Co-existing Indigenous and Settler Worlds Ontological Styles and Possibilities

Abstract

Settler colonialism involves processes of destruction and substitution aiming to replace indigenous with European/western worlds. But indigenous worlds persist in numerous spaces, moments and interactions where distinct ontologies and ways of being-in-the-world prevail. In Aotearoa New Zealand these spaces of the Māori world persist most obviously on marae. Māori and western worlds also briefly come together in public contexts where Māori protocols are used to mark openings of various sorts, temporarily governing public space and sociability. In this paper, I explore a different case where, I argue, Māori and western worlds are entangled or knotted together in the carved pou in the atrium space of a new community building in Kaitaia.