The Woven Self: An Auto-Ethnography of Cultural Disruption and Connectedness

Abstract

This current auto-ethnographic study is set against the backdrop of colonial policies of urbanization and cultural assimilation that continue to impact the everyday lives of Māāori (indigenous people of New Zealand). Colonial actions have brought about a state of mass disruption to Māori traditions of forming and maintaining connections between people, ancestral homelands, and ways of being. Today, many Māori continue to grapple with the social, cultural, and economic consequences that these upheavals have brought about. My aim within this research is to engage with how Māori preserve and maintain their cultural selves while being stretched across a diverse landscape of being that is populated by new urban and heritage rural spaces. Grounded in Kaupapa Māori theory and working in the spirit of culturally patterned auto-ethnography, I offer a case study of my family’s experiences of disconnection and our efforts to strengthen connections with our ancestral homelands, communities, and ways of being. As my analysis illustrates, the enactment of culturally informed everyday social practices facilitates process of reconnection and the strengthening of connections, and allows the reproduction of Māori selves across space and time. Furthermore, I argue that cultural connectedness can be deepened and enriched by going beyond the extraordinary moments of big events (ritualized engagements), and by becoming part of the ordinary and everyday reproduction of cultural traditions and values. This article contributes to broader understandings of how indigenous peoples seek to work through and resist the ongoing impacts of colonial disruption.

The Open Arms Day Centre as a Pou Whirinaki and Key Space of Care within the Conduct of Māori Homeless Lifeworlds in Whangārei, Aotearoa, New Zealand

“…We also decided that this analysis should be produced through wānanga, involving all three authors to tease out participant experiences of the OADC in the context of their broader everyday street lives (cf. King, 2019). As will be evident to readers with a background in applied community research, what we are describing here is a culturally patterned and interactive approach to making sense of qualitative materials that is more openended than more procedure-driven approaches, such as thematic analysis.…”

‘Thinking with Kaipara’: A decolonising methodological strategy to illuminate social heterogenous nature–culture relations in place

“…For example, writing and storytelling, when used as tools to decolonise knowing, being and doing, enable acts of resistance and speaking across borders. Examples of different practices, tools and tactics to decolonise colonial power/knowledge and ways of knowing (in place) include story-work and storytelling (Cameron, 2012; Lee, 2009; Wright et al., 2012), auto-ethnography (Denzin, 2014; King, 2019; Whitinui, 2014), re-writing and re-presenting (de Leeuw, 2017b; Fisher et al., 2015) and community participatory research (Christensen, 2012; Coombes et al., 2014; de Leeuw et al., 2012). These are necessary methodologies for critical social science scholarship (Cameron, 2012; de Leeuw, 2016; Denzin and Lincoln, 2008; Oppermann, 2014; Stocker et al., 2016; Whitinui, 2014; Wright et al., 2012).…”

“…Critical relational research requires researchers to open themselves up to their connections with the nonhuman world, de-centre humans and utilise an ethic of care (Bawaka Country et al, 2015;Cruikshank, 2005;Larsen and Johnson, 2016;Rose, 1996;Thomas, 2015). Such opportunities arise from storying, storytelling, oral histories and derivatives of ethnography such as Indigenous/deconstructed/collaborative auto-and duo-ethnography (Cameron, 2012;Diversi and Moreira, 2009;Kainamu, 2013;King, 2019;Whitinui, 2014). Beyond textual registers, performative (embodied) or visual registers are an opportunity to merge boundaries, disrupt positivist modes of knowledge production and heightened the more-than-human world (Jagger et al, 2016;Stocker and Kennedy, 2011;Willow, 2013).…”

“…Storytelling from one's own experience has been an emerging way for scholars to challenge knowledge production. For Indigenous M aori writers like Whitinui (2014), King (2019) and Kainamu (2013), knowledge production is a relational pursuit that interweaves body, mind, spirit and place. Whitinui (2014) uses a metaphysical and esoteric starting point and epistemological approach where there is no separation between self and nature as both are, for Whitinui, sacred to M aori identity.…”

Autoethnography in the modern workplace: a reflexive journey

“…Autoethnography, a qualitative methodology emphasizing personal experiences as a lens into cultural phenomena (Ellis et al ., 2011), has grown notably in popularity. Its prowess in capturing genuine lived experiences, especially amidst modern disruptions, is widely recognized (King, 2019; Carroll, 2020). However, its potential in dissecting workplace environments from an insider perspective remains less charted in academia.…”