Painting a picture of safe spots for refugees
A Nelson student’s doctorate thesis has mapped out where our former refugees are finding their happy places as they adapt to a new life in Aotearoa.
Amber Kale is halfway through her PhD in Human Geography at Victoria University, where she was studying refugee resettlement in Nelson.
The last five months have seen her collaborate with women and girls from the Myanmar community – Nelson’s largest former refugee population – to explore how they built new emotional attachments to their places of settlement.
Kale also spent a month last year interviewing those working in refugee resettlement, English language and health programmes to get a broad idea of what was happening there.
Through the interviews and a series of painting workshops, the women shared the places that they felt attached to in Nelson by painting pictures of their experiences.
Kale was also able to map the places that the Chin and Kayan refugees and their families go to feel a positive emotional connection. She discovered that these largely revolved around the agricultural, self-sufficient way of life they were accustomed to in their homeland.
Among the favoured activities were fishing off the Vickerman St lay-up wharf, gardening with friends in the Victory neighbourhood, or enjoying the ‘‘healing’’ spaces of churches or local parks and reserves.
‘‘A lot of people in Nelson have said they don’t see many former refugees, or at least the Burmese community, in the city centre,’’ Kale said. ‘‘They assumed it’s because they were staying within the Victory area, but actually it’s because they’re getting out to all these places in the outdoors . . . they come from a rural place, and so that’s what they seek out here.’’
The resulting research and artworks are now being exhibited at the G-Space Gallery at the Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology.
While there was still data to be analysed, Kale said, the overriding picture developing was that the former refugees sought out places where they felt safe.
‘‘A lot of them have come from regions of warfare and conflict, and it was sort of that absence of sounds of gunfire and even bad weather and the stability of houses that they enjoy here.
‘‘They also liked places where they feel like they had a connection to home – things that evoke those positive memories, so they’d go to places like Rabbit Island, the Maitai (Valley) or Quinney’s Bush and they can do the same activities they did at home.’’
‘‘One lady just liked to sit under this particular tree [at the Broads] because the acorns reminded her of home, playing with them as a child.’’
Kale said the concept of place attachment was not a large part of the New Zealand refugee resettlement process. However, she argued that building connections to one’s surroundings was central to constructing a sense of identity and belonging, while enhancing individual social and environmental wellbeing.
She said the project had been a good way to merge her interests as a refugee rights advocate, volunteer and a professional portrait artist, sharing people’s stories and raising awareness of what was going on in refugee communities.
‘‘I tried to get the participants to use painting as a way to communicate and to share the research with the community as well, so it’s not just stuck in academia.’’
A Kate Sheppard Memorial and Rosemary Seymour Research Award winner, Kale has previously collaborated with former refugees and long-term Wellingtonians during her Masters thesis to create a mural representing their stories and understandings of home.
The exhibition opened on Wednesday night, with a follow-up seminar on Thursday, and will run until March 28.
‘‘Many former refugees . . . come from a rural place, and so that’s what they seek out here.’’
Amber Kale, student and artist