DOI: 10.2478/colloquium-2026-0007 ISSN: 0588-3237
A Pākehā Whakapapa Deficit and a Dialogue with Science as Whakapapa of the Mind
Nicola Hoggard Creegan Abstract
This paper examines the deep sense of whakapapa or genealogy that frames much of the contemporary public dialogue in Aotearoa.
An earlier version of this paper was given at the 2024 ANZATS Conference in Adelaide, July 2024. I am grateful to two anonymous reviewers of an earlier version of this paper for their helpful suggestions and attention to detail.
Te ao Māori (Māori worldview) preserves at the heart of its Mātauranga (knowledge system) concepts that ground morality and purpose in the land/whenua and people/tangata, in spirit/wairua and mauri/life force, and especially in whakapapa or lineage and family/whanau. I examine the sense of a whakapapa deficit that one can experience as a pākehā in New Zealand, and how this is felt as a spiritual lack. I then reflect on the fact that, as Alasdair Macintyre has argued, people are grounded not only by land and spirit but also by a series of stories or interlocking narratives
and
embodied practices. I put the intellectual story idea into dialogue with the understanding of whakapapa in Mātauranga Māori in my own history, exploring the connection of science and theology, as an example of trying to do a whakapapa of the mind. I end with the possibility of connection and community in Christ, overcoming our various alienations, deprivations, and oppressions.