Hope for positive change in timely publication

It was a bit of a surprise for Ian Hutson when he was asked to write about biculturalism and fighting racism in Aotearoa New Zealand, but a pleasant surprise, and an area he has vast experience in.

Lt-Colonel Hutson is director of The Salvation Army Social Policy and Parliamentary Unit and co-chair of the Rūnanga – which embeds shared authority with Māori into the Salvation Army structure.

Ian has spent more than 40 years with the Salvation Army (Te Ope Whakaora) and has a passion for working with – and for – Māori.

He says he was happy to contribute a chapter to Leave Your Big Boots at the Door, the just released book by Lorraine McLeod featuring chapters from 17 Pākehā discussing their work towards biculturalism and fighting racism against Māori in Aotearoa New Zealand.

While writing as a Pākehā, as a postscript to Ian’s chapter explains, his bicultural journey as a Pākehā included a growing awareness of his whakapapa Māori – something he was at best only vaguely aware of.

“We’d sort of always known, but it was a mystery, no one really knew,” he says.

“My mum, she went digging around and found the marae and became connected with people so I discovered that I whakapapa to Ruku Te Kauki of the Ngāti Pikiahu-Waewae hapū and my ancestry includes links to Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Ngāti Kahungunu and Ngāti Raukawa.”

It’s also something of a mystery how he became involved in the book.

“The editor, Lorraine McLeod, rang me out of the blue one day and said she’d read my article about institutional racism. I didn’t let on but I couldn’t remember writing one about institutional racism, so I just played along,” he says.

“She was trying to gather together people to write from a Pākehā perspective about their journey of biculturalism, and about fighting racism and would I be prepared to write? So I said okay and that was about two years ago, so it took a long time.”

“I was a bit worried thinking of all the things that have happened since. But when I look at what I wrote, the editors didn’t need to change much because many of the things I talked about are happening now.”

He’s now had a chance to read the whole book and says it’s interesting reading other people’s perspectives on racism and their battles against it.

“People are coming at it from different angles, and the same things get said but in different ways. Some people are more focused on law or corrections or justice or health or education and some of their journeys are quite different so it’s quite a range. You think ‘oh, I never thought of that’, so you learn really interesting things while you’re reading it.”

His chapter focusses on his upbringing in a largely Pākehā world and how he learned to appreciate a Māori world view through his work with Te Ope Whakaora.

“I don’t think our family ever had strongly negative feelings, they were in fact very warm feelings towards Maori, but you don’t realise what’s going on, and when when you reflect a bit you realise that you’re in different worlds and the two worlds aren’t meeting,” he says.

“And therefore, because you’re in the dominant culture, you can’t really see what’s going on.”

His work with a man who had come out of the Salvation Army’s addiction programe at Rotoroa Island in the Hauraki Gulf opened his eyes.

“In recovery he joined up at our Papakura Corps, which I was then the officer of, and I journeyed with the whānau in the battle against addiction. It was there that I got confronted with Māori culture. I remember thinking, this is like a completely different dimension. I had never really thought about it before and I think a lot of Pakeha don’t really get beyond that, they don’t actually enter that world enough to understand what’s going on.”

Further work with the Mongrel Mob also hit home.

“That was pretty transformative because you suddenly saw the alienation. We took turns at living-in on the programme so it was 24/7. You went with them when they were having to deal with doctors and nurses when they were sick and you saw how they were treated. It wasn’t obviously bad, but you could feel the alienation wherever you went, and you could understand why they reacted negatively to it all,” he says.

“And then realising that for Māori in a general sense, they deal with that on a daily basis. As one person said to me, for many Māori, any interaction with what are mainly Pākehā institution is often not a positive one.”

Ian hopes something positive comes from the book, and that it might bring the Māori and Pākeha worlds a bit closer together.

“I just hope that the book will help Pākehā to appreciate what Māori face. I always live and hope that maybe it can help make a dint in some of this pain, loss and conflict, especially now the way things are around the Treaty and other related matters. Maybe it’s a good time for the book to come out because these kinds of issues are at the forefront now.”