Murmurations: Becoming-Pākehā in Motion

Abstract

Murmurations: Becoming-Pākehā in Motion explores how creative writing can function as a decolonising mode of inquiry into Pākehā identity, history, and belonging in Aotearoa New Zealand. The research asks how Pākehā identity might be understood not as fixed, but as continually shaped through relationships with others, including Māori, as well as with place, history, the more-than-human world, and the responsibilities that emerge from living together in place.

The thesis uses the image of a murmuration – the shifting, collective movement of birds in flight – as both metaphor and method for exploring these relationships. Set against the ongoing legacy of colonisation in Aotearoa, the research explores what it might mean to become Pākehā in more responsive and ethical ways.

It comprises two parts: a creative work and an exegesis. The creative work consists of twelve lyrical “murmurs” – braided, anti-memoir texts that arise from encounters with particular places, histories, memories and events.

The exegesis reflects on writing as a way of generating knowledge and understanding. It draws on Henri Bergson’s ideas about time, memory, change and lived experience, alongside poststructural, posthuman, Indigenous and Pākehā scholarship, to consider how creative practice can contribute to decolonising ways of knowing and being.