Sarah Lee
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Yesterday I set off neo-nazi alarm bells by stating that I wanted to "reclaim the pākehātanaga utopian relic of radical hospitality." Rather than discretely editing it, I want to unpack it with you because there is value in this conversation being had. 
My identity as pākehā makes me uncomfortable. To name myself as pākehā is to name that I whakapapa to the wrong side of history. It requires that I acknowledge the cultures of white supremacy and colonial ambition that are woven through my ancestry. To distance myself from my own pākehā identity is to distance myself from the mahi of working through my pākehā shame. 
In mid-November I attended the indigenous-led Social Movements Conference - Resistance and Social Change Aotearoa. Here I encountered the phrase pākehātanga. Alongside it, I encountered frustration from the front lines of the treaty justice movement at the refusal of pākehā identity by pākeha. 
Pākehātanga is the idea that as Pākehā we are a particular tribe of white New Zealanders with distinctive characteristics. We are not, as we often feel, without identity or culture of our own. Rather, we are an emergent culture that is uniquely of this place. There is no where in the world but Aotearoa that we can be pākehā. 
The wero (challenge) laid out at Social Movements Conference to pākehātanga was to accept this, and in turn to accept the duty that comes with being a people who are still becoming. We have a duty of repair that stretches back in time. We must hold ourselves accountable for the ways in which our ancestors failed to uphold the sanctity and equality of life. This is restorative justice. We have a duty that stretches forwards in time also. It is the duty to become a people capable of being honorable treaty partners. 
If you have ever felt within yourself a longing when studying te ao Māori, for the same richness of culture then you know that we have work to do. So long as we fail to address our pākehātanga poverty of spirit we will be incapable of being the people we must become to honour te tiriti and do the mahi of restorative justice. 
I believe that a necessary step of addressing this poverty of spirit is to look back to our own ancestors, acknowledge their mistakes, but also to look for the fragments of utopia - the small moments in which they got it right. It is in excavating these "utopian relics", liberating them from old contexts, and weaving them into becoming that we begin to actively construct a pākehātanga culture that we can be proud of. Radical hospitality is one such utopian relic that is central to the christian theology that I was raised on. It is the first piece of my anglo-saxon heritage that I want to point to as a "utopian relic" because it's something I think my ancestors, amidst all their mistakes, got right. 
I am pākehā. We, as pākehā, have a culture that is uniquely ours. This is pākehātanga. Naming it is an important part of holding ourselves accountable in who we are becoming. Our task is a collective task in which we must appropriate, not indigenous cultures, but our own. There are parts of our history that are appropriate for the task ahead. To find them, and weave them into pākehātanga, is a work we must do alongside the work of examining and disentangling the relics of dystopia - white supremacy, and colonialism, that we have inherited. 
If you would like to join me, I am opening my home as a site of community and radical hospitality. A place where we can come together and have the conversations that we need to have as pākehā and tauiwi (non-māori).