[-empyre-] being pakeha now?

[Stella Brennan <stevid@xtra.co.nz>]

it sometimes seems a double bind - damned as a cultureless settler if 
you make reference to tangata whenua, hegemonic know-nothing if you 
don't.

as has been pointed out, speaking position is never simple.  I remember 
at last year's cultural provocation conference listening to Dean Hapeta 
make some pretty violent and sexist comments, to which i would have 
liked to respond, but being struck dumb by the context (and probably 
also the fact that he's a great deal more verbally dextrous than me).  
and danny, pakeha from queensland (is that an ok description danny?), 
is the person on ada who is usually most articulate about 
appropriations and misrepresents of indigenous culture.

as a way of trying to describe a pakeha identity  i wanted to talk 
about place.   aotearoa/new zealand was pretty much the last major 
landmass to be inhabited by humans, and as such, it is possible to 
reconstruct an image of a landscape before it was  framed by culture.  
of course, that notion in itself - a pre-lapsarian, moa and giant eagle 
strewn gondwanaland, is an interesting construction.  there's  a lot of 
nationalist baggage goes along with representation of our (one hundred 
per cent pure) natural environment, and with flora and fauna subject to 
treaty claims, and the foreshore and seabed issue, Maori and Pakeha 
uses and meanings for the land cut across each other.

but,but,but,but...

maybe it sounds cheezy and off-topic, but the thing that gets me going 
every time i step out of the terminal at auckland airport is the smell 
of moss in the air, and the things that i pine for when i'm away 
(articulating my position as a subject of global capital, or 
whatever...) is the crazy crinkly shores of Aucklands' harbours and the 
locating cone of Rangitoto in the background.   and the fact that this 
is my home, that i'm not really happy anywhere else, is one of the 
things that makes the net appealing - that possibility of staying where 
you are while being somewhere else.

but what i was really wanting to talk about is the intersection of 
place and technology in the discourse of environmental restoration. 
hmm. maybe tomorrow....
best
stella