ABSTRACT

Common university spaces are often lauded as inclusive spaces where everyone is welcomed, but is that really the case? Universities in Aotearoa New Zealand receive social, material, and financial benefits from positioning themselves as ethnically and culturally diverse, yet these institutions were established through acts of colonial invasion that severed Indigenous communities from land, language, and culture. The silencing of violent colonial histories is typical of settler societies and in institutions like universities in order to progress the idea of harmonious settler-Indigenous relations. Historical amnesia caters to settler sensibilities and the need to feel a sense of belonging to migrated territories, yet colonial violence continues to negatively impact Indigenous peoples’ lives. In this article, we consider how the logics of settler-colonialism underpin the workings of a large communal university space at one Aotearoa New Zealand university, to explore how the ideals of equity and inclusion function in normal day-to-day operations. Our research applied collaborative focused ethnographic methods to the performative and cultural dimensions of whiteness, to reveal ways in which settler normativity – settler ways of being, thinking, and doing – were evident in this communal space. Settler normativity was constructed by the predominance and location of settlers in space, the comfort settlers displayed, design of the space, and normalisation of wealth. We argue that common university spaces function as a microcosm of settler colonialism, where indigeneity is displaced, settlers assert their permanence, and universities profit.

摘要

普通的大学空间通常被誉为包容性的空间，每个人都受到欢迎，但这是真的吗？通过将自己定位为种族和文化多样性，新西兰的大学可获得社会，物质和经济利益，但这些机构是通过殖民入侵行为建立的，这些入侵使土著社区脱离了土地，语言和文化。暴力殖民历史的消沉是定居者社会和大学等机构的典型特征，目的是推进和谐的定居者与土著关系的观念。历史遗忘症满足了定居者的敏感性以及对移民领土的归属感的需要，但殖民暴力继续对土著人民的生活产生负面影响。在这篇文章中，我们考虑定居者-殖民主义的逻辑如何支撑一所新西兰奥特罗阿大学的大型公共大学空间的运作，以探索公平和包容性理想在日常日常运营中如何发挥作用。我们的研究将协作的民族志方法应用于白人的表演和文化层面，以揭示在此公共空间中明显体现出定居者规范性的方式（即，定居者的存在，思考和行为方式）。定居者的规范性是由定居者在空间中的优势和位置，所展示的定居者的舒适性，空间的设计以及财富的规范化所构成的。我们认为，普通的大学空间是定居者殖民主义的缩影，其中土著人被驱逐，定居者断言其永久存在，而大学则从中获利。