Section outline


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    Learning Objective:
    1. Make connections between race, racism, and racialised political beliefs; and, the histories of Colonialism.
    2. To understand the historical continuity (13th century - 21st century time-scale) that Te Tiriti o Waitangi sits within and how this contributes to the NZ experience of race, racism, and racialised political beliefs.
    3. To recognise the ideological significance of the "Doctrine of Discovery" in connection to contemporary forms of racism. 
    Success criteria:
    1. Recognise & identify the influence of history of present-day social circumstances.
    2. Discuss the status of race and racism in NZ's context with reference to critical moments in the history of European Monarchy and its motivations for creating racial categories.
    3. Begin to conceptualise how some ideas, like 'race' for example, are socially constructed, yet even as a belief only, can still cause consequences that have harmful impacts on the lives of marginalised groups. 
    ^^(Thus takes place when the idea is elevated to either a social norm, or in the worst cases is written into Law.)

    Discussion on the special theme for the year: “The Doctrine of Discovery: its enduring impact on indigenous peoples and the right to redress for past conquests (articles 28 and 37 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples)”. 

    Delivered by Moana Jackson 

    Mr Chair,

    Others on this panel who are far more expert than I have already covered much of the history and the basic unjust illogicality of the Doctrine of Discovery. I would like to focus briefly on one part of the doctrine that is perhaps often overlooked, and then devote most of my time to what may be called an indigenous re-discovery of our own rights, law and sovereign authority.

    First of all though, I would like to urge us all to remember that while the Doctrine of Discovery was always promoted in the first instance as an authority to claim the land of indigenous peoples, there were much broader assumptions implicit in the doctrine. For to open up an indigenous land to the gaze of the colonising “other”, there is also in their view an opening up of everything that was in and of the land being claimed. Thus, if the Doctrine of Discovery suggested a right to take control of another nation’s land, it necessarily also implied a right to take over the lives and authority of the people to whom the land belonged. It was in that sense, and remains to this day, a piece of genocidal legal magic that could, with the waving of a flag or the reciting of a proclamation, assert that the land allegedly being discovered henceforth belonged to someone else, and that the people of that land were necessarily subordinate to the colonisers. Rather like the doctrine of terra nullius or indeed the very notion in British colonising law of aboriginal title, the Doctrine of Discovery opened up the bodies and souls of indigenous peoples to a colonising gaze which only saw them as inferior, subordinate, and in fact less human than them.

    At its most base, it expresses the fundamental and violent racism which has led to the oppression of millions of indigenous peoples over the last several hundred years. It was 2 | 4 thus more than a mere doctrine with unfortunate consequences: it was in fact, and remains to this day, a crime against humanity. And like any crime, it has had, and continues to have, many different manifestations as states continue to exercise the power to dominate which they believe the doctrine has given to them.

    In my view, it will therefore not be sufficient for states or churches or others who have profited from the doctrine to merely reject it in the 21st century as an unfortunate product of another time. Neither will it be sufficient for states or churches to simply apologise for its invention and use (important though that is), but rather to actively seek to undo its consequences in practical and meaningful ways.

    In effect, any colonising rejection of the doctrine, any apology, will be meaningless unless wit, wisdom, and compassion is applied to a practical and proper recognition of the rights of indigenous peoples as defined by the indigenous peoples themselves. The aim should be not just to recompense for the past actions but to accept that a better and more just future for indigenous peoples will ultimately require a restoration of the political and constitutional authority which the colonising states have so consistently sought to suppress.

    For full presentation: http://www.apc.org.nz/pma/mj070512.pdf