Abstract
This research aims to understand what it means to be of Asian heritage and to support Indigenous rights of tino rangatiratanga in settler-colonial Aotearoa New Zealand. Through digital and physical ethnography based in Wellington, New Zealand, I apply an anthropological lens to one manifestation of the unique dynamic of relationships between the nation’s largest immigrant population (Asians), and its Indigenous peoples (Māori). The activist group which is the basis of this study is Asians Supporting Tino Rangatiratanga (ASTR) and this study contributes to the development of knowledge on processes of decolonisation from a specifically Asian-heritage perspective. The methods for the thesis included interviews with seven ASTR participants, reflections on the slow shift of the author’s perspective from participant observation to insider ethnography, and a content analysis of ASTR’s digital media sites. I argue the group’s pan-continental solidarity is explained through a practice of care which is both multifaceted and decolonial. ASTR achieves this despite significant intergenerational tensions within pan-Asian lives which indicate that becoming Tangata Tiriti for peoples of Asian heritage is a cultural process based in collectivist care that cannot be understood through the individualistic cultural dynamics that motivate Pākehā journeys towards decolonisation. Methodologically, this thesis is written from the perspective that Te Tiriti o Waitangi is our first immigration document, allowing Asian immigrants to migrate and call Aotearoa New Zealand home, despite the tensions of living within a settler/invader colonial state. My argument is that for anticolonial Asians, ASTR offers a space for Asian peoples to practice solidarities in a manner that is based in caring relationships of whanaungatanga.