This Pa¯keha¯ Life by Alison Jones

(BridgetWilliams Books, $40) Reviewed by Caroline Barron

In This Pa¯keha¯ Life, Alison Jones rigorously unpicks her life to understand how she came to think of herself as Pa¯keha¯ and what thatword means for her and other New Zealanders. It is by no means a redemptive or self-congratulatory story of her successful interactionwith Ma¯ori – which it might have been, for she has spent decades exploring the complexities ofMa¯oriPa¯keha¯ relationships.

This relational aspect of being Pa¯keha¯ is at the book’s heart. Being Pa¯keha¯, as opposed to a European New Zealander, is only possible because of its relationship to Ma¯ori. Jones identifies this as ‘‘ doubled being: a sense of shared humanity with Ma¯ori as well as a deep sense of otherness, of the unknown and the unknowable’’.

The daughter of English immigrants, she was born nearMaungakiekie/One Tree Hill in 1953. Her fathermoves the family every few years – from Karangahape Rd to Dannevirke, to Whakata¯ne, and then Tauranga – trying, Jones believes, to outrun his depression.

The stories of her early life have a delightful, impressionistic nature five decades on when she seeks Maria, she realises her memories are fallible, unreliable. She had completely misremembered Maria’s domestic life – the boil-ups and the room crammed with beds – ‘‘a fantasy’’, shewrites, ‘‘of the imagined domestic spaces of aMa¯ori family’’.

Jones comes of age against a backdrop of Vietnam, Martin Luther King and apartheid, and becomes troubled by New Zealand’s cultural and economic disparity, and that noone seems to be talking about it. She tries on a variety of ethicalmodels – from harvesting shared land at Waipu, to feminist politics, and left-wing republicanism.

She studies science at Massey University in the 1970s, experiencing the sexism (and unwelcome seduction) of a male-dominated faculty. Realising shewas more drawn to the ‘‘beautiful logic of scientific uncertainty’’, in 1977 she begins a post-graduate degree in education at theUniversity of Auckland, entering ‘‘an academic pathway and close relationship with Ma¯ori fromwhich I would not emerge’’.

Five decades on, Jones is a professor in Te Puna Wa¯nanga, the School ofMa¯ori and Indigenous Education at the University of Auckland, whose research onNew Zealand education was honoured with anMNZMin 2019. Two recent histories written with Kuni Kaa Jenkins have been recognised with major awards: He Ko¯rero – Words Between Us: Ma¯ori-Pa¯keha¯ Conversations on Paper (Huia, 2011), and Tuai: A Traveller in Two Worlds (BWB, 2017).

While qualified to be critical of Pa¯keha¯Ma¯ori relationships, Jones is not prescriptive or didactic. Instead she gently invites Pa¯keha¯ to put aside their fear of doing the wrong thing or offendingMa¯ori, and challenges them to seek knowledge and understanding of New Zealand’s colonial past, so that all New Zealanders may move forward.

Iwas fascinated by Jones’ parents and would have liked more openness around the impact of her father’s mental health on her family. But that is aminor criticism which doesn’t detract from the book’s impact. This Pa¯keha¯ Life is an important and timely invitation for Pa¯keha¯ to look more deeply into the psychology of identity and belonging, using Jones’ own life as a starting point.