The White Māori: an exploration of identity and belonging

Adopted with no knowledge of my birth parents, I grew up shaped by absences and silences, haunted by a 'what-if?' story. Brought up Pakeha (European New Zealander), I discovered at the age of thirty that some of my tupuna (ancestors) were Ngai Tahu (Maori). This PhD traces my roots journey as an adoptee, using creative practice to highlight, explore and ultimately mend adoption losses. Through video and embroidery, I investigate and express myself as an in-betweener - between Pakeha and Maori, and between an 'unnatural' adoptee and the 'natural' connections of blood kin. Using creative practice, I interrogate and articulate my hybrid identity and my entangled belongings.

I situate my work within the entangled research methodologies of creative practice and critical autoethnography. My research is informed by adoption scholarship, framed by the concepts of hauntology and postmemory, and it has a postcolonial ethos. In this way I position my video and embroidery methods as decolonising practices, prioritising intuitive and embodied knowledges over essentialist and binary knowledges. I begin in the archives, finding inspiration in documents and photographs and blending scarce facts and fiction. I travel three times to the birthplace of my tupuna, taking my video camera. My creative practice outcomes include short essay films, narrative embroideries, video vignettes and a stitched map of Christchurch.

The White Maori comprises creative artefacts, descriptions and reflections on process, and theoretical insights into belonging, identity, adoption and the nature of being in-between. Through this creative practice PhD, I discovered that to be in-between is to be in a rich space, a space that resists categories and boundaries, and that releases me from essentialisms. As the dissertation demonstrates, being in this space can help to bridge gaps, speak into silences and transform absence into abundance.