‘Time for a troll’; the standard story propping up the colonial state

Abstract

This article foregrounds the contribution of the widely available standard story of New Zealand history and Pākehā race-talk, to the social control of Māori and the naturalisation of racism. Assisted by recent studies that show how humour is variously used to encourage compliance with social norms, we focus on an item published as a newspaper column by Sir Robert Jones. The analysis shows how the piece utilises widely familiar themes and resources of Pākehā race-talk to create an allegedly humorous piece that works to maintain the broad status quo of colonising expectations in Aotearoa. Our article revitalises the extensive research, in New Zealand and elsewhere, on the uses and effects of Pākehā/settler race-talk. We conclude by outlining steps needed to displace and depower such colonising talk to enable our thinking and practices to contribute to a more culturally just and equitable society.

Keywords

• Colonising discourse
• humour
• race-talk
• representations of Indigenous
• settler power