‘Asking Ma¯ori to fill spiritual void’
This seven-part video series explores what it means to be P¯akeh¯a, 250 years after Captain Cook’s arrival in New Zealand
Many Pa¯keha¯ New Zealanders are using Ma¯ori spiritual traditions to fill a void in their own lives, says Juliet Batten, an Auckland-based author and former psychotherapist.
Batten believes Pa¯keha¯ New Zealanders suffer from a deep lack of spiritual connection to the land which makes it difficult to have a positive, reciprocal relationship with Ma¯ori.
“We can ask Ma¯ori to supply our spiritual void, our spiritual emptiness, and that’s colonising again,” she says in the NZ On Air-funded documentary series Land of the Long White Cloud.
Batten argues that 250 years since Cook’s arrival in New Zealand, Pa¯keha¯ are disconnected from their natural world because European settlers transposed the seasonal rituals of the northern hemisphere to their new homeland.
The cultural differences between Ma¯ori and Pa¯keha¯ were the cause for much of the conflict when early settlers arrived.
Ma¯ori did not have a concept of exclusive land ownership but European settlers were hungry to buy exclusive plots of land on arrival, which they achieved once the Pa¯keha¯ population reached critical mass.
The resulting loss of land and economic power left Ma¯ori with high rates of incarceration, poor health outcomes and lower life
Hexpectancies, higher rates of poverty, homelessness and unemployment than Pa¯keha¯. Batten says though Pa¯keha¯ living today didn’t commit the crimes of colonisation personally “we are part of the institutions and the consequences.
“We participate in the privilege that was gained from those actions and in the end we have to take responsibility.”
She believes that the path to a more harmonious relationship between Pa¯keha¯ and tangata whenua requires Pa¯keha¯ to make their own spiritual connection to the land.
“If we come into a relationship feeling that we’re empty and we need to be filled up, we’re going to take. We’re going to say to the others ‘Fill me up. Give me what I haven’t got.’
“When I find that richness in me then I’m not having to take anything from Ma¯ori, I have something to give,” she says.
According to Batten, operating from a place of lack can cause Pa¯keha¯ to exhibit racist behaviours and “when we’re grounded in who we are, that’s when we’re better able to relate to those who are different from us”.
Filmmaker Kathleen Winter says that she included Batten’s perspective in the Land of the Long White Cloud series “because it shifts this conversation in an important way.
“Though Juliet is brutal in her critique of “white guilt”, she also embraces the potential of a positive cultural identity for Pa¯keha¯ through spiritual belonging.
“Doing the work of self-reflection and connection isn’t indulgent — it’s a necessary first step for those who want to change racist norms and enter true cultural exchange.”