Māori Neighborhood

In less than a week, we will be moving out of our current house, which is in a low-income neighbourhood populated mostly by Māori families. We will be moving into an upperclass neighbourhood, the demographics of which I know nothing about, other than the rather stereotypic assumption that upperclass probably means mostly white.

As we prepare to leave our current neighbourhood, I thought I would share some of our experiences living here.

When we picked this house, lots of people told us that it was an unsafe place to live, because the Māori gangs operated on the street right next to it. In addition, they said it was an undesirable place to live because all of our neighbours would be Māori. We were shocked that they would say such a thing - I guess we thought that even if they were thinking it, they would be too afraid of being labeled racist to actually say it out loud. But they said it, without seeming to think that it was inappropriate at all.

Obviously, we chose to live here anyway. Pretty quickly, the neighbour kids, Bonnie (7), Misana (7), Kiaroa (7), and Shakira (11), started coming over and talking with me, asking to play with Holly, and just generally being friendly. They are always outside playing, between each other's houses and in back yards, with minimal adult supervision, but I think with enough to keep them safe.

I was happy to become friends with them, but a little bit nervous at their seeming lack of understanding of personal space. Early on, they climbed over our fence, came up on the porch, and peered into our lounge through the windows. Needless to say, I was not particularly comfortable with this. However, I talked to them about it, and made sure that they understood that they needed to wait for an invitation from me to come into my space. I felt a bit uncomfortable communicating this to them, because I think that their understanding of this neighbourhood is that everyone is family (and they do seem to all be at least loosely related) and that pretty much everywhere is communal space. I think that that is great, but I am not really ready to have my private space be added to the community. The kids needed some reminders, which I tried to provide in a very culturally sensitive way, but they did learn to wait for my permission, and that has worked out great. They now very frequently run over when I get home from work and ask to play fetch with Holly, and I say yes if I have time, and if not, they run back to their yards to play. They love Holly, but they love just chatting about things with me even more. When I walk to the local dairy to pick up some food, I am usually accompanied by two or three of them, which they consider quite a fun adventure. Some days I find it a bit much to have excited children jumping on me after a long day of work, but most days I like the sense of community, and appreciate that the children are fun, interesting, and kind. Although I know that their experience of neighbours is different than mine, I also know that they respect and appreciate me and my values, and will not go against them.

That has been my person experience of living in a Māori neighbourhood, and I consider it to be a positive experience.

On the other hand, I have been considerably less pleased with the conversations I have had about it. Early on, I voiced my concern to a few people about trying to set appropriate boundaries with these children, but I was not prepared for the response. One person said, "Just stay away if you can. You never want to get involved with Māori. It's not worth it." Another said, "They'll never understand the idea of other people's property. That's why they steal and break things and they don't even get it." As if those comments are not upsetting enough, what got to me is that they came from well-educated people who I had never experienced to be anything but kind. It seemed clear, however, that they had been brought up to believe those things, and had never questioned them.

I DO NOT believe that everyone here feels that way, nor do I believe that the people who do feel that way would actually be unkind to any Māori with whom they interacted. In fact, Kiwis seem to be kind to everyone pretty much all the time. But it bothers me that such things can be said nonchalantly, as if they are not racist. I think that there is a lot of misunderstanding between Māori and Pākehā (European Kiwi), and that that has lead to a lot of resentment.

I plan to post soon about a Professional Development course that I took on The Treaty of Waitaingi and the history between Māori and Pākehā, so I will go into more detail on the broader context then.