Systemic Thinking and Whakawhanaungatanga: Weaving in Two Worldviews
I’m sharing some of my thoughts on systemic thinking, in a particularly ‘me’ way of looking at it. What I understand of systemic thinking is its ability to allow us to come to an awareness of our place in the world, through changing our perspectives on certain things, and the shifting of conscious and subconscious perceptions. These are my current learnings about systemic thinking that it is a dynamic, shifting, nuanced, contextual way to see the world — my world, your world, and all of what that might mean.
My understanding of systemic thinking is linked to my lived experiences of whakawhanaungatanga, an intrinsically Māori way of establishing and maintaining connection and relationship. With this connection I make between systemic thinking and whakawhanaungatanga, I think about its use within the ‘helping’ industries, and in our own practices through Te Korowai Aroha Whānau Services, which is the kaupapa Māori community organisation that I am part of. I’ll be posing questions around my emerging thoughts about systemic thinking and how I’ve related it to whakawhanaungatanga, then I’ll take a look at some kōrero and examples that I hope highlight what I’m wanting to express.
In regards to different ways of looking at things, when I first saw an upside down map of New Zealand and was told that this was the way that Māori saw our whenua, I actually had to go to university to know more about that, and what that meant in relation to myself, and the question ko wai au? Who am I? Prior to coming into an awareness of myself, mostly through education studies papers at university, I was part of the ‘I can’t see the forest for the trees’ brigade. The fact that I was living my life, but not really aware of what that meant, or even that I could influence what was happening with me, was something that I began to understand due to learning lessons such as these. That even though I was experiencing my life that actually my life had already been shaped by political forces that I did not even know existed.
So it challenged me to question the way I had accepted what was being passed off as knowledge. The irony is that I learnt so much about myself from education studies papers such as these, and it was a turning point for me, where through being taught by the likes of Wally Penetito, Kabini Sanga and Hazel Phillips, I was able to engage in this crazy idea of structural analysis, and instead of just living in the reality that I found myself that somehow, by looking at things in a different way, and from a different lens that actually I could understand so much more about what was going on for me.
So, I began to accept that we are all part of this neverending story. We are all part of the weave, the magic, the need to understand what life is all about. What I am toying with is that essentially, systemic thinking is big picture thinking. In the social work education field that I currently work in, systemic thinking is likened to ecological thinking, ever increasing circles with the person in the middle and explanations of how these circles might impact on that person’s life. We do things like genograms and ecomaps, which are tools that identify each component that make up the picture and how they relate — or not — to each other and why, and usually, what can be done about it. Once you see life through your systemic thinking eyes, I argue that you can’t help yourself but to act systemically, or with systemic thinking on the brain, where your actions are as a direct result of systemic thinking. It’s a bit like being in the middle of two opposing forces; let’s say for instance you’re a mum, and your teenager is doing teenage rebellion things, and your husband is doing typical punitive dad type stuff and as a systemic thinker aka action-er aka mum, you are the one in the middle holding it all together, because you’re invested in the big picture while the people that you love are doing their own silo’ed individualist thing (true story). In the act of holding on — i.e. the idea that someone is holding on to you, or that you are holding onto someone else (this can be either metaphoric or real) — sometimes people do not realise that they’re part of a bigger picture, so some of their actions will reflect their silo type thinking. However, there is someone invested in the bigger picture who may be trying to hold onto the individual components of that ‘picture’ because they know that they need to actually hold onto the trees to ensure there is a forest (that analogy again).
One way this concept of systemic thinking, of the big picture scenario links to whakawhanaungatanga is the idea that we are all connected to a past, a present and a future through whakapapa (genealogy), and that for Māori we are intentional with our connections as exampled in our words, our behaviours and our actions. There is a waiata (song) ‘Toro mai to ringa’ no Te Aupōuri in the Far North that makes connections through the here and now, being able to reach out to others and that presence of them, and also to draw through the veil of the past and the understanding that our whānau are grounded through a whakapapa that connects us to our tūpuna, our ancestors and the taonga (gifts) that come with that. Then, relating this to the future, and for me that is about feeling confident enough to recite a genealogy and heritage that is part of my birth right and my legacy. When we are invested in systemic thinking we are knowledge seekers about our connection to place. As this relates back to the waiata ‘Toro mai to ringa’, the words translated into English invite you to ‘reach out your hand and clasp mine in truth and friendship’. They are words expressing sadness, and allowing one to feel, for example: ‘oh the compassion that bites within me’. It really is an opportunity to engage with people with intention and to think about what is it like to not only honour the person in front of you and their tūpuna, but also honouring yourself and your ancestors that come with you.
Being Māori can be a bit frantic. Sometimes, it’s problematic — just having to explain that we’re not all the same, and I’m having a hard enough time just being me — well it can be tough. I relate this to systemic thinking, because I know that there are multiple ways to understand the meaning of things, however, I also know that I need to always be mindful of thinking that my own way is the only way. This to me expresses the beauty of whakawhanaungatanga, because when we give ourselves permission to connect and build relationship with others, it allows us some insight and empathy into other ways of knowing, doing and being. So for me that’s about ‘te tangata’ or about the person, and wanting to relate to others, and being able to do that by thinking about things in a different way. This is what happened when I was part of a conference listening to Dr Wayne Ngata talk about te tā-o-ngā-tā, which he explained as te tāmoko o ngā tāmoko, or being the greatest tāmoko of all tāmoko, which he compared to the living generation being the greatest representation of their tūpuna, and the layers of whakapapa that ground them to their heritage and identity.
In establishing relationship, and some undercurrents that relate to systemic thinking, I’m playing around with this idea of knowing and understanding the power differential and really the role we all play in that. We need to acknowledge whether the role that we play is based on relationship, of what I am proposing as the ‘middle ground’, which is a theoretical space of negotiation, or whether it is based on power and ego. When we acknowledge the power differential, we are thinking about what we are contributing to that. We allow ourselves to have insights into our ways of being — to be trauma informed (or healing centred) for some of our people because their behaviours and actions speak volumes of childhood adversity, so that we don’t so easily fall into the trap of pathologising people from our power and/or ego driven role. We need to self-regulate — to demonstrate that even though we are able to get elevated on some issues, or muffled on others— that we can engage and negotiate from the middle ground. Being part of a kaupapa Māori community organisation, we get typecast — like we only know kaupapa Māori and not a lot else. It can be extremely hard to establish a relationship with someone who unfortunately looks down their noses at you. So this is where I start to think about how to change this dynamic — always with a method to the madness. It reminds me of playing a game of poker where the person shows me their three queens and tells me, yes I’m a qualified such and such, and because I know I have to force the issue I let them take a peek at what I’m playing with, and then we get to reset the game, into what I call the middle ground, which is the place where we can engage with each other in relationship and not through the power differential. True story (again, unfortunately).
I don’t always get it right. Sometimes I know I’m engaging with someone myself from a position of power because I’m still on guard, and I’m not engaging in whakawhanaungatanga. This is what drives me to get back to establishing a relationship — because knowing who I am, and who I want to be in the world, and who they are through the sharing of story and connection, is humbling and mostly I feel grateful that I can relate to others on that level. This is why I am so appreciative of my family, who are my primary context for whakawhanaungatanga, and the reason why I always default back to relationship, and not power and ego.
There are thermal hot pools at Ngāwhā in Kaikohe in the North, and a pūrākau, a story about a taniwha (water creature/spirit/monster) that feeds the geothermal activity that provide for a number of different mineral hot pools looked after by the mana whenua, the local hapū there. What systemic thinking requires is that we not only have an experience of something, like a beautiful warm ngāwhā especially on a cold wet day. We also know how other people engage with the same experience, like the mana whenua of the area who will have a particularly different understanding than that of the many overseas tourists that flock to the place, than that of the Kiwis who enjoy the pools and the locals who come on a daily basis. Being able to engage with all of these stories reminds me that my worldview belongs to me, and that it is good to hear and share that with others in the spirit of whakawhanaungatanga. Systemic thinking is not only about the experience, but it’s about what that experience is built on — and that there are multiple ways to experience things that ground us in identity and heritage. Following on from one beautiful spot, is another one that I grew up with, which is the maunga (mountain) Taranaki. Throughout my childhood, I thought of our maunga as being perfectly shaped, a little bit like Japan’s Mount Fuji. It wasn’t until going on car trips around the maunga that it began to dawn on me that my perspective was only one perspective of it, and because I’ve had the experience of driving right around it and flying over it countless numbers of times now, I know this maunga changes from nearly every angle. We all relate to the mountain in a different way, and knowing your perspective in relation to others perspective is about understanding things in a systemic way.
Systemic thinking really is about understanding your own story, or, ko wai au? Who am I? This is done so that you may know others, ko wai koe? Ko wai koutou? What I’ve really been getting at is something Hirini Moko Mead so eloquently expresses, and something I’ve been stumbling through on my own journey through this piece of writing about systemic thinking and understanding the relationship between all things through whakawhanaungatanga. Hirini Moko Mead talks about te whānuitanga — our knowledge is continually being shaped by our ability to extend on it, thus expanding outwards. It also transcends the space-time continuum, so that we may know ourselves in relation to our ancestors, our tūpuna who ground us in our identity aligned to te hōhonutanga and the deeper meanings we are able to access because of that and so many other things that connect us to knowledge. Finally, seeing the stretched out horizon, being in touch with ones feelings and the mauri (life-force) of things that culminates in te maramatanga, which is that ‘aha!’ moment, that ‘tihei!’ moment — a moment of transformation. So knowledge is part of the magic, and wanting to know is part of the systemic doing and actioning.
No reira, I hope that you’ve been able to see things from a different perspective, and that by the light of the marama (moon) we get to experience those aha!/tihei! moments where we just let ourselves go with the mauri. My family and our tamariki — sons, daughters, nieces, nephews are the reason why I am invested in systemic thinking. This is also their birth right and legacy — to know that they belong to a whakapapa because they know who they are and where they are from, and we get to experience all of that together as a whānau — a truly humbling and enriching experience for us all.
Tūturu ka whakamaua kia tina, tina, haumi e, hui e, tāiki e!
