Colonialism And The Professions .

COLONIALISM AND THE PROFESSIONS

© Tony Ward
2009
TRICK OR TREAT? For related work visit:
http://www.TonyWardedu.com

PUBLIC PERCEPTIONS OF
BUSINESS

POWER/KNOWLEDGE
The Business profession is not
alone in its public image
• Business
• Law
• Economics
• Education
• Medicine
• Architecture
• Art
• Science
and other professions are all held
in differing degrees of low esteem
by the public.
One reason is because they have all grown out of and are instrumental in the growth
of capitalist exploitation through a process of colonization. Under capitalism,
knowledge is treated as another commodity, to be hoarded and sold to the highest
bidder. Under capitalism knowledge is power. Let’s take a look at how this has
happened through an investigation of Architecture’s own Colonial project

HISTORY
Who controls the past controls the future.

Who controls the present controls the past.
George Orwell, 1984.

The idea that we can control the past seems absurd. But of course the past is
being rewritten all of the time. While it is now commonly accepted that History
is written by the victors. What interests me are the silent and suppressed
histories - particularly the histories of the oppressed and of indigenous
peoples.

COLONISING ARCHITECTURE?

ST. MICHAEL GLASTONBURY

MT. ST. MICHAEL, CORNWALL

All of these early Christian
churches, dedicated to St.
Michael, the Archangel are
located on very ancient pre-
Christian (Celtic) sacred sites. ST. MICHAEL BURROWBRIDGE

Such ancient places
of pilgrimage have
for over a thousand
years been
surmounted by a
fortress-like
churches, claiming
their dominance of
the surrounding
c o m m u n i t y. S u c h
sites were important
in the process of
hegemony.

ST. MICHEL LE PUY MT. ST. MICHELE AD.708

Throughout Europe, the same process occurred. Here, the famous
Benedictine monastery of Mt St, Michele, built in 708. (above) stands on
an island-rock that was sacred to pre-Christian peoples. And (left) the
chapel of St-Michel d'Aiguilhe dominates the surrounding landscape.

What each of these sites has in ST. MICHAEL
common, is a dedication to St.
Michael, who slew a dragon. The
dragon (horned, winged and
breathing fire) was not only
characterised as Satan in early
Christian iconography, but also of the
Earth Spirit - the source of the pre-
Christian spirituality, of the Mother
Goddess cult. The symbolic
skewering (By a piece of Christian
Architecture) of the Earth Goddess
represented the imposition of
Christian patriarchy over gynocentric
Europe. The Freudian symbolism is
not too obscure! The Goddess was
replaced, by a male deity. But she
lives on even today in the re-branded
guise of the Virgin Mary, the mother
of Jesus.

DOME OF THE ROCK (685-691)
5 years after the death of the
Islamic Prophet Muhammad in
632, in a war of liberation from the
Byzantine Empire (the remnant
Eastern Roman Imperium that had
merged with the Roman Church),
Jerusalem was conquered by the
Islamic army.

The Dome of the Rock was
erected as a statement of
reclamation by the indigenous
people between 685 and 691 CE.
The loss of pilgrimage revenues
from Jerusalem was a serious
blow to Church finances as well as
affront to Christian hegemony and
power.

This act of reclamation
was quite conscious,
and sought to compete
with and overwhelm the
Christian buildings that
has been built on the
site during the
Byzantine occupation.
Historians contend that
the Caliph wished to
create a structure which
would compete with the
existing buildings of
other religions in the
city. al-Maqdisi writes
that he:
”sought to build for the Muslims a masjid that should be unique and a wonder
to the world. And in like manner, is it not evident that Caliph Abd al-Malik,
seeing the greatness of the martyrium of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre
and its magnificence was moved lest it should dazzle the minds of Muslims
and hence erected above the Rock the dome which is now seen there.”

EUROPEAN IMPERIALISM CRUSADES
Church and State 1095-1291
From the 11th-13th Centuries, successive
Popes and monarchs formed alliances to wrest
the Holy Land from Islam. The Crusades failed
in their purpose to “retake” the Holy Land for
Christ, but established an imperialist pattern
that would prevail for centuries (down to none
other than George Bush?) There were 9
crusades in all - most of them failures.
The Crusades were a series of religiously-
sanctioned military campaigns waged by much
of Latin Christian Europe, particularly the
Franks of France and the Holy Roman Empire.
The specific Crusades to restore Christian control of the Holy Land were
fought over a period of nearly 200 years, between 1095 and 1291. Other
campaigns in Spain and Eastern Europe continued into the 15th century. The
Crusades were fought mainly against Muslims, although campaigns were also
waged against pagan Slavs, Jews, Russian and Greek Orthodox Christians,
Mongols, Cathars, Hussites, Waldensians, Old Prussians, and political
enemies of the popes.

St Chapelle, Paris (1248)
The Crown of Thorns
If the mountain won’t come to
Mohammed.., (If the pilgrims can’t
come to the Holy Land, then the Holy
Land must come to the pilgrims).
Built by Louis IX to house the Crown of
Thorns - retrieved during The Crusades.
Purchased by him from the Latin Emperor at
Constantinople, as an investment in his
move to become rightful King. He paid
135,000 livres and 40,000 livres to build the
chapel. His endorsement of ownership by the
Pope was a powerful aid to his ambitions.
Despite the fact that it was Louis’ private
Chapel, the presence of the relics in Paris
(and Louis’ own increased prestige) would no
doubt have been a big draw-card to the
pilgrims of the day, and an economic boost
for the economy of the city and the King.

Michelle Obama's Chicago
Olympics pep rally

The Obama’s attempt to gain the Olympics for Chicago in 2016 is just the latest
example of a very old economic strategy: Promise State investment, build it,
and they will come, bringing private returns from Tourism.

The processes of colonisation that had
been established in the crusades was COLUMBUS 1492
carried to a fine art in the 15th-16th
Centuries by the Spanish, with the
blessing and twisted legal logic of
Alexander VI, the Spanish (Borgia) Pope.

After the discovery of the New World, the Pope’s papal bull Inter Cetera
Divini (1493) divided the planet into franchises, and established a right to
colonise and appropriate resources based upon the legitimating argument of
“saving souls”.

OVIEDO 1328-1528
What is interesting about
this picture?
It’s possible to see here the
shift that happened to
Spanish Church Architecture
after 1492. The plain, simple,
yet elegant architecture of
the Gothic remains. But the
Sanctuary has become an
extravaganza of imagery and
iconic motifs, dripping with
gold.

The “discovery” of America, was very
profitable to the European colonisers CONQUISTADORS
(primarily the Spanish). The amounts
of gold and silver taken from the New
World by Columbus and those who
followed him were staggering. In the
mid-Seventeenth Century silver
constituted more than 99 percent of
mi n e ral exports from Sp a n i sh
America, and between 1503 and
1660, 185,000 kilograms of gold and
16,000,000 of silver arrived at the
Spanish port of Sanlúcar de
Barrameda.
Silver shipped to Spain in little more than a century and a half exceeded
more than three times the total European reserves - and probably much
more since these official figures are not complete.

TOLEDO
ALTAR
CHAPTER HOUSE

Once simple churches such as those in Oviedo and Toledo suddenly soared to
new heights, expanded, and had new windows installed to let the sun pour
down on the vast collection of gold and jewels from the New World. The
cathedral of Toledo boasts a five-hundred pound monstrance made from the
Indian booty brought back by Columbus himself.

In the Chapter House this 500-pound, 10-foot high, 15th-century gilded
monstrance by Juan del Arfe, a silversmith. Made of solid silver, it was gilded
70 years later, allegedly with gold brought back by Columbus. It is still carried
through the streets of Toledo (left) during the feast of Corpus Christi. Cordoba,
Avila and every other city in the south boast similar artifacts. Gold became so
common in European palaces and churches that architects developed a
novel style of decoration emphasising entering light that could illuminate
the gold and make it dazzle the observer.

MALAGA & VALENCIA

As Jack Weatherford notes:
“I first saw this wealth of silver and gold in a Holy Week procession in Cōrdoba…
Dressed in their long robes of purple and white topped by tall conical hats from which
hung veils covering their faces they looked like marchers in a Ku Klux Klan rally The
first one carried a six foot high cross of silver. Twelve young boys…followed him, each
of them carried a gold trumpet four feet long and a foot wide at the mouth. From each
trumpet hung a banner of the Hapsburg eagle… Following…marched more boys with
tall silver crosses and more men with covered faces. In Andalusia over 300 such
processions marched during Holy Week.”

THE CHURCH AND THE BANKS
Florentine Banking Cardinals
(alone):
• Medici (2 Popes)
• Strozzi
• Salviati Insider Trading?
• Ridolfi
• Gaddi (2 cardinals)

Medici Villa Madama, 1518

Many of the great banking families of Italy were deeply connected to the
Church hierarchy. Election to the Papacy was invariably accompanied by
simony and bribery, because of the great power that the position wielded.
These banking families lent the Church money for projects (which their
sibling-cardinals and popes initiated), and then claiming their interest on the
spoils of colonial conquest which their family’s Pope, had sanctioned.

THE CHURCH AND STATE: EL ESCORIAL
Phillip II (1556-1598) moved the capital from Toledo to El Escarole (1563) near Madrid.
Reacting to the Protestant Reformation sweeping through Europe, he devoted most of
his New World gold to stemming the Protestant tide and consequent loss of revenues.

The Spanish Crown owed nearly all of the silver shipments before they arrived to
German, Genoese, Flemish and Spanish bankers. In 1543, sixty-five percent of all Royal
revenues went to paying debts to the Fuggers, (German bankers who had advanced to
the Pope the funds needed to finish St. Peter’s), and of the Welsers, the Shetzes, and the
Grimaldi, the other major bankers in the Italian and Spanish economies. The ongoing
expropriation of gold and silver was needed to replace Church monies lost by Henry VIII’s
dissolution of the Monasteries and appropriation of their assets and revenues (1536-41).

THE COUNTER-REFORMATION

The Coronaro (1646) Assumption (Rohr, 1720)
To counter the potential loss of revenue that the Reform movement threatened, the
Church threw all of its economic and political might behind the Counter-Reformation
project. Much of the wealth acquired by Phillip and the Church was used to combat the
austerity of the Protestant architecture. The Church adopted a specific design policy of
that we might call Enrapturement- incorporating perceptual ambiguity intended to
overwhelm the senses through a sensual experience that would swamp the auditory,
visual, olefactory and haptic representational systems, inducing a trance-like
experience. Bromini (left), Bernini and the Asam brothers (right), were masters.

The process
worked! Whereas
in 1600 Europe
was all but lost to
the Reformists, by
1650, more than
two-thirds of the
continent was once
again under the
sway of orthodox
Catholicism

ZIMMERMAN WIESKIRCHE
1746

THE COST? WHO PAID
FOR ALL THIS?
• In the Potosi mines of Bolivia alone, six thousand African
slaves all died of altitude sickness.
• Four out of five of the local Indians forced into slave labour
for the Spanish died in their first year in the mines.
• By 1600 over three million native people were murdered or
died from the results of their enslavement in South America
• In the fourteen years after of Columbus’ arrival more than a
quarter of a million Haitians were murdered by the Spanish

Historian David Stannard argues that the destruction of the
aboriginal peoples of the Americas, in a "string of genocide
campaigns" by Europeans and their descendants, was the most
massive act of genocide in the history of the world

CULPABLE CHURCH
So while the late Pope John Paul may have
sought to defend the activities of the Church in
the process of colonisation and the genocide of
indigenous communities on spiritual grounds
(right), there is no denying that the Church’s
greed for gold (both to pay off growing debt and
to stem reform) was also one of its motivations.
The Church continues today to support despotic
dictators in El Salvador, Guatemala, Chile,
Argentina, Colombia, Peru, the Phillipines and
elsewhere in the interests of maintaining its
power and hegemony.

I am referring here to the institutionalized
Church. There are, of course, courageous
liberation theologians who devote and often give
their lives for the people. They have my deepest
admiration and respect. But they are often
persecuted by the Church

ZAPATISTAS of
CHIAPAS

Indigenous Mexicans still suffer from the privations caused by the original genocide.
Here, in 1989, the Zapatista Mayan peasants cluster around the entrance to the
Cathedral in Mexico City’s Zoccalo in a land protest against State and Church policies
toward the Mayan people, especially in Chiapas, the southernmost and poorest (and
most indigenous) province. Their plight has been highlighted by the Zapatista Army of
National Liberation and its leader Sub-connate Marcos.

TERRORIST COLUMBUS

In European culture, Christopher Columbus is
portrayed as a hero-explorer who brought
“progress” and Christianity to native peoples.
To many of these same native peoples,
Columbus is seen as a terrorist who brought
Demonstrations such as this death, slavery, starvation and centuries of
took place all across the all subjugation. This poster (below right) is taken
Americas to mark the start of from indigenous demonstrations such as the
their subjugation and one in Columbia during the 500th Anniversary
exploitation. of Columbus’ voyage in 1992.

COLONISATION & CAPITALISM

Marx put it succinctly: “...(the) discovery of
gold and silver in America, the extirpation,
enslavement and entombment in mines of
the aboriginal population, the beginning of
the conquest and looting of the East
Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren
for the commercial hunting of black skins,
signaled the rosy dawn of the era of
capitalist production”..
Karl Marx

COLONIAL EXPANSION

1898

The activity of the Church and the Spanish monarchy was just the beginning
of a process of colonial expansion that in the next 400 years would cover the
planet. So much wealth poured into Europe from South America that it fuelled
a massive investment programme. Each of the European nations joined in the
subjugation of indigenous peoples to increase its economic power.

BRITISH IMPERIALISM AT HOME:
THE ENCLOSURES
Throughout the 17th, 18th and part of
the 19th Centuries, British society and
the British landscape were transformed
by a series of Parliamentary Acts - the
Enclosure Acts. These Acts allowed
rich and powerful politicians, and
landowners (you had to be a land-
owner to vote) to force millions of
peasants off what had been until then,
common land over which they had
living, grazing, hunting and growing
rights.

These displaced folk were herded into the burgeoning towns where they
formed an immense pool of cheap labour, ready to be exploited in the
factories - owned, of course, by the same land-owning class interests that
had displaced them in the first place. Those caught “poaching” to feed their
families were transported to the penal colonies in America and Australia.

LEGAL THEFT

Graffiti, Auckland, NZ 1987
The law locks up the man or woman
'

Who steals the goose from off the common;
But lets the greater villain loose
18th Century poem
Who steals the common from the goose.'

Salford factory town by LS Lowry 1887-1976 - the world I was born into.

BLENHEIM PALACE 1705-24

Blenheim Palace, “gift of a grateful nation” to the Duke and Duchess of
Marlborough in return for military triumph against the French and Bavarians.
The birthplace and burial place of Sir Winston Churchill. “Set in 2100 acres of
“beautiful” parkland landscaped by ‘Capability’ Brown, the exquisite Baroque
Palace is surrounded by sweeping lawns, formal gardens and the magnificent
Lake.” The architect was Sir John Vanbrugh.

People still pass from village to
village, guidebook in hand, to HARLAXTON HALL
see the next and yet the next
example, to look at the stones
and the furniture. But stand at
any point and look at that land.
Look at what those fields, those
streams, those woods even
today produce. Think it through
as labour and see how long and
systematic the exploitation and
seizure must have been, to rear
that many houses on that
scale...
What these ‘great’ houses do is to break the scale, by an act of will corresponding to
their real and systematic exploitation of others. For look at the sites, the facades, the
defining avenues and walls, the great iron gates and the guardian lodges. These
were chosen for more than their effect from the inside out... they were chosen,
also, you now see, for the other effect, from the outside looking in: a visible
stamping of power, of displayed wealth and command: a social disproportion
which was meant to impress and overawe. Much of the real profit of a more
modern agriculture went not into productive investment, but into that explicit
social declaration: a mutually competitive but still uniform exposition, at every
turn, of an established and commanding class power.”

MR & MRS ANDREWS

Painted by Gainsborough, the landscape evokes Robert Andrews' estate, to
which his marriage added property. The gun, intended to indicate a
recreational interest in hunting, no doubt had a more sinister purpose. Key to
these estates was the availability of cheap labour - vast pools of unemployed,
hungry peasants and convicted transportees who hover beyond the edge of
vision.

PETERLOO MASSACRE

The lie was given to this supposed pastoral harmony in August, 1819, when
60,000-80,000 Northern demonstrators peacefully seeking representation were
charged by sabre-wielding cavalry. 15 people were killed and 400–700 were
injured.

TRANSPORTATION

The prisons were
overflowing and convicted
felons were usually
transported to a penal
colony - either to the
Americas, from the 1610s
through the American
Revolution in the 1770s,
and then to Australia
between 1788 and 1868.
During the late 18th and 19th centuries, large numbers of convicts were
transported to the various Australian penal colonies by the British
government, many for petty crimes they were driven to commit because of the
poverty they were forced to live in. Over the 80 years more than 165,000
convicts were transported to Australia.

THE SLAVE TRADE
In the Americas:
• Not enough workers
• Not enough Transportees
• Slavery was the answer
• 15 million Africans shipped
• Up to 600 slaves per ship
• Chained together hand & foot
• Half became effective workers
• 7.5M died or were crippled
• Cost price: £25
• Sale Price: £150 (500% profit)
British were the biggest traders
• Profits financed Empire building
• Development of America
The number of transportees and immigrant workers to the new American colony
was not enough to keep up with the demands of economic growth. The gap
was filled by slaves. The trade in slaves was the ground upon which the
economies of both Britain and United States was built.

MONTICELLO

Monticello in Charlottesville, Virginia, was the estate of Thomas Jefferson, the
principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence, third
President of the United States, and founder of the University of Virginia. His
power was built on slavery As the country moved from an agrarian to an
industrial economy, the disposition of the slave population became a source of
dispute. Approximately one Southern family in four held slaves prior to war. In
1860, about 385,000 individuals (i.e. 1.4% of White Americans in the country,
or 4.8% of southern whites) owned one or more slaves. 95% of blacks lived in
the South, comprising one third of the population there. With the coming of the
Industrial Revolution, these slaves represented a potential source of cheap
labour to Northern industrialists. The entire United States Economy is
built on the bodies of African slaves

AMERICAN PROGRESS 1830 - 1880
American Progress - John Gast, 1872

The American colonisation of the West, and the dispossession of its indigenous
peoples was carried out under the ideology of Manifest Destiny. Europeans
believed that they had a superior culture, and that it was their God-given
destiny to occupy the land and to extinguish the culture of its original
inhabitants. In this illustration, we see Progress leading the settlers across the
prairie, Bible in hand, stringing telegraph wires with the other, while the
“savages” flee ahead

PAHA SAPA
The Black Hills are sacred to all the
Plains Indians. In the 1868 Fort Laramie
Treaty the United States recognized the
Black Hills as part of the Great Sioux
Reservation, set aside for exclusive use
by the Sioux people. However, after the
“discovery” of gold in 1874, the United "They made us many
States confiscated the land in 1877. promises, more than I
can remember, but
they never kept but
It is clear that the US had no intention of one; they promised to
honoring the Ft. Laramie Treaty. Gold was take our land and they
not “discovered” by accident in 1874. Six took it."
years after the signing, George Armstrong
Custer was in fact authorised to take his
exploration team into the Black Hills
specifically to look for gold.

FOUR RACIST PRESIDENTS
Abraham Lincoln
Thomas Jefferson ordered the execution,
wrote of the Indians by hanging, of 38 Dakota
in America that the Sioux prisoners in
government was Mankato, Minnesota.
obliged "now to Most of those executed
pursue them to were holy men or
extermination, or political leaders of their
drive them to new camps. None of them
seats beyond our were responsible for
reach." committing the crimes
they were accused of.
George Washington Theodor Roosevelt
instructed Major once said, "I don't go
General John Sullivan so far as to think that
to attack Iroquois the only good
people and "lay waste Indians are dead
a l l t h e settlements Indians, but I believe
around...that the nine out of ten are,
country may not be and I shouldn't like
merely overrun, but to inquire too closely
destroyed", and to “not into the case of the
listen to any overture of tenth".
peace before the total
ruin of their settlements
is effected".

In a simple, present
day context, we might
MATO PAHA
cite the example of
Mato Paha - bear
Butte, in South
Dakota where the
spiritual traditions and
space of indigenous
people are annually
violated.

Mato Paha - Bear Butte is the most sacred of all sacred mountains to the Plains
Indians. For untold centuries they have gone their to pray and to carry out their
sacred ceremonies. It lies about 6 miles from Sturgis, S.D., where, every August,
tens of thousands of bikers congregate for the annual Harley Davidson Rally.
The local authorities have consistently refused to grant the Lakota (or the mountain)
any special status that might protect them from the visual and noise intrusion and
the drunken behavior that attends the rally. The map (left) indicates (in red) the bars
and concert venues that have been allowed to develop around the mountain. Were
it the Vatican, offensive development would be banned.

AMERICAN GENOCIDE
Historian David Stannard estimates that almost 100 million
died in what he calls the American Holocaust. What
distinguished the genocide of Latin America from that of the
United States was that in the former case the outcome was
not the intent but rather the effect of a policy of enslavement
and economic production. In the case of the United States,
the eradication, removal and assimilation of native American
culture was a stated policy. It was itself a form of production.

LIBERTY

(WHAT PRICE) LIBERTY 1865-86?
What price Liberty? A gift from one supposedly libertarian colonial regime to
another at a time when Native Americans were being dispossessed and
eradicated, the year after the Navajo Long Walk..

COLONIALISM & THE
PROFESSIONS
Since the 14th Century, Architecture
(and the other professions) have
been complicit in the oppression and
genocide of indigenous communities.
Even with the advent of Modernism’s
theories of the Social Good, this
process has not ceased. The
development of Brasilia (right)
required the removal of thousands of
Indigenous people. It is listed as a
World Heritage Site. Brasilia 1956

The professions are the whores of capitalism and the
handmaidens of oppression. The question is, How can we turn
them into antiracist, anti-colonial projects? How can we change
the role of the professional to serve, rather than oppress?

“The most odious form of colonisation, and that which has
brought with it the greatest pain for the colonised (is) the
colonisation of the mind”
Franz Fanon

"The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling
ideas; ie., the class, which is the ruling material force of
society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The
class which has the means of material production at its
disposal, has control at the same time over the means of
mental production...”
Karl Marx

WHITE POWER AND IMPOSED MEANING

Carlisle Indian Boarding School
Thousands of these Indian children were abducted from their homes in surprise
raids. They were put in boarding schools and indoctrinated into European ways
and forbidden to speak their own language under threat of punishment.

The field of Education is one of the major arenas of mind colonisation in
which capitalism conducts and effects its global project. If we can
transform Education, we can change the world.

(WHITE) CAPITALIST CONCEPTS
Our education must proceed through the critical demystification of, every idea,
every concept, every theory that has been shaped and mythologised by the
ruling class. Some key concepts:
• Knowledge (Whose knowledge?) • Human Nature (Innate?)
• Education (Indoctrination?) • Responsibility (To self?)
• Beauty (Spanish churches?) • Intelligence (What kind?)
• Liberty (For whom? • Development (Sustainable?)
• History (Whose History?) • Sustainability (Without change?)
• Democracy (For the few?) • Space (Given or created?)
• Individualism (vs. co-operativism) • Time (Whose time?)
• Competition (Human nature?) • Rationality (Eurocentrism?
Meaning is a site of struggle. Decolonising ourselves requires that we
demystify and decolonise these and other concepts.
For critical analyses of these see:
http://www.tonywardedu.com/content/view/295/98/

CULTURE 4: EDUCATIONAL SPATIAL SYSTEMS
Learner seen as child Learner seen as adult
Authority Authority Authority
Authority PhD

Grade School Lecture Grad. Seminar
Cultural hurdles/barriers

Programmed Learning Research

Control Decreasing Degrees of Control
Freedom
Knowledge seekers are not allowed to graduate until they
have demonstrated that they can reproduce the elitist,
disconnected system that has produced them
Compare this with the Maori/Lakota/Iroquois Talking Circle, where learning is
leaderless, accretive, cooperative, mutually supportive and consensus-based
and where the freedom (and power) to speak is universal. Knowledge is not
the property of the individual to be used for personal ambition or profit
but is collectively created and owned.

THE CYCLE OF PEDAGOGICAL REPRODUCTION

• Competition
• Hierarchy
• Judgement
• Individualism

It is a system of power relationships that promotes and reproduces
systems of individualism, hierarchy, competition, passivity and
quiescence to authority. It progressively insulates learners from everyday
life and community and creates an elite system of experts who hoard their
knowledge for sale to the highest bidder.

SO WHY DOES MAIN STREET
HATE
WALL STREET?

THE ENGAGED UNIVERSITY?
Yea Right!

Ask yourself this:
Is it surprising that Business School students who spend all of
their educational time from Grade School to Grad School:
• In paranoid locked-down, schools
• In an isolated “silo” discipline
• Cocooned within a “free-market” culture and ideology
• Indoctrinated into a competitive ethic
• Being told that “Knowledge is Power”
• In subterranean classrooms without light
• On 50 minute schedules that leave no time for digestion or
reflection.
• Having no community engagement
• Over a fifteen year period
go out to work on Wall Street to earn millions while the people in
the street below become homeless and starving as a consequence
of their competitive, collective myopia? In an indigenous culture,
knowledge is not power, but responsibility - responsibility to share
and support. Knowledge is not a commodity for individual
ownership and exploitation. It belongs to the group.

MAORI
The indigenous
Maori people.

Arrived approx.
800 years ago
from Oceania

TREATY OF WAITANGI 1840
In return for permission to settle the land, the British promised that they
would protect Maori land, culture, language and resources. As
elsewhere in colonized countries like Canada and the USA, the British
had no intention of keeping their side of the bargain.
Representatives of the British
Crown signed a Treaty with Maori
chiefs at Waitangi on 6th February
1940. There were two versions of
the Treaty, One in English and one
in Maori. They were not the same.
In the Maori version, they ceded Governorship (Kawanatanga). In the
English version they ceded sovereignty (Rangatiratanga). They would
not have signed if they had known. The Treaty was written by Samuel
Marsden - a Missionary who spoke Maori. From the get-go the Crown
intended to deceive Maori into signing away self-government in return
for British citizenship. The Treaty promised that the Crown would
guarantee and protect Maori land, culture, language and resources.

LAND OCCUPATION
From Cook’s “discovery” of NZ in 1769 Maori were dispossessed of 95% of
their land through government legislation and fraud.

1860 1908 1960

Maori land ownership patterns

CONFISCATIONS
One of the primary means of land
dispossession was “legal” confiscation.
Under the New Zealand Settlement Act of
1863, tribes that were deemed “Rebels”
had their land confiscated by the
government. The definition of
“rebellious” bore striking (slippery)
similarities to American Indian “Hostiles”
and today’s “Terrorists” - convenient
labels for demonising those we oppress
When provocative Government raids of
native lands were resisted by Maori
tribes, they were labeled “Rebellious”,
their leaders imprisoned and hung and
their lands were taken.
The struggle continues today as Maori
attempt to gain redress and resist
globalisation

THE WHAKATANE STUDY

©2009
Tony Ward
To download a more extensive version visit:
http://www.tonywardedu.com/content/view/166/49/

Project:
WHAKATANE
To design a commercial
development for the LOCATION: Bay of Plenty
North Island
Whakatane D. C.
POPULATION: 15,000

MAORI POP.: 30% (Town)
52% (Region)
NORTH ISLAND Bay of Plenty
15% (Nationally)

UNEMPLOYMENT: 8%

MAORI UNEMPLOYMENT: 30%

ANNUAL FAMILY INCOME: $15,000

AVE. NATIONAL INCOME: $54,000
SOUTH ISLAND

MAIN INDUSTRY: Farming, Tourism,

MAORI HISTORY
About two hundred years
before the Santa Maria
arrived in Haiti the Mataatua
canoe landed in what is now
called Whakatane.

Site of one of the first Maori
settlements in New Zealand -
deeply historical and of great
spiritual significance.
Landing place of the Mataatua
Waka (canoe) party - the origin of
seven separate tribes.

”Me whakatāne au i ahau nei!”

WAIRAKA

When the Mataatua canoe landed 800 years ago, the men climbed the
escarpment to explore. The tide came in and the canoe started to drift away.
Wairaka, the daughter of the captain, Toroa leapt into the canoe to save it,
uttering the incantation “Me whakatāne au i ahau nei!” (“Make me a man!”)
because women were forbidden from paddling. She saved the canoe and
now the Wairaka district (above) is named after her. It is still inhabited by her
descendants.

LANDLESS

Traditional home of Ngati Awa
whose entire lands were
confiscated in 1866 on the false
charge of murdering a
missionary. The leaders were
hanged. They were later (1988)
pardoned and exonerated and
the Government apologised but
the land was gone!

TOWN DEVELOPMENT
Successive Local Governments then began to “reclaim” the harbour, and
develope a European township along the river.

MODERN TOWNSHIP
• The modern (1988) town centre occupies the narrow space between the
Escarpment and the river.
• Residential Development is mainly to the North and West
• Council wanted to develop the triangle of “reclaimed” land between the
Strand and the river

Residential development Wairaka (Maori Settlement Area) is to the East

Proposed Development Site

THE COUNCIL
The Council had almost no
Maori representation (one
token member from
distant Rotorua), - this
despite the fact that more
than 50% of the Region’s
population were Maori.

The Council seemed
reluctant for us to meet
Maori representatives,
saying they would “just
obstruct the process”

NGATI AWA
Nevertheless we arranged a separate
meeting with Ngati Awa.

After initial suspicion and our
assurances of commitment they told a
heart-rending tale of colonial oppression,
pointing to specific locations and
landmarks on our model of the town.

What we learned changed all of our attitudes and lives.
Stories were told of:
• land confiscation,
• dispossession,
• displacement,
• racism,
• political, spiritual and economic oppression,
• persecution
• execution of leaders
• the destruction of almost all sacred sites
• deep mistrust and anger

SACRED LANDSCAPE DESPOILED
Numerous Pa (village) Sites
around the escarpment ridge
Toroa’s
Wananga
The Heads Muriwai’s
Piripai Irakewa
Cave
Marae Wairere Stream/
Falls

Munuka Burial Caves
Tuatahi

PA SITE

WAHI TAPU
For more than 150 years sacred sites had been
systematically violated and desecrated by Councils,
despite the pleas of the tribe. These included the three
that had been cited as location markers by Irakewa to
his son Toroa, 700 years ago, as the site of a possible
settlement. Toroa was the captain of the Mataatua
Canoe which founded Whakatane
Wairere Stream and Falls (polluted by a landfill)

Muriwai’s Cave (Isolated, filled in) Irakewa Rock (dynamited)

PIRIPAI

Ancient Urupa (burial site)

One of the Council’s plans was to open up Piripai (the Sand-spit) for residential and
commercial development, despite the fact that is the site of numerous ancient burials,
many centuries old.

POHATUROA - ULTIMATE INSULT

POHATUROA
Toilet

Pohaturoa - the Rock - was the centre of ceremonial life. Here, mothers buried the
whenua (afterbirth) and pito (umbilicus) of their newborn. In Maori, the word
whenua has a double meaning. One the one hand it means afterbirth. It also
means land - signifying that the spiritual connection between the person and the
place is more than metaphorical. The Council built a public toilet over the spot!

DESIGN DILEMMA
We faced a stark choice:

• Conform to Council philosophies and ignore
the pain of Ngati Awa and the cultural history
of all previous developments

• Confront Council and risk the project

We collectively decided on a third alternative:

• Using design as a lever, broker a reconciliation
between the two communities

RECONCILIATION &TRUST-BUILDING
Neither party trusted the other
Creating an environment of mutual enough to initiate the process of
trust required that: trust-building (a vicious circle).

• We establish the trust of both parties.
• We operate a process of inclusivity
• We develop a common language
• We make no attempt to dictate the
dialogue
• We continually reflect-back community
concerns and issues
• We interpret, explain and mediate
• We stress common goals rather than
differences
• We facilitate open dialogue and
community decision-making

WE LISTEN!

LINKING ISSUES
We developed 67 Patterns to guide Town Development.

They addressed not only:
• economic and material concerns
• employment creation
• investment
• tourism etc.
but also:
• Reinstatement of Wahi Tapu,
• A truthful recounting of history
• Acknowledgment of past wrongs
• Constitutional representation on Local Bodies

Our task became to demonstrate the linkages between
these issues (for instance by portraying Maori culture
and history as an essential ingredient for tourism and
economic growth).

DETAILS
Four design proposals were fleshed out
with sketches, plans and a scale model
designed to illustrate the proposal for the
non-professional general public.

COUNCIL DISPLAY

The model, the four design proposals and all of the supporting arguments and Patterns
were displayed in the foyer of the District Council offices for a week in preparation for a
Town Forum that was advertised in the local press and on talkback radio. A large number of
people visited the exhibition.

THE TOWN FORUM

170 people attended on a stormy night. All Councilors, Ngati Awa Trust Board members,
many retailers and large numbers of Maori and pakeha members of the public came. The
meeting was facilitated by the students.

DISCUSSION
Following a general description and
explanation, break-out sessions,
facilitated by students were asked to
suggest:
• Five points of agreement
• Five points of disagreement
• Five points overlooked

Breakout Session

Plenary Session Student Facilitation

CONSENSUS DESIGN

Based on this feedback and internal review a final design was proposed that seemed to
contain the best elements of all of the preliminaries.

THE REPORT
The Mayor concluded the meeting by saying:

“We have all witnessed and participated in a
truly historic moment in the history of
Whakatane in which for the first time, people
with long-standing differences have come
together to find common ground in the interests
of the whole community.”

And this accomplished by a group of
sophomore undergraduates

SINCE THEN....
In the ensuing years, many of the recommendations in the
Report were incorporated into the District Scheme and have
had a major impact upon the quality of life in Whakatane. The landfill has been closed

Irekawa

Wairere Falls

The proposed Cultural Heritage Trail has been
completed. All sites have been included. Signs
with Maori versions of historical events, critical
of past Council actions, are prominently
displayed
Muriwai’s Cave

THE TOILETS
.

The offensive public toilets (right) have been
removed and the area landscaped.

PIRIPAI
Recommendations on the need to
preserve the un-built nature of Piripai
have so far been successful, but the
pressure for development remains. The
struggle continues, assisted now by a
new representational structure.

REPRESENTATION

Whakatane District Council is now considered one of the most
culturally sensitive Councils in New Zealand. A Maori Liaison
Committee has been appointed. This Committee comprises 12
members:
• The Mayor
• 11 Tribal representatives from different Iwi and Hapu in
the region
• 2 Councillors
The Committee has only an advisory capacity, but its voice is
increasingly heard by the Council as a whole.

THE ENGAGED UNIVERSITY
From an indigenous perspective, Knowledge is Responsibility.
Responsibility to:
• Acknowledge that are privilege is built on the sacriﬁce of others
• Build relationships with those silent and invisible ones upon whom
our privilege is founded
• Share the knowledge acquired to help others ﬁnd justice and freedom
• Support their struggle for equity and justice
• Speak truth to power
The University itself, as a place of privileged knowledge has a
responsibility to the community of disadvantaged and oppressed. Some
Universities and some Departments take this responsibility seriously.

Colonialism And The Professions .

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