Methodologically, as we develop participatory processes in culture-centered research, these processes are both organic and cyclical. The organic nature of CCA processes suggest that when we work with community partnerships and community members, the relationships among the multiple stakeholders (and yes, given the circles of participation in CCA, these are indeed multiple relationships in multiple contexts at multiple levels) are continually evolving. Being open to participation in ways that are responsive to community needs suggests that we continually re-evaluate where we stand with respect to the choices and the decisions we make through the lifecycle of the project. This also means that the same decisions need to be revisited at multiple entry points at multiple levels of our relationships, partnerships, and roles within the CCA network. Moving the gamuts of decision-making through these multiple cycles calls for a great deal of patience as the same sets of decisions need to be re-visited again and again.
The Haka, the Hurt, and the Work We Owe An Indian in Aotearoa reflects on resistance, complicity, and the solidarities we have yet to build Mohan Jyoti Dutta I watched the haka. I watched it several times, in fact. Each time, I tried to sit with what I was feeling before reaching for what I was supposed to think. Let me be honest about who I am in this conversation, because that matters. I am an upper caste, upwardly mobile Indian man. I am a professor at a university in Aotearoa. I carry the accumulated privileges of Brahminical socialisation, of English-medium education, of institutional access that was never designed for the communities I now write about and alongside. I say this not as confession but as orientation — because where you stand shapes what you see, and I have learned, through years of working with communities at the margins, that the refusal to name your own location is itself a colonial habit. The haka directed at Parmjeet Parmar did not offend me. It ...