In late 2018, we gathered at AUT city campus to consider the meaning of citizenship for people marginalised in our society. Today, we provide an overview and reflect on the Future Islands Aotearoa symposium.
What is Future Islands Aotearoa?
Future Islands Aotearoa is a collaborating partner and member of the Yale Programme for Recovery and Community Health (PRCH) and its subsidiary the International Recovery and Citizenship Council (IRCC). Our mission is to promote the recovery, self-determination and community inclusion of people facing mental health distress, addiction, homelessness and discrimination by focusing on their strengths and the valuable contributions they can make to the lives of their communities. As a collaborative, we support activities such as:
researching innovative and effective community and peer-based services and supports
assisting systems of care in becoming more culturally, recovery and rights orientated
reducing health inequities and disparities, and
improving individual, agency, and system-level outcomes
What is citizenship?
Citizenship is both a status and a practice – and the honouring and protecting of our rights in exchange for access to the many benefits such as equitable education, health care and the contributions we make to our community. For many people of Aotearoa, full participation and protections are lost when a person or group is excluded and described as being on the margins of society - due to stigma and discrimination. People can be excluded in many ways, based on their race, sexual orientation and through disclosing experiences of mental distress and/or addiction.
Many of these understandings are based on Dr Hamer’s doctoral work (2012), as well as our ongoing commitment to continue to explore how the Western, colonial notion of citizenship relates to Māori as tangata whenua, and the experiences of how other indigenous peoples enact their status as political actors and citizens within their democracies. Though the 3rd article of the Te Tiriti o Waitangi does give emphasis to Māori individuals and their rights alongside other New Zealanders, colonial notions of citizenship emphasise rights, whereas Māori emphasise collective rights based around whānau and the right to live as Māori and as citizens of the world with full participation and inclusion in the Te Ao Māori and in the wider community [Sir Mason Durie, personal communication, January 2020].
The first Future Islands Aotearoa symposium
The first Future Islands symposium explored the bi-cultural context of citizenship in Aotearoa. We used the results of the extensive research at PRCH as a framework to explore its relevance to Aotaearoa. The framework is based on citizenship as a measure of the strength of people’s connection to the 5R’s of citizenship[2] – our rights, responsibilities, roles, and resources that society offers to people through public and social institutions and to relationships involving close ties, supportive social networks, and associational life in one’s community.
We have attached the posters that summarise the findings on the day from the 80 participants who discussed the 5Rs, including What is Citizenship? and the dynamics of whakawhanaungatanga (based on the work of Pa Henare Tate), and the importance of a sense of belonging.
Since the 2018 symposium, the citizenship programme (based on the 5Rs) has been piloted by two collaborating NGOs in Auckland and an evaluation is being undertaken by Dr Helen Hamer and Debra Lampshire, on behalf of Principal Investigator Dr Daniel Sutton at AUT University, Auckland.
We continue to use the term citizenship in these symposiums because we believe that the restoration of the rights and benefits of being a citizen can be reclaimed through the active participation of people with lived experience through their valuable role, leadership and contribution to the communities in which we live. We continue to collaborate with mana whenua to adapt the citizenship work in Aotearoa to align with the principles of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, Tikanga Māori best practice and to ensure that bi-cultural obligations for both practice and research will address inequities for Māori and Pasifika within health and correctional institutions.
Our next Future Islands symposium will be attended by people with lived experience who are new, emerging and early career peers. We will explore their valued role and contribution of peers to the health, education and social sectors, what we mean by leadership, academic pathways and building the peer workforce of the future.