Dr Hirini Kaa will present the second 2021 Ernest Scott Lecture.
Christianity, Colonisation and the Challenge of Māori History
13 October 2021, 6.15pm – 7.30pm
Dr Hirini Kaa will explore the tension of telling the histories of Māori and Christianity. As monuments fall, as school curriculums are overhauled, as “national identity” is reassessed and as the dream of indigenous sovereignty comes ever closer, what is the place for Christianity in these histories beyond the binary of oppressor-oppressed? What if cultural change does not always equate to cultural loss?
One answer is to turn to mātauranga as a framework for history – indigenous knowledge and ways of knowing. “Insider” histories that can read and tell our own stories through our pain and loss but also through whanaungatanga (connectedness) and whakapapa (lines of descent). This is some of the challenge of Māori history that will be explored in this lecture.
Dr Hirini Kaa of Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Kahungunu and Rongowhakaata descent, has worked in the social services sector, as an academic at the University of Auckland, and for his iwi (tribe), and now works with Te Pīhopatanga o Aotearoa (the Māori Anglican Church) focusing on mātauranga (knowledge and ways of knowing).
Registrations can be made here.