adventures in cultural politics

The two forms of activism I know well - the first world anti-copyright struggle and the fourth world struggle to prevent unlawful exploitation of traditional knoweldge - seem to be unbridgeable. I think the first world has more to learn from the fourth than vice-versa.

A review of the excellent conference that I attended in Sydney, that featured some of the best Australian discussion on indigenous issues I’ve encountered for a while… Marcia Langton and Lewis Gordon were in full effect.

Why do my favourite Maori academics get so rarely cited by Pakeha New Zealanders? Partially because it’s difficult to maintain the coherence of the nation-state. This makes me suspect that undoing that coherence might be the key to cultural justice. My first academic paper on these issues.

From 2004, when the Foreshore and Seabed legislation was being proposed. I have been told that this was a reasonably accurate account of the most galling avoidance of due process by a New Zealand government in recent memory.

New Zealand historian Michael King died in a terrible car accident. Unfortunately, his obituaries are being used for some Pakeha self-gratification and trashing of academia, which irritated me enough to write about, at the risk of being seen as disrespectful.