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ABSTRACT
While colonial worldviews and practices continue to cast a long shadow, indigenous efforts to reflect and protect their humanature relationships mark a striking form of political resistance within modern legal contexts. One particularly revealing case is that of Aotearoa New Zealand during the Te Awa Tupua (Whanganui River) Settlement Bill in 2017, where Māori parliamentarians successfully advocated—after decades of struggle—for the granting of rights to a natural entity through nuanced code switching strategies between English and Te Reo Māori (the Māori language). Drawing on cultural discourse analysis (CuDA), we showcase how their code-switching practices highlighted cultural differences, built identities, and advocated for kaitiakitanga (the Māori worldview of guardianship). By looking at code-switching through CuDA's discursive hubs, we found that speakers relayed complex humanature worldviews and navigated the linguistic, colonial, political, and environmental struggles experienced within them. Speakers performed culturally distinct practices counter to Western derived hegemony, with regard not only to its depictions of the environment, but across its designations of what a culture should encompass regarding humanature relations within an intercultural setting such as Parliament.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to acknowledge all Indigenous people around the world fighting for the preservation of Nature and culture—including their fight for language preservation. They would also like to thank the two reviewers for the 2019 World Communication Association and the reviewers from JIIC who provided generous and valuable feedback. The first author would like to acknowledge Drs. Leah Sprain, David Boromisza-Habashi, Tiara Na’puti and Laura Nash for their support and feedback during research development and writing.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 New Zealand's Māori name is Aotearoa, meaning “Land of the Long White Cloud.”
2 “Humanature” follows Tema Milstein's work in bridging human-nature binaries in language use. See Milstein, T. (2013). Banging on the divide: Cultural reflections and refraction at the zoo. In E. Plec (ed.), Perspectives on human-animal communication: Internatural communication (pp. 162–181). Routledge.
3 New Zealand is an independent nation, albeit that it continues to be a part of the British Commonwealth. The Crown is today seen as the New Zealand state (Phelan, Citation2009).
4 In the first year, over 500 tribal leaders were said to have signed the treaty (however, not all did).
5 Tangata whenua: People of the land; see also mana tangata whenua: indigenous rights
6 See Clause 19 of the Settlement Bill for the various functions of the office.
7 People of the land, Māori
8 See graph available Te Pūnaha Matatini Whānau: https://cpb-ap-se2.wpmucdn.com/blogs.auckland.ac.nz/dist/d/75/files/2018/02/reo-speeches-by-year-tcq2bu.png
9 According to the Aotearoa New Zealand parliament the terminology “reading” “dates back to the days in Britain when bills were literally read out to the House. It has never been the practice in New Zealand. Only the title is read aloud.” First reading: “first opportunity for the House to debate the bill. The member in charge of the bill leads off the debate. Second reading: “the main debate on the principles of the bill. At the end of the debate, any select committee amendments that did not have the unanimous support of the committee are voted on together. All unanimous amendments are incorporated once the bill passes its second reading. The bill can also be defeated at this stage.” Third reading: “final stage in the House. It is the last opportunity to debate and decide whether the bill should be passed in the form in which it has emerged from the committee of the whole House. It is a debate more for summing up than on the provisions in detail. Once a bill's third reading has been agreed, it has been passed by the House but it has one further step before it becomes law:” Royal assent (https://www.parliament.nz/en/visit-and-learn/how-parliament-works/fact-sheets/parliament-brief-the-legislative-process).
10 Hapū: kinship group, clan, subtribe.
11 Taniwha: dangerous river creature.
12 Tikanga: customs.
13 awa: river, stream.
14 maunga: mountain, peak.
15 kōrero: speech.
16 whakapapa: genealogy, lineage, descent.
17 mana whenua: territorial rights, power from the land, authority over land territory.
18 rohe: district, region, territory.
19 ruruku whakatupua: commitment to growth.
20 taiao: Earth, natural world, environment, nature.
21 te ao: Māori worldview.