Decolonisation—the active process of addressing the ongoing harms, both tangible and intangible, wrought in settler colonial states—is good for all of us. It is beneficial to colonised and coloniser; a practice of restorative justice that does more than simply compensate for the injustices of the past in a transactional exchange. Decolonisation is not a loss for the coloniser. Even though we may project loss and diminishment onto it through our self-referential fantasies of what success looks like. It can actually uplift everyone and bring about our collective regeneration. Decolonisation is an opportunity for reciprocal restoration.

In the settler-colonial country where I live, Aotearoa New Zealand, we have long had a deficit narrative around Māori (the indigenous people), and the glaring inequalities created by colonisation. This deficit narrative itself comes from a place of superiority—we Pākehā (European New Zealanders) are certain that our way of living in the world is the most sophisticated and aspirational one, so anyone that does not live in that way is either to be pitied, or frowned upon, or patronised. In this frame of superiority, Māori need to be “lifted up”, or “educated”, or “given extra support” in order to reach the heights to which we have determined everyone should aspire. What we have glossed over is that we stacked the deck. We imposed a Pākehā definition of the heights themselves, and we made the means to get to those so-called heights, Pākehā ones. High prestige and high-paying jobs are tethered to Pākehā education; property and wealth are ascribed to individual ownership; professional behaviour is articulated through Pākehā value-systems; intelligence is understood in Pākehā terms; success is seen as independent achievement for personal gain; the economic system is designed to encourage self-interested behaviour (indeed, it is its explicit foundation). It is through this Pākehā lens that we both see, and set, the standards of what it takes to live and flourish in society. We project our views and our values onto the world.

While some progress has been made towards recognising and addressing the deck-stacking, there is still very little focus on the deck itself, nor questioning whether it is the kind of deck we should even be using. And, in the discussions about Pākehā privilege, there is almost no nuanced understanding of the cost of that privilege to Pākehā. Of Pākehā deficit. That is not to turn this into a Pākehā pity party, but rather to point out to Pākehā that “winning” is not all it is cracked up to be. It is an attempt to change the deficit narrative away from one that is defined by Pākehā values alone.

My argument is not that we should look away from the very real devastation and oppression, and the resulting massive socio-economic inequalities and ongoing systemic racism we have in Aotearoa. Nor be diverted from restoring sovereignty that was never ceded. My intent with this apparent focus on Pākehā themselves, and what they are missing, is to help Pākehā see that this will uplift us too; that dissolving our material advantage over Māori is not to be feared but embraced. That there is an invisible deficit that comes with our privilege that we are not seeing, and by entering whole-heartedly into an ethic of restoration, we restore ourselves too. It is an opportunity to put aside the worn old white deck that we have been playing with, and co-create something life-affirming for all of us.

It is very hard for Pākehā to understand the ways that privilege can also bring deficit, because our ways of seeing are not well-attuned to the invisible and immeasurable realm. I think of it as a cultural prioritisation of our central vision over our peripheral vision—we are practised at looking at things directly and seeing clearly-defined details in front of us, but less practised at seeing things softly out of the corner of our eyes. But increasing our capacity to activate our averted vision—by taking off our cultural blinders and allowing the edge of our vision to register the faint objects in the dimness—opens us up to much more nuanced understanding of our ways of being in the world. Peripheral vision has a greater sensitivity to gradations of light and movement. Think of the way it is easier to see a faint star by not looking at it directly.

What is at the centre of our vision is what we place there; what we have been trained to focus on. In the context of privilege and advantage and success, we have been trained to focus on the acquisition of things for ourselves—individual status, power, and wealth (over others is left unsaid). It has been drummed into us that these are the things that matter, that without them we will not thrive. In the periphery of our vision though, something faint and uncomfortable lurks. Many of us feel it, even if we cannot make it out or put our fingers on it. There is a sense of the uncanny; home does not feel that homely.

We are unsettled, we settlers. We are missing something.

What we are not seeing in the privileging of individual acquisition of wealth, status, and power is the price we pay: the poverty of spirit that accompanies it, and the adverse effects that has on us. Not only are we acquiring things at the expense of others’ lives, but also at the expense of our own.

One of the enormous benefits of connecting with cultures and worldviews outside your own is the way it can show you something about yourself that you might not otherwise have seen. It holds a mirror up to you and your worldview and culture, and offers an opportunity to reflect and grow. For Pākehā in Aotearoa the mirror is a portal to decolonisation, to (paradoxically) being able to de-centre ourselves.

What I see reflected back at me when I look at Te Ao Māori (the Māori world) is a Pākehā world where not-caring is systemic, where superiority is actively encouraged, where inadequacies are relentlessly pointed out, where judgement of others is rife, where self-interest is lauded, where surface appearance is prioritised, where self-reliance is revered, where disembodiment is normalised, where creativity is stifled, where distrust is the default, where exclusion is the go-to, where disconnection is the operating system, where “life” and joy are to be fitted into specific time-slots, where achievements are more important than relationships, where everything is transactional, where the world is a machine to be manipulated, where family is for weekends, where it’s no-one’s fault but your own, where the soul has been forgotten, where nature is a stage and a resource for humans to use, where community is not the norm, where grief is an individual activity, where other people are obstacles to be managed, where life is a competition, where feelings are problems, where “getting ahead” (of whom?) is the goal, where the sacred holds no value, where unity is achieved through uniformity, and where everything (and everyone) needs to be controlled.

These are some of the deficits of our Pākehā privilege.

Of course this is not true for every individual Pākehā person or family or organisation, but it is systemic—baked into the societal habitat that shapes our collective behaviours, and reinforced through our institutions. The imposition of a white British worldview on Aotearoa, that cemented in and grew the status, wealth and power privileges for we Pākehā, also created the conditions for our deficits to grow. And those deficits impact us all, hurting us, and compounding the impact of colonisation for Māori. What is important is to be able to look with more sophistication at the simple story of privilege and disadvantage that we continue to see and tell through our Pākehā lens, and begin to understand the ways we are all entangled in, and negatively impacted by, colonisation.

Systemic understanding is key when approaching the complexities of colonisation and its ongoing effects. But understanding how systems work is itself difficult inside of a worldview, and knowledge system, that comes from dominant Western Enlightenment traditions. Because you cannot understand systems by reductionist analytical methods. They don’t break down into isolated component parts. Systems are entangled flows. They are unpredictable and emergent. Parts of systems feed back into other parts and generate dynamic change and surprise. Living systems (including any systems where humans are involved) are impossible to pin down and fix in place, to measure, and to control. You can make computational models of some systems, but even these are more like loose sketches than a faithful rendition of the thing itself. Systemic understanding requires holistic capacities—taking in the whole picture and gaining a full sense, using both central and peripheral vision, and other embodied ways of perceiving as well. You don’t meticulously plot systems, you sense them in space-time.

I really notice the way that many Pākehā find it very difficult to understand the systemic nature of racism, and default to it being an individual character flaw possessed by a person. This seems to me to be another example of the individualism we are awash with, acculturated to apportioning ownership of everything to individuals. Our cultural worldview of atomised decontextualised humans, rather than interconnected situated parts of a much larger collective in space-time (always connected through genealogy and kinship), makes it difficult for us to grasp the way culture plays out, in and through us. We think it really is all about us—that we are entirely self-made.

What I am trying to articulate in this essay is the way that trying to decolonise ourselves using colonial tools is very very difficult. Trying to see and understand colonisation and its impacts through our white colonial lens, and using our white colonial methods, keeps us blind to both the extent of its harms and the rich potential for collective liberation that decolonisation brings. Our own worldview stands in the way of our understanding. It is a collective cultural form of the cognitive bias described by Daniel Kahneman, what you see is all there is.

Developing an understanding of our worldview, and actively working to step outside of it, is a way out of this bind. Even little glimpses, out of the corner of our eye, are enough to open up the cracks that allow some light in. Reflection, through a mirror held up by Te Ao Māori, is one way of getting those glimpses if we are open to looking. It helps us to see ourselves, individually and collectively, complete with all our flaws. Seeing the flaws in the cold light of day can be confronting at first; looking away, or denying they are flaws, or pointing out the flaws in others, might be our first reaction. But staying with them, getting curious about them, spending time and seeing what they tell us, with full compassion for ourselves, might lead us to a more complete and complex view of ourselves and our culture, and some insights about where we might go.

I want to say to Pākehā that the worldview we have inherited here in 2025 is not that awesome. It leaves big chunks of the world out, indoctrinates us with beliefs we have to unlearn, and leaves us isolated, lonely, and harmful to one another. It disconnects us from what it means to be alive. This white worldview, with its patriarchal roots, tempered by modernity and an economic system that prioritises a narrow view of value, and spread through the vector of colonisation, is dominant globally. But dominance is not actually the signifier of what is best for us. We have clear evidence of that all around us in the world today. Opening our worldview and culture up to transformation is the paradigm shift we need to begin to address the harms that western “progress” has caused, and continues to cause, in the world.

I invite you to tap into another aspect of your deep knowing that our worldview compartmentalises into a box labelled ‘irrelevant to the serious business at hand’. But, like intuition, it too is part of our extraordinary human intelligence system—our imagination.

Just imagine living in a society that believed every one of its people deserved a flourishing life, and that each person had something unique to offer the wider community and the world. Imagine how it might feel to belong unconditionally. Imagine not feeling alone. Imagine if, no matter what happened to you in your life, you knew that you would be ok—that you would be supported by a community that had your back. Imagine what it would be like not to feel like you were in competition with others for attention, for status, for reward, for belonging, just to survive. Imagine how it might be if people around you genuinely cared for you, and you them—what would that feel like in your body?

Imagine what it would be like to work in an organisation where you felt like you belonged; where there was a deep understanding that people need to be cared for and seen, and that we thrive best in relationship. Imagine if your whole well-being was considered when business decisions were made, and that you were part of the decision-making. If you did not dread opening your mouth in a meeting for fear that others would be trying to shoot you down in order to get their ideas out there or boost their status or gain an advantage. Imagine if your strengths and talents were focused on, rather than your shortcomings. Imagine if you were not metricised.

Imagine if children were seen as a treasure, not a burden, or an economic drain, or an obstacle to “productive” work, or a possession, or a project, or a luxury, or something to be managed, or in need of discipline, or inferior adults, or smaller versions of ourselves, or future economic units, or an extravagance, or in the way. Imagine if we had a real understanding of the need to care for children, and created our society around that, rather than trying to fit children around us. Imagine if we realised that “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” is not a philosophy for a healthy upbringing, but a post-rationalisation to make us feel better about the harm we cause and experience. Imagine if we remembered we were children too.

Imagine if we valued our old people and the wisdom they bring, rather than casting them as “past it” and irrelevant and senile and a burden on everyone else. What if old people were understood as part of a flourishing society, not outside of it. Imagine if we remembered that we are all destined to be old people.

Imagine if we revived the adages and proverbs and pieces of wisdom we inherited and were wise enough to see they had something profound to say. What if we no longer contemptuously branded them “old wives’ tales” or unsophisticated, and accepted them as lessons in thriving collectively in a complex dynamic living world. Imagine if everyone had access to wisdom that could help them see the forest for the trees, no matter what level of qualification they had.

Imagine if school was a place where we all wanted to go, where we were encouraged to be curious and expansive and creative. Imagine if learning was pleasurable and we were able to learn at the pace that we learned best. Imagine if everyone understood that children are learning machines, and that it doesn’t take much to foster that, but that it is also very easy to suppress it. Imagine if we did not fear getting the answer wrong, if there was no long term penalty for making mistakes. Imagine if we were not defined by how well we achieved using narrow measurements. Imagine if teachers were revered and cared for and valued for their human skills of encouraging and enabling learning and exploration and discovery. And celebrated for their wisdom. Imagine if we didn’t care about how we compared with others because we realised that comparison is always on the basis of some narrow criteria. Imagine if we were not advised to specialise, to focus, to narrow our range of interests, to get serious, to look at one thing at a time.

Imagine if we did not have to work in industries that cause harm to others and to the world just to make ends meet. Imagine if we remembered that it is not actually money that makes the world go round, it is love. Imagine if we knew that our economic system makes love invisible on its books and in its models, but actually relies on it. Imagine if we did not have to develop whole industries in order to clean up the mess made by other industries, and then call it progress. Imagine if we worked to ensure we all had enough, not more. Imagine how it might feel to be satisfied, not wanting.

Imagine not looking for what is wrong, but what is right. Imagine if the news what not filled with blame-seeking. Imagine being excessively gentle with yourself. Imagine being excessively gentle with others. Imagine feeling good enough right now. Imagine that voice in your head, and all its should-ing, quieting down and letting you be. Imagine not worrying about what others were doing—anywhere—or trying to change them to make them more acceptable to you. Imagine not holding yourself together. Imagine not fearing your own and others feelings—knowing they are processes not states.

Imagine resting. Imagine what it would feel like if doing nothing was not viewed as laziness. Imagine if it was understood as necessary for a healthy life, and a healthy (living) society. Imagine if “play” was not something you were permitted to do once “work” was over, but integral to it. Imagine if your creative “hobby” was intimately tied to your work, woven in, not relegated to an “appropriate” time. Imagine if art was not separate from science. Imagine singing and dancing at work, and it not feeling weird or awkward. Imagine if being professional was being your actual self.

Imagine if we cared for our living world as a member of our family, rather than a resource to utilise for profit. Imagine how that might change the way we understand pollution, or deforestation, or mining, or cultivation, or development. Imagine if we were conscious of how we live as part of the planet, rather than as the imagined ruler of it. Imagine if we took seriously the research about the intelligence of living things. Imagine if we all had ways of understanding the complexity and interdependence of living systems without needing to study for a PhD to do so. Imagine if we treated our planet like a living being that nurtures us, upon which we rely, and that keeps us alive.

Imagine if we were able to talk about the ways we are interconnected, through our bloodlines, our care lines, our timelines, our thought-lines, our lifelines, our movement lines, our experience lines, our relational lines, our action lines. All the lines of flow we make and remake and embody and experience in a dynamic entangled whole. Imagine if we lived from this deep knowledge.

Imagine if we knew how to act collectively, and with incredible expertise, creativity, and coordination, without having to be managed and overseen and audited. Imagine if we were able to pass comprehensive learning on without needing to write and disseminate it in a report. Imagine what it would be like to be trusted to do your work, and to trust others to do theirs, without surveillance or standardised evaluation measures. Imagine feeling valued for what you did.

Imagine if you did not have to go to therapy, or take medication, or “learn to be more resilient”, to unlearn all the unhealthy societal messages you had internalised through your work, your education, your family, your experiences. Imagine if we realised that the way to treat depression and anxiety was to address the systemic causes of them rather than pathologise people and prescribe more medication. Imagine if we spent our time trying to uplift others, not tear them down. Imagine if you no longer had to push so hard just to live.

Imagine if we realised that our economic system is not the only way through which things can happen.

Imagine if we were encouraged to imagine.

How we behave is cultural. It reflects the values, assumptions and beliefs we have been taught – implicitly and explicitly – through the collective human systems we have grown up in, combined with our own unique nervous system responses (which are also learned subconsciously, albeit at a more individualised level). Acculturated within a Pākehā-centric society, though, we still have a tendency to locate human behaviours within individuals, and consequently the way we address behaviours is to “correct” or “fix” or “restrict” or “punish” or “cure” the individual. But this way of addressing issues is incredibly ineffective and costly, in every way. It is treating the downstream symptoms, not the upstream causes. It is rescuing people, one by one, from the torrent, rather than stopping them jumping in before the rapids begin.

In our Pākehā society, the primacy of the individual is clear. And this is reflected still in the ways we are “combatting” racism. Even though we have been learning about the systemic nature of racism, it remains on the whole at the level of an abstract concept, or a description of the material effects of racism throughout our systems. Integrating that knowledge about with our embodied experience is more difficult. We still put most of our energy into calling out racist behaviour in others and being clear that it is bad. Again, in saying this, I am not suggesting we leave racist behaviour unchallenged; I’m trying to expand our approach, not give a mutually exclusive alternative. I want to suggest that racism, as a behaviour, needs to be addressed systemically and with deep understanding of that system (which includes us as messy, feeling, fearful, live humans). Decolonising our collective life is a systemic approach to addressing racism, by working at the level of paradigm.

A paradigm shift is needed so that our systems reflect, and therefore effect, a society that is able to hold and value the world-views and knowledge systems beyond a white Anglo model of what the world should be. Without a genuine shift that de-centres the primacy of Pākehā ways of knowing, doing, and being – that introduces new complementary tools beyond the masters’ ones – it is going to be very difficult to reveal the blind spots of those ways. That is not to say that we throw away the Pākehā tools – this is not a binary choice – but that we expand the toolkit to include some that we might have forgotten or thrown out in the heady Enlightenment rush of scientific fundamentalism.

Decolonisation for Pākehā is an act of impropriety; of stepping outside the proper domain we have been taught to valorise and believe. And it feels wrong to do so. It is a movement away from the safety of the crowd, where we know what’s what. It feels anxiety-inducing; it is difficult to orient ourselves, and our frames of reference are no longer concrete. It takes courage to trust that your step will land you on solid ground. A leap of faith is involved. Or maybe a leap of imagination.

Imagine what we could learn if we expanded our view of the world and allowed more in, rather than trying to keep it out. If we thought about the ways that knowledge systems can complement and enhance each other to offer richness and vibrancy and new perspectives on seemingly intractable problems. If we could see that expanding our view to include aspects of the world we didn’t have the tools to understand can give more to everyone rather than take something away from us. Dismissing ideas out of hand when they sit outside of our experience does a disservice to everyone.

The amazing thing is that the Western knowledge system that our Pākehā world-view and culture relies on, has itself been coming to this conclusion. There is more of an understanding of the need to take holistic approaches, by exploring inter-, multi-, and trans-disciplinarity and through disciplines such as systems-thinking. Systems understandings are leading us to understand that our narrow bounded stories of the world, often focused on events or individuals, rather than the broader entangled context around them, are only partial; often giving us a false idea of the reality that can lead us to make poor decisions for the long term. There is an understanding that reason alone is not actually how we make the best decisions. There is an increasing awareness of the role the body and emotions play in our cognition and our mental life. We are learning that our interconnections with the “natural world” are more than metaphorical, with ecological research (often prompted and led by indigenous scholarship) showing us the literal connections at macro and micro level between organisms (which include us), and research in neuroscience and psychology elucidating the way that our nervous system responds to being immersed in nature. Through the fundamental sciences we are becoming increasingly aware that the world is not as fixed as we once believed—that objective observation is not possible, and that the very act of observing (and measuring) changes the nature of the thing that is observed (or measured). For me this is physics confirming what indigenous scholars have been trying to explain for generations—that the researcher is never neutral and that the idea of neutrality itself is a western construct. The idea of quantum entanglement or “spooky action at a distance” raises the possibility that some things we dismissed as impossible, or superstitious, might have some truth to them. Western science and indigenous knowledge are increasingly coming together. In the words of the Māori scholar and cultural astronomer, Dr Rangi Mātāmua “same story, different lens.”

Imagine what we could learn from te ao Māori, if we deeply reflected on the teaching and brought it into our own embodied frame of reference so we could live it authentically, rather than performing Māori by rote. How would that shift us? If we could then draw on that lived experience when we are manuhiri (guests) in te ao Māori so we are able to honour the values that sit underneath cultural protocols from a place of felt understanding. How would that change the relationship? The conversation? The sharing of knowledge and insights and approaches? Opening up our cultural blind spots is beneficial to us all. It is an act of cultural humility that ends up strengthening us. It helps us evolve the Pākehā world into one that can be in right relationship with Te Ao Māori, with te taiao, and in the process come into right relationship with ourselves too. It is truly restorative.

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