Avril Bell is a Pākehā New Zealander and honorary associate professor in sociology at the University of Auckland. Her research centres on the legacy of settler colonialism in making sense of Pākehā identities, New Zealand national identity and Māori–Pākehā relations. Her book, Relating Indigenous and Settler Identities: Beyond Domination (Palgrave, 2014) extends this focus to make connections between settler colonialism in New Zealand, Australia, Canada and the USA. She is co-editor of A Land of Milk and Honey? Making Sense of Aotearoa New Zealand (AUP, 2017). Avril talks to NZ Booklovers about her new book.
Tell us a little about Becoming Tangata Tiriti.
The book is aimed particularly at people whose work involves them in working with Māori communities, businesses or colleagues and who don’t have a lot of experience already in engaging with the Māori world. It’s a collection of stories and insights from twelve non-Māori New Zealanders who already have a lot of experience working with and for Māori – so lots of wisdom to share.
What inspired you to write this book?
It really goes back about 20 years for me. As more and more Treaty settlements came through by the early years of the century, we started to see iwi and hapū becoming increasingly significant actors in their regions. Settlements gave them money to invest, so councils and businesses were interested in working with them. And they also created co-governance and co-management relationships between iwi and Crown entities like DOC. I started to wonder how these organisations and the people working in them were responding – were they engaging positively with iwi? What changes were required in the way they did things, or thought about things? What did they learn from these relationships? What was the impact on themselves? This book is one of the projects I have been involved in that pursued those questions.
What research was involved?
I set out to find non-Māori who had a track record of working well with Māori. My ideal was to ask Māori leaders who they found good to work with, and I started from there. There are twelve people I spoke to whose stories are in the book. They didn’t all come to me via recommendations from Māori. Some I knew already and others were recommended to me along the way. In most cases I met with people and interviewed them once. Sometimes we met more than once. Where possible we met face-to-face, but during Covid lockdowns some interviews took place via Zoom. The interviews were more like conversations really. Each one was quite different, even though I covered much the same themes in my questions. I asked people to tell me about their work and what worked for them, what challenges they had, and so on. I also asked them whether te Tiriti was relevant to the work they did and what they thought about the idea of Tiriti partnerships, what advice they would give others, what they thought about non-Māori learning te reo Māori, the impact of their work and learning on their own identities as New Zealanders – quite a range of themes.
What was your routine or process when writing this book?
I am a morning person. After I’ve done some exercise and caught up with news, I sit down with a coffee and aim to spend a couple of hours writing before midday. After that, it will depend on what other work needs doing and how the writing is going. Sometimes I work for longer.
I also really benefit from working alongside other writers. I attend week-long writing retreats when I can (usually once or twice a year) with a group of academic women writers. We work on our own projects and in the evenings we share our work and give each other feedback. It’s a wonderful, supportive community. At times I’ve also had arrangements with other writing friends to meet online and write alongside each other. We use the Pomodoro technique to structure a 2-hour block of writing time together. People can find out about pomodoro online.
What did you enjoy the most about writing Becoming Tangata Tiriti?
What I loved about writing this book is that it is entirely positive. I’m a sociologist, and sociologists spend a lot of time criticising what’s wrong with the way society is organised. In this project, it was all about celebrating great people doing interesting work. I also really enjoyed writing for a general audience, as clearly and simply as possible to get things across in what is hopefully an interesting way.
What do you hope readers will take away from reading your book?
I hope readers will learn at least one thing or come across one idea or angle they haven’t thought of before. I hope, for those people in particular who are starting out in engaging with the Māori world and communities, that they are encouraged and pick up some practical advice. And I hope readers will get a clear sense of how the treaty is for and about all of us.
That is the gift of the concept of tangata tiriti – people of the treaty. For all of us who aren’t of Māori descent, we are here because Te Tiriti o Waitangi was signed in 1840 and allowed the British to establish a colonial government. One aspect of the book is exploring what it means for people who start to see te Tiriti as a guide and touchstone for themselves and their own work.
What did you do to celebrate finishing this book?
The launch and dinner with friends afterwards will be my celebration.
What is the favourite book you have read so far this year and why?
Oh my goodness. There are so many! I read a lot of novels. I recently finished Limberlost by Robbie Arnott, which is an incredibly beautifully written and structured, deceptively simple story set on an apple orchard in Tasmania. Another novel I really loved this year was Francis Spufford’s Cahokia Jazz, which is based in an alternative North America where there is a Native American state. Richard Flanagan’s memoir, Question 7, is stunning and wise as a meditation on the connectedness of things and the absurdity of human life. In terms of New Zealand work, I’m loving Michael Bennett’s detective fiction, and on the non-fiction side I really enjoyed Helen Lehndorf’s A Forager‘s Life, and for Pākehā in particular, I highly recommend Richard Shaw’s The Unsettled, which explores why we tend to forget our family’s involvement in colonial history and what happens when we start learning about it.
What’s next on the agenda for you?
I have another book project that keeps getting put off. I’ll finally start on that – something quite different from Becoming Tangata Tiriti.
Auckland University Press
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