Decolonisation, ecology and ethics
By Samar Ocean Wolf Ciprian
As a founding member of the tree protection group Honour the Maunga, I have been repeatedly labelled a racist, white supremacist; with my motivations, actions and intentions dismissed as white privilege. The problem is, I’m not white.
I’m a visibly brown woman, with dark curly hair. I come from two indigenous cultures - the Arabian Peninsula and Northern India. I grew up between the US and the Middle East. In the former I was frequently treated with suspicion for being an Arab and in the latter I faced extreme gender discrimination.
My work involves preserving Central American healing traditions, and I have received teachings in indigenous practices from North and South America. Recently, along with other members of Honour the Maunga, I have had the honour of being welcomed into Te Tāwera Hapū, as Iramoko Marae’s uriwhanaunga, or extended family.
What possible motivation could I have for perpetuating white supremacy or colonial mores?
None.
My only motivation is that I am haunted.
My ancestral fatherland is unique in that its living landscapes have been nearly completely obliterated by a post-decolonization experiment that placed profit over nature. The scars bearing witness to this has left on me will never heal. Therefore, I am unable to sit back and accept decolonization as the justification for ecocide - specifically in relation to the felling of 2000+ trees across Auckland’s maunga by the Tūpuna Maunga Authority.
Growing up, I swam in the Arabian Gulf daily. No words can describe the awe of looking upon endless white sand beaches with a water so light blue it was almost silver-pink. I remember turtles laying their eggs in the sand at night. The water was so clear that we knew every fish by sight and behaviour rather than name. The children of my generation were as much raised by these waters as by our own parents.
I left the Gulf in the early 2000s, when the first coastal development projects were beginning. I remember the unease in the pit of my stomach as scaffolds went up, blocking access to the water for the first time. I have returned most years and watched in despair as ever more coastline gives way to development, erosion and pollution.
The turtles are long gone; the fish replaced with toxic jellyfish and ropey algae. The water gets murkier, greener and foams with ever-increasing concentrations of chemical run-off every season. Late last year, I went for a swim and instantly, my eyes and skin were afire. I was exposed to algaecide, which is now routinely dumped into the open sea to combat blooms caused by stagnant water around artificial islands and rising temperatures due to climate change.
I cried out with bodily and emotional pain. The water was dead.
What is scheduled to occur across Auckland’s maunga is a painful parallel. Yet, our culturally diverse group of tree protectors have been vehemently attacked and threatened at every turn due to a public misperception of us as racist.
This appears to be because public discourse on the rationale behind this proposed environmental devastation only follows a simplistic binary: ‘good indigenous’ vs. ‘bad colonizer’ - mirrored by the transference onto flora that plays outs as ‘desirable native tree’ vs. ‘pest exotic tree’. One does not have to look very far to see that science and sustainability are not major players in this conversation. Like a Happy Meal, this way of thinking is quick, easy to digest and affords all those who wish to feel like they’re doing the right thing a seemingly fool-proof road map.
Except, right according to what metric?
There is no consensus on what decolonization means in this country, nor is it governed by a code of ethics that takes into account important collective issues such as sustainability. At this time, it appears largely as a bully word that makes certain outlandish projects unquestionable.
While decolonization may be in vogue now, it is not a new phenomenon. My ancestors have lived along the Arabian Gulf for some 125,000 years. From 1820 onwards, we too had treaties with the British. On December 1st 1971, the Trucial States achieved decolonization. Different Shiekhdoms came together and a new nation was born. The discovery of oil in the 1960s allowed for a diverse group of tribal peoples to coalesce and have their own voice in the modern era. I was born ten years later.
The ecological collapse of the Gulf that I describe did not happen at the hands of colonizers. It was carried out by my own people. Our collective value system rapidly moved away from seeing the land as a family member to regarding it as a commodity. In little more than a decade, the world I and hundreds of generations before me had grown up in ceased to exist.
Death of the land happens quickly. Once it goes, so too does the part of it that lives in its descendants. This loss is a weight that no indigenous person, or any person, should have to bear.
I have nothing but empathy for the kind of loss that drives a group to wish to recreate a time that was taken. While the dream of emerald maunga covered in native forest is a beautiful one, how are all of us so ready to ignore the obvious? Extreme droughts are becoming increasingly common. We are marooned due to a global pandemic that is deadliest in dense urban areas with little tree cover. The trees on Auckland’s volcanic cones are havens to native bird life and mothers to thousands of wild native saplings. So much so that some arborist reports suggest the exotics be retained to provide free nurseries to the new native plantings. Tūpuna Maunga Authority has chosen the multi-million chainsaw and helicopter option instead.
Colonization has left many legacies. A reverence for life isn’t one of them.
Is there a point at which tokenistic gestures of decolonization that ultimately serve very few while causing immense harm to the environment can be called unethical without the fear of being labelled racist?
I can’t answer this for you. I can only tell you why I’m here.