Book Review: Alison Jones’ Insightful “This Pākehā Life”

As a white person in Aotearoa, there are many names and identities one can give themselves. For many, the title ‘New Zealand European’ does the trick—a rather strange and vague term, but anatomically correct, I suppose. For others, the category of ‘white’ works well, though many more would recoil at this thought. And others still, the word ‘Pãkehã’ encapsulates something significant about who they are. Then again, this Mãori term comes with a whole load of its own baggage. Amidst the privilege and power being white brings to someone in a place like Aotearoa New Zealand, it’s fair to say that ’identity’ for Pãkehã is a rather elusive thing.

I picked up this book rather nonchalantly during what for me can be a semi-regular browse through recent book catalogues late at night. I’d been working on a dissertation in post-settler Pãkehã identity politics and the various tensions, discomforts, and dilemmas that come with, as Alison Jones writes in the beginning of her memoir, ‘becoming and being Pākehā’ (p. 7). So, naturally, the title This Pākehā Life: An Unsettled Memoir drew me in—if nothing else except for selfish reasons of finding another book to add to the bibliography.

Jones is an educationalist and professor in Te Puna Wãnanga at the University of Auckland and I had come across her a few times before. But broadly speaking, this book served as my introduction to her and her work. What I found instead of another footnote I’d soon forget about was a penetrating and lasting contribution, not only to Jones’ own life and testimony, but to understanding what it means to be white and Pãkehã in New Zealand today. In telling the broad story of her life and experiences, Jones teaches many of us Pãkehã more deeply about who we are and who we might become.

Jones’ memoir speaks with nuance, complexity, and ease, straddling an important line between commentary, story-telling, and life reflection. This is no small feat—both the background of Jones being in academia and the political subject of her life and book mean that at various points the genre of autobiography could’ve fallen into a guise for pushing a particular agenda. Instead, the results feel more like a book of wisdom and experience rather than being preachy social commentary or heavy-handed writing; the reader is allowed to deeply dwell in all the novelties of twentieth century New Zealand society and upbringing while still feeling like they have just read a forceful account of identity, whiteness, and relationship. The mix is surprisingly at-once accessible and uncompromising.

The text itself moves at a broadly chronological pace through Jones’ life, punctuated by an introduction. From the get go, the reader is given clear guidance regarding the direction of this text: this story is about the struggle for white people to inhabit and live in a place such as Aotearoa which necessarily means being in relationship to Mãori. Jones makes clear her purpose to write,

This book is about my making sense here, of my becoming and being Pākehā. Every Pākehā becomes a Pākehā in their own way, finding their own meaning for that Māori word. This is the story of what it means to me. I have written this book for Pākehā – and other New Zealanders – curious about their sense of identity and about the ambivalences we Pākehā often experience in our relationships with Māori (p. 7).

But to be and become Pãkehã is not a neat, settled, or unproblematic identity. She continues in her introduction,

‘Pākehā’ is a complicated and politicised term in modern usage. It is a tuna-term, a slippery eel of a word; it wriggles easily away from one’s grasp. Sometimes it is a general descriptive category to name the white people inhabiting New Zealand; sometimes it refers to an identity, a form of self-understanding that arises from close ongoing engagement with Māori-as-Māori. Sometimes it is used negatively by Māori to name the colonisers. But as Ani Mikaere famously put it: ‘[T]here is nowhere else in the world that one can be Pākehā. Whether the term remains forever linked to the shameful role of the oppressor or whether it can become a positive source of identity and pride is up to Pākehā themselves. All that is required from them is a leap of faith’ (p. 8)

This leap of faith, for Jones, follows a particular path of ongoing ‘unsettlement’:

Mine is not a redemptive story of good feelings and togetherness; I try to show that Māori–Pākehā relationships are difficult and wonderful all at once, and that such complexities are not only exciting but also make us who we are as quirkily unique New Zealanders. Now, after more than sixty-five years of becoming Pākehā – having accepted the inevitable Pākehā state of permanent lively discomfort, and eschewing a single resolution of our relationship with Māori – I feel strangely liberated. Being Pākehā, having daily engagements with Māori-as-Māori, may not be entirely comfortable, but nor is it ever boring. For all the complexities, such relationships have given me a deeply rich sense of myself and the place I live (p. 10).

The rest of what follows—a series of delightful, difficult, strange, and interesting stories of childhoods, universities, activism, marriages, and academic careers—lives up to this promise; seeking to show the ‘wonderful’ and ‘difficult’ reality of being Pãkehã. Stories flow about the fleeting friendships with Mãori at school and in segregated neighbourhoods, the dynamics of talking to settler family about social and political issues, learning to understand your own zeal and passion within the limitations of yourself, learning to take life less seriously but growing much deeper and serious in wisdom. Jones often writes with a wit and humour which she never quite escapes, as if her words and recollections are always written with some sort of pleasant smirk. Her memoir is both a gratifying and disruptive read, oddly comforting while challenging—strangely ‘liberating,’ as she imagines her own life of learning and growing to be.

When Michael King first wrote Being Pakeha, he called for a very different understanding of white identity and privilege in Aotearoa. However we read that book now, it turned a trajectory for people like me to look deeper in understanding my own settler identity and belonging in New Zealand than what had been commonly narrated before. When one does turn to this—turn towards ‘being Pãkehã’ in a Mãori world—the pain and violence of ongoing colonial history is difficult to face, even if necessary.

For this task of facing towards our past and understanding our ‘unsettled’ belonging to this land, Jones is a welcome, and much needed, twenty-first century guide. Whatever comes of the journey towards Mãori by learning to be Pãkehã—along with all the humility and discomfort that requires—the gift of the hikoi is, as Jones reflects, that Aotearoa New Zealand becomes “the only place I make sense” (p. 7).

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Rating: 5/5

This Pākehā Life: An Unsettled Memoir is available from Bridget Williams Books and all good books stores.

You can read an excerpt from the book at E-Tangata here.

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Andrew Clark-Howard (Pãkehã) is currently an editor at Metanoia.