The Art of Letting the Ghost Come Back: A Serendipitous Tale of Exploring the Complex Issue of Becoming a Pākehā Educator

Abstract

Adopting the role of a bricoleur researcher I created ways to explore complex issues in postcolonial societies. Complex issues require creative and innovative methodologies. In New Zealand, as in other postcolonial nations, we are confronted with an increasingly multi-ethnic and multicultural society haunted by a colonial past. Of particular interest in this study was the development of Pākehā (European New Zealander) identities. Pākehā, as the dominant group, are purported to have no cultural/ethnic identity. Rather, Pākehā default to a national identity, perpetuating a ‘norm’ status against which all ‘other’ identities are compared. As a Pākehā educator I responded to the call that Pākehā need to know their past, to understand their present, and disrupt assumptions of a homogenous white identity. As a critical autoethnographer I interrogated my touchstone stories and those of my colonial ancestors. I juxtaposed the stories alongside those of two other Pākehā educators in a duoethnography. I created ways to engage with the human and nonhuman to explore the concepts of entanglement, intra-action and becoming. Through employing arts-based methods I immersed myself in embodied engagement with the data generated. Through poetry, creative writing, painting, sculpture and the making of an arpillera, I engaged with my stories. Important also was creating ways to bring conversations on to the page in an endeavour to let the ghost speak. As a critical researcher, I deconstructed stories of becoming Pākehā to reveal diverse ethnic and cultural threads. I uncovered the silenced stories of those ancestors who had gone through a process of assimilation and I engaged in counter-stories as a process of decolonisation. This study reveals Pākehā as a dynamic identity always in the process of becoming along a continuum of engagement with Indigenous Māori. Examples of critical pedagogical practice are provided, enabling others to engage productively with the complex issues of identity development in postcolonial societies. This thesis is a material witness to my serendipitous tale as a bricoleur researcher creating a way to speak with, and about, some ghosts.