Decolonising Place in Aotearoa

The ongoing capitalist settler colonisation of Aotearoa has wrought immense violence upon this place and its inhabitants. The centrality of the dispossession of Indigenous land by settlers in Aotearoa has brought the issue of place and its contestation—how it is understood and conceptualised, and ultimately, how it is related-to—to the fore. Contributing to the discourse around place in Aotearoa are a rich diversity of Indigenous and non-Indigenous thinkers, often writing outside of academic discourse. Whilst there may be a renewed interest in place within academic discourse, some of the most important place-based thought that seeks to address colonising relations to place is not exclusively located within academic discourse, but instead draws from the Indigenous epistemic traditions of Aotearoa. Informed by these traditions, and these Indigenous and non-Indigenous thinkers of place, my aim is to develop a conception of place that emerges from place and draws from mātauranga Māori (customary Māori knowledge) and whakapapa kōrero (Māori thought). In the context of the ongoing settler colonisation of Aotearoa, I will present two opposed ways of relating to place pertaining, but not limited to, settler colonialism; anatopism (being out of place) and belonging (being in good-relation to place). By speaking to the particularities of place, belonging and anatopism within settler colonialism in Aotearoa, I will discuss several examples of the practical politics of decolonising place in Aotearoa.