Imagining Decolonisation and Why it's Good for Everyone with Tina Ngata

In Episode 7 of the Happen Films Podcast, Antoinette is joined by Tina Ngata (Ngati Porou), an advocate for environmental, indigenous and human rights. Tina is based in Tairāwhiti, East Coast, Aotearoa New Zealand, where she’s a busy community leader working for the rights and wellbeing of her whanau/family and community.

For many years her blog, the Non-Plastic Maori, documented her journey reducing her personal dependence on plastic, a journey that led to a deepening understanding of the wider issues of plastics consumption and waste and becoming a prominent activist in that space and beyond. She has spoken for Maori and indigenous rights at the United Nations and in conferences around the world, has published a book of her collected work opposing the continued celebration of colonial history, Kia Mau: Resisting Colonial Fictions, and is continually writing, speaking and protesting for justice for humans and Papatuānuku/Mother Earth.

The intention was for this episode to be Happen Films’ contribution to Plastic-free July – Tina being one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s waste resistance heroes – and the idea was to talk about waste within the context of environmental, indigenous and human rights. And we do… but the focus of the conversation turned out to be colonisation – its history; its day-to-day presence – and what decolonisation might look like. That’s an appropriate conversation to be having at any time and feels particularly resonant right now, within the extraordinary context of this year, 2020, and everything it’s bringing forth to challenge our thinking, our history, our practices and our plans for the future.

As Tina says: “Anti-colonialism is not just for indigenous people. Anti-colonialism, anti-imperialism and anti-racism is for everyone – we’ll all get well-being out of deconstructing the ways in which we believe that we have entitlement to each other’s spaces and places and bodies.”

We hope you enjoy listening to Tina’s wise and profound words and come away as inspired as we have!