as an Anglican clergyman and writer, up to his retirement in recent years to Pākiri, together with an examination of Māori-Pākehā relations generally.
The former Bishop of Waiapu and Dean of Christchurch says it wasn’t a straightforward choice to write the book, but it was a topic he had been thinking about for many years and it was time for a new look at where currently things are, and might go in the future.
“It’s a very caustic debate right now, especially for people of my colour, my gender and my age,” Bluck says. “For anyone under 30, it’s almost a non-issue, but for my generation, it’s pretty dramatic.
“Because the debate is so polarised, I had very strong advice from some learned friends from the academic and church world, who thought it probably wasn’t a good idea.”
But this is not the first time he has tackled Māori-Pākehā relations. As well as writing previous books on the subject, he presented a series of talks on Radio NZ called Who Wants to be a Pākehā? in 2019, and regularly writes for newspapers and magazines.
“I’ve been talking about this for 30 years,” he says. “We were overseas for 10 years and came back in the early 1980s. I was very conscious, and a bit shocked, as to how the whole bicultural debate had heated up and got more confrontational and more difficult.”
However, he says the situation now is far worse, with Pākehā and Māori more separate than ever, largely due to the way people communicate with each other and source news and information.
“My background is not only in the church, but in journalism and as a teacher in communication, so I’m very interested in what makes good communication. It’s a science as well as an art form,” he says.
“There are some basic rules about how to talk to each other if you want to be heard and most of these are being broken daily.”
Bluck says the Treaty of Waitangi is misunderstood by many Pākehā, and it needs to be understood as a covenant – a binding contract by two parties to work together towards a common goal.
“Before it was a political document, it was a covenant. It was read and seen and signed by Māori and missionaries, who drafted it as a compact of mutual obligation,” he says. “If you don’t use the language of covenant, and spirituality, you can’t really understand why the treaty is as important as it is.”
As well as analysing the state of biculturalism, both good and bad, in Aotearoa today, Becoming Pākehā offers much food for thought on the way forward, and what might be needed for relations to be built upon and improved into the future.
Bluck will be embarking on a national tour to promote Becoming Pākehā this month, which includes a signing at Matakana Village Books on November 27 at 4pm. The book is published by Harper Collins.
Book Giveaway
Mahurangi Matters has a copy of Becoming Pākehā to give away. To enter the draw, just email reporter@localmatters.co.nz with ‘Becoming Pākehā’ in the subject line, together with your name and a contact number. Competition closes Monday, November 14.
