The Limits of Common Kindness

How we interact in public places changed dramatically due to the Covid-19 outbreak. In an attempt to govern this interaction, the government of Aotearoa New Zealand set the citizens a moral standard: they were to ‘be kind’. In her contribution to the Urban Readings PhD researcher Anne Cunningham reflects on what this slogan means in the context of spatial justice.

To provide some background, Aotearoa NZ lives with colonialism. Its colonialist origins lie in the British State’s deceptive disruption of Māori sovereignty. Since the 1980s, there has been an increasing conversation about how we respond to this past so as not to perpetuate the injustices experienced and being experienced by Māori. In spatial disciplines, we often turn to ‘participation’ to develop justice. Yet, academic scholars have also reviewed the idea that participation is intrinsically linked to spatial justice (Calderon, 2019; Egoz et al., 2018). In Māori scholar, Tina Ngata’s, book, ‘Kia Mau’, she also addresses how, “indigenous participation on the margin is vital to the centering of the coloniser” (Ngata, 2019, p. 46). It is these concerns, with the dynamics within participation, which this essay aligns itself with.

False equivalence and why removal of civic monuments contributes to spatial justice

As we exited our lockdown and engaged in the global conversation around the #blacklivesmatter movement, we saw a similar diversity of kindnesses in how municipalities dealt with public concerns about civic monuments celebrating early colonisers. Three particular examples of municipal decision-making caught my attention: the re-installing of Endeavour replicas in Gisborne; the statue of Captain John Hamilton in Hamilton; and the redevelopment of Victoria Square in Christchurch.

Tina Ngata’s astute critique of Gisborne City Council’s decision-making processes around the reinstallation of the Endeavour ship replicas is a breath-taking education in the harm of Pākehā kindness (Ngata, 2020). Local Councillors centred the role of Pākehā representative democracy, proposing that it was their job to remove the “burden” of decision-making from Māori (Ngata, 2020). Whilst the paternalism inherent in this proposal is critically deficient, the resulting argument was also flawed: that both Māori and Pākehā should have equal numbers of monuments (Ngata, 2020). This division of place not only makes a false equivalence between a quantitative allocation of space, and spatial justice, ignoring the harm experienced by Māori witnessing Pākehā monuments celebrating colonialism as they go about their day. This empathy was not kind, as it was not authentically centred on the values and beliefs of the recipients.

In contrast, when Māori kaumatua (elder), Taitimu Maipu from Waikato-Tainui, declared his intent to remove the Captain John Hamilton statue from the Civic Square in Hamilton, the response of Hamilton Council was to listen to the harm it caused Māori and immediately remove the statue. Hamilton Council’s empathy had practical roots in Hamilton City Council “working collaboratively with Waikato-Tainui for more than 12 months on a project to review culturally sensitive place names and sites”. Through this collaboration, the municipality had developed empathy and compassion for the “cultural harm which has taken place” (O’Dwyer, 2020). They could respond immediately in a way that Māori leadership understood as kind.

False equivalence and why removal of civic monuments contributes to spatial justice

As we exited our lockdown and engaged in the global conversation around the #blacklivesmatter movement, we saw a similar diversity of kindnesses in how municipalities dealt with public concerns about civic monuments celebrating early colonisers. Three particular examples of municipal decision-making caught my attention: the re-installing of Endeavour replicas in Gisborne; the statue of Captain John Hamilton in Hamilton; and the redevelopment of Victoria Square in Christchurch.

Tina Ngata’s astute critique of Gisborne City Council’s decision-making processes around the reinstallation of the Endeavour ship replicas is a breath-taking education in the harm of Pākehā kindness (Ngata, 2020). Local Councillors centred the role of Pākehā representative democracy, proposing that it was their job to remove the “burden” of decision-making from Māori (Ngata, 2020). Whilst the paternalism inherent in this proposal is critically deficient, the resulting argument was also flawed: that both Māori and Pākehā should have equal numbers of monuments (Ngata, 2020). This division of place not only makes a false equivalence between a quantitative allocation of space, and spatial justice, ignoring the harm experienced by Māori witnessing Pākehā monuments celebrating colonialism as they go about their day. This empathy was not kind, as it was not authentically centred on the values and beliefs of the recipients.

In contrast, when Māori kaumatua (elder), Taitimu Maipu from Waikato-Tainui, declared his intent to remove the Captain John Hamilton statue from the Civic Square in Hamilton, the response of Hamilton Council was to listen to the harm it caused Māori and immediately remove the statue. Hamilton Council’s empathy had practical roots in Hamilton City Council “working collaboratively with Waikato-Tainui for more than 12 months on a project to review culturally sensitive place names and sites”. Through this collaboration, the municipality had developed empathy and compassion for the “cultural harm which has taken place” (O’Dwyer, 2020). They could respond immediately in a way that Māori leadership understood as kind.

Being kind is not an abstract moral duty

Ngāi Tūāhuriri and Christchurch City Council took a different approach, underscored by their past collaborative work. They issued a joint press release that stated statues should be part of a continual discussion because, “it is important that our public statues and monuments reflect the history of mana whenua and the colonial settlement in this region” (Christchurch City Council & Ngāi Tūāhuriri, 2020). This statement was grounded in pre-existing spatial justice. In particular, the spatial re-framing of colonial monuments during the rebuild of Christchurch, after the Canterbury Earthquake sequence. For instance, the re-design of Victoria Square centred Māori, with the statue of Queen Victoria now a facet of a Māori place. This was a result of the work of Ngāi Tūāhuriri agency, Matapopore, which had been set up to be the “mana whenua (indigenous) voice in the Christchurch recovery and is responsible for ensuring Ngāi Tūāhuriri values and aspirations are realised“ (Matapopore, 2020). Matapopore worked in collaboration with Christchurch City Council, pakahiwi ki te pakahiwi (meeting face to face and working shoulder to shoulder). Therefore, Christchurch City Council practiced how to be kind through the long rebuild of the city. This illustrates how being kind is not an abstract moral duty exercised by doing something you think is right in a moment of hardship. Kindness is the product of diachronic, collaborative practices.

This essay’s reflection on a few examples has shown how being kind is dependent on our empathy for others, but that empathy is not inherently just. If non-indigenous people want just empathy to underscore how we change our places then we need more than our imagination to feel our way in someone else’s shoes. Just empathy is the result of long term practical collaborations which centre Māori ways of working and ways of understanding our place.

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Anne Cunningham
September 2020