This is a personal commentary on some of the responses to the public narrative of the events after the 15 March Christchurch mosque attack. Several colleagues had publicly and privately offered their views on the Government’s and media outlets’ use of terms such as ‘unprecedented’, ‘our loss of innocence’ and ‘our darkest day’. A fiery and impassioned exchange of words emerged on social media about the statement ‘This is not us’. By exposing the counternarrative to these emotion-laden terms, a shady past, and an invisible present, was revealed. However, the timing of the talk about colonisation also seemed out of step with the need for sensitivity.
In this commentary I explore the role of white supremacy and casual racism in New Zealand. A personal I/we/us narrative style is used throughout to describe how Muslim and Māori lives intersected prior to, and after, the attack.
The timeline of events is primarily one week, and up to six weeks, post the attack.
On the afternoon of the 15 March I was waiting at the Hamilton airport to pick up my daughter and her family. When I received an email from the University alerting staff to the shooting in Christchurch, I checked the news webpage and saw images of the ambulance, and police situated at Deans Avenue. The tall trees of Hagley Park formed a backdrop of serenity that was at odds with the chaos that had happened hours earlier; images of distraught people were prominent. At the same time, the plane disembarked and my family came through the gate — shock on their faces. I felt a terror creep up and be swallowed with relief as I saw that they were all safe. They were on one of the last planes to leave Christchurch that afternoon.
My grandson’s creche backs onto Deans Avenue, close to the Al Noor Mosque. My daughter should have been at the creche that day but instead she travelled with her family to attend the Annual Regatta in Ngāruawāhia, and my son-in-law’s kapa haka group was set to perform for the Māori King and accompanying visitors. My son-in-law was also scheduled to do a ‘mataora’, a facial tattoo, or embellishment, for a family friend.
My daughter and I spoke about what might have happened had she or her husband been driving or walking down Deans Avenue that day. My son-in-law is tall, brown and wears a long bushy beard. We have no doubts about what might have happened had the shooter seen them, or their children. But more than this, our children, like Muslim children, live in a culture that has othered them. The portrayal of Muslim and Māori as savage, misogynistic, undeserving, troublesome and uncultured is a narrative we have lived with since colonisation stepped onto our foreshore.1 The words Māori and Foreshore are now synonymous with extreme colonisation. So the question of whether ‘this is not us’, or not, takes Māori to a place where they have been before.
Social media conversations occurred immediately after the attack in Christchurch. What was readily apparent was that some were uncomfortable raising the role of racism and colonisation, while others felt that white supremacy had to be talked about because to do so is to call out the institutions and social groups that benefit the most from it. The need to be sensitive and careful were uppermost in my mind, but so too was the need to consider how marginalised peoples feel about racism.
How do Māori experiences have any connection to the attack in Christchurch? The conversation I had with my daughter about what could have happened to her was frightening because we do not really ever feel safe in our own country. I have brown siblings, brown children, and brown nephews and nieces. I worry about them: will they get a job with their Māori names and Māori faces? Will they be given a choice of homes the same way that Pākehā are given choices? Will their Māoriness be undervalued? Will they fall through the casual racism gaps in our health system.2 Or, will they have to fight for every inch of their rights because the society they live in tells them every-single-day, in some overt and covert way, that they are not good enough? I worry about them because we live in a country that Taika Waititi eloquently described as ‘Racist as f**k’. He was vilified, and some called to have his award, ‘New Zealander of the Year’, taken from him.
If we can be proud of Taika and his achievements, why do we recoil in disgust and anger when he tells us, and the world, that we are not quite the race-relations haven we try to portray to the world, and to ourselves? Was there a collective introspection where the nation asked itself, ‘what does he mean?’ Why did our country have to hit rock bottom and lose 50 lives before we asked ourselves to look inwards at the institutions that enabled racism to thrive? Alongside that introspection, did we look at our own actions, or inactions, that foster racism, not only towards Māori, but to anyone who was not Christian and Caucasian?
The Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, and others used terms like ‘our darkest days’, ‘lost innocence’, and ‘unprecedented’ to describe reactions to the Christchurch attack. At the same time, my colleagues hit back on social media saying that the attack was not unprecedented, and that we were never innocent. We argued that ‘this is not us’ really meant, ‘actually, yes it is’. If it wasn’t, why did the New Zealand Settlement Act (1863) happen? ‘This is not us’, yet the New Zealand Wars (1800s) happened. ‘This is not us’ and the Treaty of Waitangi became a legal nullity (1877). In 2004, Don Brash’s Ōrewa Speech happened. So if this is not us, how did the rise of the alt-right happen? Former Psychological Society Bicultural Director, Dr Rose Black commented that, ‘We Pākehā sit on the continuum from superiority to white supremacy, and we don’t even know that we are’.3
My own view on the public commentaries was that, as tangihanga had not even started, now was not the time to talk about colonisation. While Māori funeral custom is to raise concerns as a way of paying respect to the deceased, and honouring their family, the funeral had not yet happened. I made what I thought was a brave decision to challenge my colleagues on social media — ‘Wait,’ I said. ‘Raise these issues later, at least until after the burials.’ This is not to say that I didn’t agree with them. Because I did.
My colleagues disagreed with me. They were angry and they knew that everything they had been saying about land confiscation, decimation of Māori culture and language, enforced poverty, systemic racism and structural violence was everyday, unacknowledged white supremacy in action. Our experiences taught us that we live within concentric circles of racism, and a deeply held belief in white supremacy as an ideology and practice. This is so deeply ingrained in the history of New Zealand that we do not recognise it, or want to know when we are called to account.
The point my colleagues were making is that New Zealanders should know that everyday acts of casual racism towards Māori, Pacific, Asians and Muslims are endemic and often silenced. Māori are not strangers to terrorism, and the commentators wanted to make that fact public. To do otherwise was to silence those who had suffered, and exonerate those who were complicit in institutionalised programmes of eugenics and classism.
My colleagues also suggested that for our country to heal, we needed to know how this land was colonised, who paid the price for it, and who continues to benefit. Moana Jackson4 commented on the importance of acknowledging the links between the past and present as the massacres and the ideologies of racism and white supremacy, which underpinned them, did not come about in a noncontextualised vacuum. Jackson also argued that the colonisation of New Zealand has a whakapapa — a genealogy, premised on brutality, Christianity, an enduring belief in racial superiority, and a view of Māori as the noble savage5 who cannot attain high intellectual functions, and certainly should not have resources that Pākehā could put to better use.
It may seem strange to say this, but I am reminded of the times I watched Thomas the Tank Engine with my son. Each time the character Diesel appeared (he was the black train), Middle Eastern music played. Diesel always seemed to be dirty, oily and slick. He was also cast as arrogant, untrustworthy, and deceitful. That same language, with its racist connotations, is used to describe Māori and Muslim communities.
Within a day of the attack — and largely prompted by the media headlines stating that the attack was unprecedented — angry commentaries spoke of the massacre at Rangiaowhia in 1864. These were conversations that felt out of place. Some asked about the relevance of bringing up an event where colonial militia herded men, women and children inside a church in Te Awamutu, which was then set alight. Did we also need to be reminded of how those who escaped were shot in the back as they tried to run away? My colleagues wanted it known that our people were murdered in a Christian church because they had resisted the advance of colonisation.
In the Waikato in the 1860s, Māori refusal to sell land, and the establishment of a King movement, provoked the colonial government in 1863 to demand that Māori pledge their allegiance to the Crown, or face ejection from their land. Without waiting for a reply, the Waikato was invaded a day later6. Some of us wanted to stay silent, to not compare disasters. I thought it was important to say, ‘We cannot sympathise with someone who has lost family by ripping open your own scar and saying, “This happened to me too.”’
Essentially, is it fair for Māori to claim our own colonial trauma, while the recovery response was still in progress? Historians Paul Moon and Melissa Derby7 argued (in an unrelated article) that modern Māori cannot know what historical trauma is because we were not there to experience it. They further claimed that Māori portray a one-sided, revisionist view of history and colonisation, while ignoring the benefits of being colonised, and seek to blame, and be angry at, a specific ethnic group (the British) while conveniently overlooking the trauma at the hands of our own pre-European Māori.
What then about Muslim experiences of trauma? Is it convenient to say that trauma does not pass down to future generations simply because we tell ourselves about it? As we were not there (when the trauma happened) how could we be traumatised? This statement shows a disregard for human experiences and overlooks the power of narrative history as a tool for healing, and for reconciliation.8
Many of us will have a future narrative about the Christchurch attack, and it is important that it is one based on recovery and learning. It is concerning that if we cannot accept that Māori have a collective experience of colonisation and trauma, how are we going to manage what we hear in the future? Anjum Rahman, the leader of the Islamic Women’s Council of New Zealand, wrote: ‘How does a heart break? Does it shatter into a million pieces? Does it split into two aching, throbbing halves? Does it break with a low keening wail or an earth-shattering scream of pain?’9
Pain of this magnitude is always remembered.
Some of the difficult commentaries I managed were from Māori who had learned to hate Muslims. It is the ‘some of my family and friends are racists’ story that was touchy to navigate. Māori values of manaakitanga and whānau were clearly not extended to Muslims, and we had to call each other out on that. I was particularly tired of seeing racist, Islamophobic comments from Māori who live in Australia, as if they had never known racism growing up in New Zealand, or the racism towards Indigenous Australians.
Another narrative that we discussed was that Māori, and Muslims, were under intense surveillance by State Services while white supremacists were ignored. Despite members of the Muslim communities having told police, the State Services Commission, the Security Intelligence Service, Department of Internal Affairs, government ministers and the Human Rights Commission about the death threats they had received from the alt-right, they did not feel heard, or protected.10 Was it too unbelievable and unpalatable to scrutinise white supremacists as potential terrorists? Is it white imagination to say that only certain people can commit acts of terror, while white people do not?
Despite the high rates of gun violence in the United States committed by white Americans, they are not collectively held to account like Muslims are. White shooters are described as loners (or a lone wolf), someone not part of an organised unit, or group. But are they really alone? In relegating the ‘lone wolf’ to the position of an unhinged outsider, we are not exposed to the white supremacists’ collective belief in their right to eliminate anyone they see as a threat to their self-idealised supremacy.11
This tricky side-step also enables the ‘this is not us’ narrative to float, because that type of person seems too far down the other end of the white supremacist continuum. Māori commentators on the other hand did not see the difference between white supremacy that kills quickly, and white supremacy that is insidious and kills slowly.12 The removal of Māori children by Oranga Tamariki, the abuse of children and youth in state care and in faith-based institutions, and Māori experiences of mental health services are just a few examples.13
The language used to portray Muslim experiences as other was perhaps most telling in the way that the shooter’s background was portrayed in the media. Without a doubt, had the shooter been Muslim, or Māori, the entire ethnic group and culture would have been vilified and portrayed as barbaric, with a primitive nature. However, there is a propensity to assuage potential white fragility by portraying white killers as inherently good — and that they have somehow gone bad. Australian and British newspapers showed a photo of a blonde, blue-eyed boy, with his father — the headline read ‘Angelic boy who grew into an evil far-right mass killer’. The killer was also described as ‘a likeable and dedicated personal trainer running free athletic programmes for kids’. Other terms used were ‘ordinary, white-man, of Australian, Irish, Scottish and British descent’ and a working-class ‘mad-man’.
The descriptions used above are examples of what psychologist Ray Nairn calls narrative fragments.14 When we hear a narrative fragment, a phrase or brief sentence cueing a well-known story, we fill in the rest of the story. By describing the killer as blonde, blue-eyed and angelic we maintain a view, depending on our life experiences, that white culture is normal, natural, ordinary and the standard against which everyone else is measured.
I wondered, did the child-angel fall off the heavenly perch destined for him as a white Australian? Does the narrative of white supremacy also guarantee entry into the celestial kingdom for Christians in the same way the Crusades promised the spoils of the Holy Land? Does having to write about the not-so-good-whiteperson leave editors a little out of their depth? Jacinda Ardern told the nation:
For those of you who are watching at home tonight and questioning how this could have happened here, we, New Zealand … We were not chosen for this act of violence because we condone racism, because we’re an enclave for extremism, we were chosen for the very fact that we are none of these things, because we represent diversity, kindness, compassion, a home for those that share our values, a refuge for those who need it. And those values, I can assure you, will not and cannot be shaken by this attack.
Sahar Ghumkhor, a reporter for Al Jazeera, said that the ‘This is not us’ statement merely showed a ‘comforting conviction’ that extremism and violence are features of backward societies, and not products of Western cultures. She went on to say that racism still determines who the ‘we, and they’ are of the world and that ‘this is not us’ ‘… seek[s] to absolve and reject responsibility and shame, and replace them with fragile innocence and even pride’.15
The concerns were that by calling the attack unprecedented, or claiming that our innocence is lost, we overlooked the systems that allowed it to happen. Narrative fragments for marginalised peoples highlight racialised concerns and experiences: the Black Lives Matter movement, Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Black Deaths in Custody, Pipeline to Prison, At-Risk-Māori and Islamophobia are all examples of inequities that are unattended to. It has become normal to hear about these narratives, to experience them, to despair over them, and to have them etched in our future-past. But let us be clear, what happened in Christchurch, was only a matter of time — we all knew that. Soon after 15 March, Egyptian New Zealander Hala Nasr wrote about her experiences as a Muslim in New Zealand.16
But, the culmination of my lived experiences, and many others which I can’t bring myself to repeat, rests under the surface of my discomfort with the ‘They Are Us’ solidarity statements.
It feels like negation, not just of my own lived experiences, but also of our own history as a nation. Because, while Friday was a dark day, maybe one of the darkest, Aotearoa’s settler colonial history is a long white-supremacist storybook. I will not pretend it is new, that it is exceptional, that I didn’t see it coming. I did, and you should have too.17
Nasr’s commentary is a painful narrative of discrimination and abuse that has been told to us many, many times. If indeed ‘this is not us’ is actually true, how do we reconcile hearing about the abuse of Muslim communities, and doing little to change it?
Within days of the attack, the New Zealand Psychological Society set about preparing a co-ordinated recovery response. Having had some experience following the Christchurch earthquake, we were keen to assist when needed. We updated our webpage, sought relevant material for those affected, either directly or indirectly, and established points of contact in Christchurch, and throughout the branches. I became acutely aware that despite the large amount of resources we had on trauma, we had nothing written specifically for Muslim communities. The Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Educaton were in the same situation. This was a major concern, particularly as there were 40 different ethnic groups affected by the attack. None of the resources available talked about how to deal with race-based trauma, or how to work with Muslim children, or distressed Muslim youth. Particular information was also needed for Muslim women who were now widowed, and in the process of iddah; and for Muslim elderly men and women — and importantly, the resources did not offer support to maintain spiritual faith, particularly after the loss of an Imam, and the insidious nature of Islamophobia.
The Charity Hospital in Christchurch had, quite early, started a counselling roster for people affected by the shooting, and the Ministry of Health set up a telephone counselling line. We reached out to our colleagues around the country to seek support for the telephone lines, the Employee Assistance Programme, Victim Support, schools, tertiary institutions, corrections facilities, and hospitals. In Christchurch, a Hub was established where Muslims could access various agencies (ACC, Immigration) and be together to meet and talk. Our colleagues were working double shifts in Christchurch where they could. We knew that Christchurch was experiencing an influx of help and that we needed to be careful of not getting in the way. Resources were also developed to support those working beyond their usual capacity. I raised a query about the monocultural nature of the notion of ‘self-care’. ‘Self’, from a collective world view, is relational and includes care for community and family/whānau. The resources on self-care had to be rewritten to show a relational approach to wellbeing.
By the end of the week of the 22 March, after a prolonged wait, the deceased were returned to their families and burials were planned. Jacinda Ardern did a fantastic job supporting the Muslim community, and the country, through the aftermath of the attack. She became the topic of international interest and was praised for her kindness, and how she had moved swiftly to indicate that the gun laws needed to change, and a review of the state surveillance agency was going to happen. Over that time, Jacinda Ardern, politician, and breastfeeding mother (because this job is important), supported the country through one of its darkest hours. It must also be said that Jacinda Ardern received abuse across a number of platforms for showing solidarity with the Muslim faith.
In talking about the ‘this is not us’ statement, it is also really important to talk about the best parts of society that work hard to show their aroha, compassion and love, for others. Perhaps the most public reminder of how compassionate New Zealand can be was the willingness to connect, and to have a public Muslim funeral, and prayer service on Friday, 22 March. A Muslim call to prayer was to be broadcast around the country, and an Imam would lead the service.
The public backlash by some was fairly swift and predictable. Destiny Church leader Brian Tamaki condemned Jacinda Ardern, and warned, as did many others, that New Zealand would be converted to Islam if we allowed the call to prayer to happen. This is again where the history of colonisation and cultural amnesia intersect. Māori have already had a religious take-over and the subsequent banning of our religious deities via the Tohunga Suppression Act, 1907. So the thought of another religious take-over does not scare some of us as it does others. At the funeral service, Imam Gamal Fouda called on the government to end hate speech, and the politics of fear:
Islamophobia is real. It is a targeted campaign to influence people to dehumanise and irrationally fear Muslims. To fear what we wear, to fear the choice of food we eat, to fear the way we pray and to fear the way we practise our faith. We call upon governments around the world including New Zealand and the neighbouring countries to bring an end to hate speech and the politics of fear.
Imam Fouda also showed the world the beauty of faith as a pillar of healing: ‘We are broken-hearted but we are not broken. We are alive. We are together. We are determined to not let anyone divide us.’
The Psychological Society continued to work to co-ordinate a recovery response that was layered and reflective of the Muslim community and their needs. There were multiple requests for Muslim psychologists, counsellors, social workers and those able to work with Muslim communities. At this point the professional bodies needed to work together as we did not know who were practising Muslim psychologists. The resources from Psychological Societies around the world were sent with messages of support, and resources written in Urdu, Arabic, Somali, Farsi, Indonesian, and other languages. The Society’s connections to the Asia Pacific Psychological Association meant that we could ask colleagues internationally for advice.
The Australian Psychological Society (APS) also provided extremely valuable support and information, including a paper on how to create stronger communities to prevent racialised violence.18 There may have been an email overload for some but, as it turns out, there was no co-ordinated plan between the Society, the College and the Board to deal with traumatic incidents. At a time like this, the divisions between our professional bodies were a limitation that needed addressing. Also, co-ordination with training programmes and Branches and Institutes is needed to inform the Society about the psychology workforce, and their particular skill set. The Psychologists Board does not collect data on religious affiliations, and this is perhaps a limitation.
During this time, I thought about how to connect with Muslim psychologists. I also thought that perhaps the difficulties Māori experience in psychology with limited cultural content specific to our world views also occurred for Muslim students. Do Muslim students face a Western world view of psychology, devoid of any knowledge of the history of Islam’s contribution to psychology, or Islamic healing theories and methods? Could a Muslim student say that their training prepared them to work within an Islamic perspective? Or do they, like Māori, Pacific, Asian, African students, have to learn the cultural perspectives post-training?
As Western psychology in New Zealand is typically taught from a white American, European, or British perspective, the history of psychology’s role in colonisation is rendered invisible. Some exceptions are the APS apology to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in 2016 for their role in the erosion of Aboriginal culture.19 Would Muslim students be taught that the gold standard of psychology, the American Psychological Association (APA), colluded with the Department of Defence to permit the torture of Muslim prisoners in their detention centres (that is, Guantanamo Bay).20 Or that the APA changed their code of ethics from ‘to do no harm’ to allow psychologists to participate in the development of torture programmes? Are Muslim students taught that in 2015, members of the American Middle Eastern/North African (MENA) Psychological Network (2015) wrote an open letter to the board of the APA and the psychological community to raise concerns that psychology was mirroring what was happening across the United States? The writers claimed that Muslims and refugees experienced diminishing civil liberties, human rights abuses, discrimination, threatened and actual violence, and racial profiling since 9/11. The MENA group also felt that the APA had aligned itself indirectly ‘with voices legitimizing state sponsored violence and oppression against marginalized groups in nations around the world’. Recommendations to the APA were to increase the visibility of Muslim psychologists in the APA, and to promote the relevance and trustworthiness of psychology for Muslim communities.
Recently, Germine Awad et al.21 argued that MENA group members in the USA continued to experience macro- and micro-level pressures such as: historical trauma, hypervisibility and invisibility, societal and institutional discrimination, interpersonal and macroaggressions, hostile national context and invasive surveillance. The context is the same for Muslims in New Zealand. Psychological training, research, teaching and professional development will now need to consider a recovery response that is truly reflective of the Muslim community. A starting place is to identify gaps in knowledge, and to uncover the continuum of white supremacy and how it plays out in the room. Speaking of which, it might pay to look around the room and see which culture is reflected, and which culture has the most power.
How relevant is a Māori lens on psychology for Muslims? Marama Davidson, co-leader of the Green Party, commented to the media, and on Twitter, that her conversations with the victims of the attack showed their preference for therapy that was informed by kaupapa Māori models. In other reports, some Muslim youth said that they mistrusted the mental health service as they had been discriminated against in the past. In my conversations, I was told that the whare tapa whā model by Mason Durie is consistent with a Muslim world view.22 Māori models are no doubt useful to begin with. However, a specific psychological perspective drawn from Islamic teachings is more likely to benefit Muslim communities and will enable the profession to expand.
Our ability to be inclusive turns the phrase ‘this is not us’ into ‘but it could be’ if we support our colleagues who continuously strive for diversity across our institutions, and broader society. We need to challenge the epistemological monoculture in psychology training to produce culturally inclusive, culturally informed psychologists. A recent analysis of clinical psychology programme enrolments for the period 1994 to 2017 shows that with the exception of European females, who are substantially over-represented, every other sociodemographic group is notably under-represented.23 As we move towards a recovery approach in psychology, we need to understand the sociodemographic needs of the workforce and our communities.
At this point in time, and even over the next few years, can we realistically prepare for the actual diversity in our country without first focusing on ideologies of racism that exist in the doctrines and practices of white supremacy? And even when the focus or gaze is turned to the more extreme examples of racism, the everyday practices of racism, particularly at structural levels, are usually ignored by the dominant group to which most psychologists belong.
One other event happened in April that warrants mentioning. A decision by the Tītahi Bay Returned Services Association (RSA) to have a Muslim prayer at their dawn ceremony commemoration on ANZAC Day was met with a major public backlash, and death threats were made. Social media could barely contain itself as cultural amnesia played a familiar tune of how Australians and New Zealanders sacrificed their lives for our Christian freedom and our national identity. Muslims also fought in the World Wars for the British Empire, yet there is seldom any mention of their contributions. The cultural amnesia also meant that few people knew that every year, in Gallipoli, Australians and New Zealanders have a special monument and space for them to remember the fallen.
On the memorial wall at Gallipoli there is an inscription of a quote from Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the first leader of the Republic of Turkey:
Those heroes who shed their blood and lost their lives! You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours. You, the mothers, who sent their sons from far away countries wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.
If we cannot tolerate prayers to honour those who suffered in Christchurch, and to honour the ethnic diversity of those who also fought in the war, what does that say about our nation? Is that really us?
In the opening I said that my family left Christchurch to perform for the Māori king in Ngāruawāhia at the annual regatta, and for my son-in-law to inscribe a facial tattoo (mataora) for a 60-yearold Māori male. Māori came so perilously close to losing their skill and knowledge: performing arts, boat racing, and tattoo (tā moko). To be able to practise Māori cultural traditions after 175 years of colonisation is a testimony to our ability to survive, and to be inclusive. My family would have been in Christchurch that day but they came home to participate in Māori activities that the majority of New Zealand know nothing about.
Finally, among the many opinions, Anjum Rahman’s comment stood out as gracious and welcoming. She said that the Indigenous peoples needed to be treated with dignity and respect. Here was a community that had been brutally treated, and continue to be, the world over, and they were asking the government to respect the Treaty of Waitangi. I hear solidarity and I hear pathways for moving forward together.
Using a narrative timeline I have described some of the main discourses that prevailed over social media, and the online newspapers since 15 March. There were many others, Senator Anning and Egg-boy, protests about there being too many memorial services, and Destiny Church members’ stand-for-Christianity outside the Al Noor mosque. My purpose in this writing is to show the difficult conversations that happened since 15 March because our histories are ignored, and because white supremacy always appears to get a free pass in life. As long as the lives of marginalised peoples intersect we can be united in our approach to challenging injustice to create a flourishing future.
Rather than summarise with a hopeful comment and wish for change, I realised that such sentiments need action, not hope. Goals going forward could instead focus on:
1. Connect with Muslim psychologists (but don’t be a burden): offer support, based on their right to self-determination, to identify a layered approach to healing from the attack.
2. Prepare for the future: develop a co-ordinated plan with professional organisations, Crown agencies, community groups and NGOs to respond in a culturally appropriate and timely manner to adverse and traumatic events.
3. Look around the room: increase the number of culturally and ethnically diverse psychologist and academic staff. Use an equity-based approach. Māori make up 15 per cent of the population, Muslims 1 per cent, Pacific 7.4 per cent and so on. However, the level of need in these communities outweighs simple numbers. For example, if Māori are over 50 per cent of the mental health population, Māori should make up 50 per cent of the psychology workforce.
4. Change the way psychology is taught: psychology programmes need to embed content in their course work that reflects the sociodemographics of New Zealand. Why wait for a disaster to happen? Be proactive, and ethically responsive.
5. Learn a language: expand our exposure to and knowledge of diverse cultures and their cultural practices. Keep it local — there are close to 40 different Pacific nations in New Zealand. How many do we know about?
6. Do something about racism in psychology: in my experience, racism in psychology bubbles away in the form of epistemic elitism, a fear of change, and reluctance to accept culturally diverse world views. Racism is not immutable. But things are still changing too slowly. Learning about another culture requires us to accept our limitations, and lack of knowledge. Be comfortable with discomfort.
7. Do something about racism in everyday workplaces: we know the statistics about the social determinants of health and wellbeing need changing. Demand better services for clients, and better access to psychologists.
8. Be the one to advocate for change: ask for more culturally diverse learning opportunities and don’t take no for an answer (discrimination may occur, however, when we are the squeaky wheel).
9. Grow the psychology workforce to be ethically and skillfully prepared to work with culturally diverse peoples: inclusivity requires a shift in power — pass opportunities to those who can’t rely on white privilege to succeed.
10. Work with our communities as often as possible: being prepared means that we have already established our connections, and we maintain them — usually with food and sharing resources.
1 T. McCreanor, ‘When racism stepped ashore: Antecedents of antiMāori discourse in Aotearoa’, New Zealand Journal of Psychology, 26(1), 1997, pp. 36–44
2 H. Came, T. McCreanor, L. Manson, & K. Nuku, ‘Upholding Te Tiriti, ending institutional racism and Crown inaction on health equity’, New Zealand Medical Journal, 2019, pp. 132, 1492
3 Personal communications, 2019
4 M. Jackson, ‘The connection between white supremacy and colonisation’, E-tāngata, 24 March, 2019
5 McCreanor, ibid
6 V. O’Malley, The Great War for New Zealand Waikato 1800–2000, Wellington, 2016
7 Moon, P. & M. Derby, ‘“They bleed from long-healed scars”: A Nietzschean psychological perspective on the literature of inherited colonial trauma in New Zealand’, Te Kaharoa, 12, 2019, pp. 1–34
8 For a more nuanced exploration of historical trauma see L. Pihama, L.T. Smith, T. Evans-Campbell, H. Kopu-Morgan, N. Cameron, … K. Southey, ‘Investigating Māori approaches to trauma informed care’, Journal of Indigenous Wellbeing. 2(3), 2017, pp. 1–14.
9 A. Rahman, ‘Islamic Women’s Council repeatedly lobbied to stem discrimination’, Radio New Zealand, 17 March 2019
10 Rahman, ibid
11 Jackson, ibid
12 A. Kanji & D. Palumbo-Liu, ‘Settler colonialism lurked behind the Christchurch massacre’, Truthout. 6 April, 2019
13 L. Russell, M. Levy & L. Cherrington, ‘He Whakamanawa: Honouring the voices and stories of Māori who submitted to the 2018 Government Inquiry into Mental Health and Addiction in Aotearoa’, Unpublished report. New Zealand, 13 December 2018
14 R. Nairn, ‘The Pākehā Nation is cocooned in colonising talk’, Joan Cook Memorial State of the Pākehā Nation Essay, 2019
15 Prime Minister’s statement, press conference, 15 March 2019
16 S. Ghumkor, ‘The hypocrisy of New Zealand’s “this is not us” claim: Is Brenton Tarrant really an aberration?’, Al Jazeera, 2019
17 H. Nasr, ‘Islamophobia: A Personal Reflection’, The Pantograph Punch, 24 March, 2019
18 Australian Psychological Society, ‘Creating stronger communities. Insights from psychological sciences, 2018
19 Australian Psychological Society, ‘The APS Apology to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, 2016
20 D. Hoffman, ‘Report to the special committee of the board of directors of the American Psychological Association independent review relating to the APA ethics guidelines, national security interrogations, and torture, 2015
21 G.H. Awad, M. Kia-Keating, M.M. Amer, ‘A model of cumulative racial–ethnic trauma among Americans of Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) descent, American Psychologist, 2019
22 Dr Shaystah Dean, Personal communication
23 D. Scarf, W. Waitoki, J. Chan … & M. Abbott, ‘Sociodemographic diversity within clinical psychology training programmes across Aotearoa’, New Zealand Medical Journal, 17 May 2019