Pakeha: What does it really mean?

The idea of Pakeha privilege is reluctant of many white New Zealanders to call themselves Pakeha; this tends to lead towards many implications. As mentioned within the lecture it states that 66% of New Zealanders believe that Pakeha was originally an insulting term, including 44% of Maori. While the term Pakeha is widely used in New Zealand, although often loosely, there is considerable uncertainty about its use. It also signals some commitment to the bicultural and/or bi-national politics of contemporary Aotearoa.

The term Pakeha is commonly used within the New Zealand society however to a lot of people they do tend to have difficulty defining it. Pakeha is an indigenous New Zealand expression that has one major stream of its heritage, such as, people, manners, values, and customs that are not exclusively Polynesian. The term Pakeha also symbolises things that are no longer European. It does however; represent people and things that derive from overseas but through the transformations of history and geography. Reasoning for this is through all the new characteristics and combinations that are not unlike their backgrounds. Furthermore, this term has been used many times over time and to be Pakeha means to identify oneself as being part of a group that is not of Maori heritage but to acknowledge ones ethnicity such as Eurocentric.

Pakeha is not a term in order to identify and describe a particular ethnic group. Both terms of Maori and Pakeha however are ways in which to differentiate between the Polynesian, European and the historical origins of the settlers. Some people do tend to embrace this term, although some do tend to find it extremely offensive. Pakeha is a particular word that can be taken by many different meanings but it was however formed during the time in which the first European Settlers came to New Zealand. But as time went on this term did not stay the same as some people began to think that Pakeha was a certain ethnicity and then it began to have many mixed meanings to it. The term is used often within todays societies and has adapted in many ways throughout time.     

Pakeha will not necessarily recognise that their cultural values and behaviour have been primarily formed from the experience of being a member of a dominant group of New Zealand. In relation to whiteness, Pakehaness also gains its power because of its invisibility. Reasoning for this is because such cultural values and behaviour are seen as universal. In saying that, for those particular reasons, it is why Pakeha often think they do not have a culture. Consequently, people who are of Pakehaness tend to classify and see themselves as an outside ethnicity, in contrast to the way in which white people see themselves as outside race. Also when people come to New Zealand they know or they begin to know the heritage of the term Maori. But when they tend to learn more about Maori this term of Pakeha also arises. The Maori use this word “Pakeha” in order to describe themselves and opposed to the different ethnicities and/or culture. In the nineteenth century when the European settlers came here and found out about this particular term they then decided to adopt it. Consequently, they the European settlers did use this term in order to describe themselves, however, today it is used to describe people who are non-Maori or of non-Polynesian heritage. Furthermore Pakeha is a term in to differentiate both of the historical origins of the settlers, the Europeans, the Maori, the Polynesians and the other.