Engaging with Māori: Learning the Language of the Heart

1. Engaging with Maori: Using our heads and hearts Ingrid Huygens • Erana Cooper – “learning the language of the heart” • Emotions are a vocabulary in building relationships • Supported by research & theorising locally & elsewhere

2. Keynote points from Erana Cooper • Be informed about history • Our emotional responses situated in long histories of the Maori-Tauiwi relationship • Understand how historical & contemporary actions generate protest & struggle for Maori • Incorporate understanding of historical trauma into our practice as psychologists

3. “Emotion is the chief source of all becoming-consciousness. There can be no transforming of darkness into light and of apathy into movement without emotion” (Jung, 1938)

4. How are tauiwi doing with the language of the heart? 1700s – 1860s Needed and wanted a relationship, negotiated a treaty 1850s – 1970s Pakeha had numbers & ideology – brutal indifference 1970s onwards Re-engagement, asking ‘Why are you angry?’ Ongoing ignoring + listening Ongoing complacency + remorse Ongoing dismissal + discomfort Ongoing betrayals + changes

5. Emotions in patterns of relationship (Gergen & colleagues, 1994) • Emotions are features, not of individuals, but of relationships • Emotions are internal events within relationships, intelligible through cultural interpretations • Emotional sequences are cultural habits, so.... there are always new patterns that can be learned

6. Emotional sequences(Gergen & colleagues, 1994)Anger – query – explanation (blame) – anger /defense/hostility – anger .....Anger – query – blame – remorse – caution/compassion/anger...Anger – query – explanation – empathy/ confirmation...Some emotions were end-points – guilt, acknowledgment, confirmation

7. Question: How do Pakeha change? Network Waitangi Whanganui-a-Tara, 2003

8. Pakeha awakenings through - Emotional responses to stories of pain & struggle Standing in the shoes of the other – empathy, compassion Shock at disturbing statistics Network Waitangi Whangarei, 2003

9. First steps in learning & change for Pakeha/tauiwi - • Responding to Maori stories of pain and dispossession – shock, pain, grief... • Being critically challenged by Maori – discomfort, unease, remorse... • Being immersed in supportive Maori environments – gratitude, ease, confidence... Network Waitangi Otepoti, 2003

10. Network Waitangi Otautahi, 2003

11. Waitangi Associates, 2003

12. Emotional work in Maori-Tauiwi relationships - Work with our processes of empathy, guilt & fearto create myriad connections of action & hope, by... Hawkes Bay Treaty workers, 2003

13. Decolonisation for tauiwi– • Feeling pain & vulnerability of own ancestors displaced from their lands • Understanding process of denial & distancingof such history • Relief & hope at building new relationships in this country Freedom Roadworks, 2003

14. Promising work elsewhere • Weber & Carter (2003) • Trust as optimism, a distinctive way of seeing the other flavoured by expectation of goodwill from the other. • Requires a shared moral code in the social milieu • Megan Boler (1999) • Emotions guide moral & ethical evaluations, help us envision future possibilities and who we want to become.

15. Promising local work • Maria Humphries, Betsan Martin & Te Kawehou Hoskins • Relational ethics • Response-ability in relationship • .

16. Promising local work • Arama Rata • Forgiveness is the END of a complex process of: • rongo (commitment to restore relationships) • whakapapa (interconnectedness between people, places, and events over time, forming identity) • kaupapa (agenda based on costs/benefits of forgiveness) • .

17. Using the language of the heart is complex, and necessary,,, Contact Ingrid Huygens for conference paperworkwise@pl.net

18. References Boler, M. (1999). Feeling power: Emotions and education. New York: Routledge. Campbell, R. (2000). The emotionality of social change. The Community Psychologist, 32(5), 16-18. Gergen, K. J. (1994). Realities and relationships: Soundings in social construction (pp. Chapter 9, P. 210-235 Emotion in relationship). Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Huygens, I. (2007). Processes of Pakeha change in response to the Treaty of Waitangi. Hamilton: University of Waikato. Narayan, U. (1988). Working together across difference: Some considerations on emotions and political practice. Hypatia, 3(2), 31-47. Rata, A., Liu, J. H., & Hanke, K. (2008). Te Ara Hohou Rongo (The Path to Peace): Maori Conceptualisations of Inter-group Forgiveness. New Zealand Journal of Psychology, 37(2 July). Weber, L. R., & Carter, A. I. (2003). The social construction of trust. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers.