He kohuka whakarerekē: Shifting Māori-Pākehā relations and Aotearoa’s Pacific diplomacy

Please join PhD candidate Jayden Evett as he presents his pre-submission seminar.

This is a hybrid event. To attend online, sign up using the ‘Register’ button and a Zoom link will be emailed to you after you have registered.

Te Whakahaumanu (or, the Māori Renaissance) is a social, political, and cultural revitalisation and resurgence of the indigenous Māori people of Aotearoa New Zealand that began in the 1970s. It is a rejection of their colonisation and a process of reclaiming (taumanu) and restoring (haumanu) what was taken from them in effort to rebalance relations with the settler Pākehā population. Its impact has been studied in many fields – art, literature, language, politics – all of which are connected by their representative quality: how people express who they are, what they believe, and how they see the world. One representative field that study of this intergroup rebalancing has missed is diplomacy: how Aotearoa represents itself to and in interactions with the world.

Join Jay as he canvases his project to trace how shifting Māori-Pākehā relations impact Aotearoa New Zealand’s Pacific diplomacy. This whirlwind talk covers highlights from his research:

· Learn about his tūātea (breaking wave) and paewīra (axle) models that map how domestic ethnic friction can affect external diplomacy

· Follow the story of how Aotearoa’s Pacific diplomacy went from constancy to flux, illustrated through several case studies, and

· Hear about identity decolonisation, a concept for making sense of this trend in a context broader than New Zealand itself.

Jayden Evett is a PhD student in the Department of Pacific Affairs at the Australian National University and an affiliate of the Stout Research Centre for New Zealand Studies. Born and raised in Aotearoa New Zealand, he joined ANU in 2018 when he began a master’s degree. Before this, he studied at Victoria University of Wellington and the Diplomatische Akademie Wien. This seminar is the final step in the PhD process, which he began in 2021, before it is examined.