<I>

  <&>Wellington Corpus of Spoken New Zealand English Version One</&>
  <&>Copyright 1998 School of Linguistics & Applied Language Studies</&>
  <&>Victoria University of Wellington</&>

  <&>side one</&>
  <&>0:45</&>
  

  <WSC#MUL003:0005:KI>
      towards a theory of maori women's studies <,,>

  <WSC#MUL003:0010:KI>
      for me it's a great honour to be able to be here talking about
      this work <drawls>and</drawls> <&>1:00</&> it's an honour for a
      number of reasons firstly because when we start to theorise
      about maori women's studies in a very real way we put our women
      <,> back into the history books and given that it's nineteen
      ninety and given the way in which our society has developed and
      as students in a women's studies course you will be coming to
      terms with the way in which <.>m</.> women generally have been
      made invisible in our society the road that one needs to tread
      to find out about maori women the women that i'm descended from
      <O>inhales</O> the nature of our journeys the nature of our
      struggles and indeed the very complex processes that keep us
      invisible in this society means that we have to <&>2:00</&> be
      able <,,> to be <,,> treading a number of paths at the same time
      i believe

  <WSC#MUL003:0015:KI>
      i've treaded some of those this morning cos i went to where you
      were last year <O>laughs</O> then i went to h m six then i saw
      ros <loudly>running along and i thought where goes ros there
      goes women's studies</loudly> <O>laughs</O> so i arrived here
      <,,>

  <WSC#MUL003:0020:KI>
      on a more serious note when we come to the theorising about
      maori women's studies and to the creation of a theory of maori
      women's studies <O>inhales</O> for me <,,> <&>background noise</&>
      we have to be able to do a number of things and one of those is
      a very exciting thing for women to be able to do together and
      that is to theorise <,,>

  <WSC#MUL003:0025:KI>
      because <,> when we think about the <&>3:00</&> role of theory
      in our education and particularly in a university context theory
      is seen to be one of the essential tools that a higher education
      offers people to help us to be able to interpret our world and
      the way in which we see our place within it <,>

  <WSC#MUL003:0030:KI>
      one of the things that i think we can observe about theory for a
      range of reasons that we can't go into in depth today is that
      theory has come to be seen as the tool of men <,>

  <WSC#MUL003:0035:KI>
      men theorise and women don't

  <WSC#MUL003:0040:KI>
      men theorise about their world have the power and the ability to
      be able to see theory as a very real tool that helps us to
      understand <&>4:00</&> that world and women are the people if
      you like who feel the effects of what theory as a conceptual
      tool can do but who haven't been able to be in a position to
      reclaim the role of theorising and to feel okay about it and one
      of the things i want to do today is to introduce some ideas
      about a theory of maori women's studies because if we look <.>at</.>
      and i accept that these are assertions

  <WSC#MUL003:0045:KI>
      they will be debated they will be debated FIERCELY in a place
      like this to be <.>a</.> because to suggest that theorising has
      been a task that men have taken over will be to suggest some
      things that attack <&>5:00</&> the very nature of an institution
      like this so i realise that some of this stuff will be hotly
      contested in a place like this however i do believe it's <.>able</.>
      that it is important for us to be able to say these things none
      the less for maori women particularly and to be able to justify
      OUR position for saying it okay

  <WSC#MUL003:0050:KI>
      i don't accept for a minute that everybody's going to believe
      this overnight never mind what's important for ME is that maori
      women have a chance to do this theorising and that maori women
      have a chance to HEAR the way in which other maori women are
      theorising

  <WSC#MUL003:0055:KI>
      so we look then <&>writes on blackboard two seconds</&> at
      theory and this is a little diagram that tries to set out in a
      pictorial way what theories do and you see there that theories
      are about observations <&>6:00</&> they're about ideas they're
      about speculations hunches experiences over here <&>writes on
      blackboard one second</&> data problems incidents and a theory
      is something that helps us to clarify all of those things to
      interpret what we are seeing around us and to suggest hypotheses
      that ought to be tested

  <WSC#MUL003:0060:KI>
      theory can be seen from that kind of <,> layout then as the sum
      total of our observations interpretations clarification and the
      integration of those things into a coherent set of ideas <,> in
      which what is happening is <&>7:00</&> tied in some way to an
      understanding of the world

  <WSC#MUL003:0065:KI>
      now when we start to be able to take back the role of theorising
      in our lives and to be able to say theory isn't just something
      that einstein did or that plato did as a philosopher or that
      rousseau did as an educational thinker that theory is something
      that we all do in our own lives

  <WSC#MUL003:0070:KI>
      we theorise at an individual level <,>

  <WSC#MUL003:0075:KI>
      before i had children my sister was astounded by my theories on
      <laughs>child development</laughs> <others laugh>and <,></others laugh>
      how to bring children up

  <WSC#MUL003:0080:KI>
      now that i have some children of my own she laughs because my
      theories of course have <laughs>changed very quickly</laughs> so
      we have theories at an individual level and what's <&>8:00</&>
      important in a situation like this is that we share those
      theories those theories that we may have as individuals and try
      to set out a theory that has more power because it is relevant
      to a whole group of people so i have individual theories about
      all sorts of things which as a maori woman i believe is my right

  <WSC#MUL003:0085:KI>
      i don't share a lot of those with people because i have found
      that as i've shared my ideas coming to terms with being a
      feminist coming to terms with being a maori that the sharing of
      my ideas my theories if you like at a personal level has often
      meant that i become the subject of ATTACK because people think
      WHAT? you want to talk about the day when maori women may
      constitute fifty percent of parliament i'm not sure why anybody
      would want to go into parliament but as <&>9:00</&> a source of
      central decision making AND a place where the laws of this land
      are made part of some people within the maori revolution's dream
      is for our women to at least have half the seats in that place
      but that's one idea that's a part of a theory at a personal
      level for a number of maori women about how to change the nature
      of our society

  <WSC#MUL003:0090:KI>
      we also have to be able to <.>d</.> link into ideas that offer
      powerful interpretation for whole groups of people so at one
      level our personal theories can <,> be very important to us and
      very useful to us but they're not the ONLY way in which we can
      look at theory so what i want to set out here today then is an
      attempt <,> just an attempt to sketch out the framework of some
      key elements that i think are necessary for a theory of maori
      <&>10:00</&> women's studies <&>writes on blackboard</&> and
      it's called towards a theory of maori women's studies so that
      hopefully some of the attacking that goes on when women stand up
      in our society and say i know <,> won't happen because by saying
      towards a theory i'm only saying i think i know so i'm hoping
      that it won't mean that these ideas are discounted because they
      have the words maori women connected to the associations that go
      with creating theory so we're calling it then towards a theory
      <writes on blackboard>of maori women's studies <,,><&>10</&></writes on blackboard>
      and <&>11:00</&> they come from observations over my life from
      ideas and situations and hunches that i've been through as well
      as things that i have experienced and read and things that other
      people have theorised about so i'm coming to you here if you
      want to see me in this way as a practitioner in maori women's
      studies who through the practice of wanting to identify as a
      maori woman has become clearer about the theory and i want <,>
      to just spend a minute talking about that um <,> because in my
      life's experiences the way in which i have been reared and the
      way in which i have been taught to view women has very much been
      at the hands of my <&>12:00</&> mother my sisters and my
      grandmother and her sisters

  <WSC#MUL003:0095:KI>
      i don't come to you as somebody with postgraduate degrees in
      feminist theory and i have no problem with that they just
      weren't around when i was coming through as a student i come as
      somebody who has been brought <&>pronounced bought</&> up to be
      able to see and feel the role of women as a powerful enriching
      and creative thing and it's been at points in my life when
      others have NOT seen the role of maori women in those ways that
      i have come to think <O>voc</O> what's going on here

  <WSC#MUL003:0100:KI>
      what's this really all about

  <WSC#MUL003:0105:KI>
      how can i explain being attacked because i just wanted to stand
      up and have my say

  <WSC#MUL003:0110:KI>
      how can i interpret that personal attack which in fact was
      really just a response to the fact that a young maori woman
      <&>13:00</&> academic wanted to have her say

  <WSC#MUL003:0115:KI>
      what's that all about when that is seen as such a threat <O>inhales</O>

  <WSC#MUL003:0120:KI>
      it was brought <&>pronounced bought</&> home to me um <O>tut</O>
      a long time ago when i happened to be in a situation <.>where</.>
      <O>voc</O> i was going to be married in a very unorthodox
      situation and the person who was going to perform the ceremony
      <,> would only do it if we went to the <laughs>premarriage
      classes</laughs> sigh <,> so i went and one of the things that
      happened at those classes was that we shared a whole lot of
      ideas about what is marriage what is the nature of the whanau
      the family what is creating a home all about with about seven or
      eight other couples who were not at all like my <&>14:00</&>
      partner at the time and i <O>inhales</O> and basically what
      happened during those sessions was that i bit my <.>to</.> <O>laughs</O>
      i came out after seven weeks with NO tongue cos i think i'd
      bitten it off but i bit my tongue to not say what i really
      wanted to say because i just KNEW that the reaction would be so
      hostile and i thought there is no point

  <WSC#MUL003:0125:KI>
      we want to get married in a student hall

  <WSC#MUL003:0130:KI>
      this man will only do that if we come to these classes so just
      bite your tongue but at one point towards the end of those
      sessions and at this point i was a lecturer in education at
      massey university and some of the people unbeknown to me were
      students on the campus who were in our group <O>inhales</O>

  <WSC#MUL003:0135:KI>
      towards the end we were asked about what the real tasks of
      keeping a home together were and whose responsibility they were

  <WSC#MUL003:0140:KI>
      well i waited patiently until everyone else had had <&>15:00</&>
      their say and then i offered my position which is really just a
      very simple position and that is that they're shared tasks and
      that whoever the partners in a relationship in a home are they
      do half each and that didn't seem to me to be very radical at
      all it just seemed to be a very common sense way to allocate the
      tasks and not to tie them to any particular <,> ways of seeing
      sexuality or gender or any of those things

  <WSC#MUL003:0145:KI>
      well when we reported back and <.>it</.> the groups were split
      boys on one side and girls on the other <others laugh>so when
      the groups reported back</others laugh> and the spokesperson
      from our group shared the ideas of the group mine of course were
      not reported at all and so i took leave to put my hand up and
      say well there was one other <O>laughs</O> contrary position in
      the group <,> albeit stated right at the end and in a
      nonthreatening way and so i put my ideas to the <&>16:00</&>
      group to which one of the young chaps from the boys' section
      responded <imitates>oh yeah well you just got that stuff out of
      women's studies books

  <WSC#MUL003:0150:KI>
      I'VE seen you at the university NOSE in all those books

  <WSC#MUL003:0155:KI>
      those ideas don't work

  <WSC#MUL003:0160:KI>
      they're not real you know some radical feminist has written them
      on a dark night and published them in the book <others laugh>and
      you think <,> that you can change the world</others laugh></imitates>
      <others laugh><,,> and</others laugh> in fact at that time i was
      VERY new to being a teacher in the university system and very
      new to feminism in the way that i would articulate it now <,>
      and i was able to just say to him without a word of a lie not to
      denigrate the writing of feminist theory or to <&>17:00</&>
      denigrate women's studies but to be able to reaffirm the women's
      studies in my family to be able to say <softly>look i <.>actually</.>
      i'm an education student

  <WSC#MUL003:0165:KI>
      i don't do women's <.>stu</.></softly>

  <WSC#MUL003:0170:KI>
      <laughs>i'm a teacher</laughs>

  <WSC#MUL003:0175:KI>
      i actually have never studied women's studies

  <WSC#MUL003:0180:KI>
      this is just what my mother did and her mother and her sisters

  <WSC#MUL003:0185:KI>
      now he never believed that but that's okay

  <WSC#MUL003:0190:KI>
      i knew it was true and my partner knew it was true and whether
      the other women in that room wanted to believe it was true or
      not they had an idea being put in front of them that would've
      questioned some of their ideas about women's role about the way
      in which a house is created and made into a home <&>17:47</&>
</I>
