Abstract
This proem to the book Ethnographic Worldviews: Transformations and Social Justice serves to locate the collection in contemporary spaces of involved and committed practitioners of the ethnographic craft. While discussing the cutting-edge exemplars within this book, the co-editors present a global picture of the ethnographic craft—and art—that sweeps across a wide range of situated fields and areas of study. Additionally, the co-editors discuss the emphasis on authors from indigenous and southern hemisphere sensibilities, and what this may mean for forward-thinking ethnographic practice.
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Notes
- 1.
Tom Roa wrote the commentary cited in the text and in full below to enhance our understandings of this significant whakatauki, upon which we drew in developing the first CEAD hui and this book. The whakatauki drawn on is:
Kotahi te kōhao o te ngira e kuhuna ai te miro mā te miro, te miro pango, me te miro whero. –Pōtatau Te Wherowhero.
There is but one eye of the needle through which the white thread, the red thread, and the black thread traverse. –Pōtatau Te Wherowhero.
According to Tom Roa,
Whakataukī; whakatauākī; pēpeha; tongikura are pithy, succinct, ancestral sayings which provide lessons from the past to inform our present, and guide our future. They are most often metaphoric, frequently visionary, always purposeful.
Pōtatau Te Wherowhero, the first Māori King, is known to have uttered these words at his inauguration as King in 1858. The visionary foresaw that European technology (the needle) was to play a major role in the future of his people. Using the metaphor of a sewing together of diverse threads, strengthened in that stitching, enhanced by the diversity of colour, his reference was to the various peoples of all colours making their way to Aotearoa/New Zealand, who, when unified, would celebrate their strength, their beauty, their unity in diversity.
A signatory to the Declaration of Independence of 1835, Pōtatau, recognized by many including Governor George Grey as a leading ariki of Māoridom, was not a signatory to the Treaty of Waitangi. He died in 1860, two years after being crowned King, and was succeeded by his son who later became known as King Tāwhiao.
During Tāwhiao’s reign, his Waikato people suffered horrendously with the invasion of their homelands by the Colonial Armed Forces and subsequent Government policies. The Raupatu Settlement as redress for the hara (wrong) has gone a long way to improving the lot of the Waikato people and has been a model not just for other Māori, but for indigenous people the world over. (personal communication, April 16, 2012).
- 2.
The three official languages are te reo Māori, English, and NZ Sign Language.
- 3.
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Rinehart, R.E., Barbour, K.N., Pope, C.C. (2014). Proem: Engaging Contemporary Ethnography Across the Disciplines. In: Rinehart, R., Barbour, K., Pope, C. (eds) Ethnographic Worldviews. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6916-8_1
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