A CONVERSATION BETWEEN MAKANAKA TUWE AND NATHAN REW
One of the key editorial arguments of this issue is that when it comes to examining the Black Indigenous nexus, Melanesia (and western Oceania at large) is a key site of knowledge production. Conversations and debates on this topic are also enriched by Afrodescendant and/or Afrodiasporic Oceanians who carry with them their own relationship to both Indigeneity and Blackness. The epistolary dialogue that follows between Makanaka Tuwe and Nathan Rew constitutes a fragment of such conversations and allows us to reflect on numerous nodes of commonality and specificities.
Kia ora Nate,
I have started, stopped, and restarted this note to you several times over the last couple of weeks as there are many threads to weave when thinking about the notion of the inseparability of Blackness and Indigeneity in an Aotearoa New Zealand specific context. For a while now, I have mused that the discourse on Blackness, Africanness, and Indigeneity is long overdue. From how there is frottage between the three identifiers, how they are interconnected and the ways in which identifying with one or all three can be contested depending on the context.
In instances where the discourse has been had and recorded the focus has been on Black African migrants and former refugees, and Afro-diasporic communities primarily their various experiences of anti-blackness. The experiences cited have been around hair discrimination in schools and the use of the “n” word in New Zealand society. With the latter, academic papers and news items (dating back to 2015) have included whether Māori and Pacific Peoples can use the word, the different encounters people have had with the word—some as recent as January 2025, the use of the word by a mayor, a university professor, teachers, a TV sports commentator, Police, on Real Housewives of Auckland, as well as the change of three place names that included the “n” word in the South Island.