Seminar: An Uncomfortable History: Kiwi Indians and Exclusion
Free Seminar
An Uncomfortable History:
Kiwi Indians and Exclusion
Associate Professor Jacqueline Leckie
Stout Research Centre for New Zealand Studies
Victoria University of Wellington
Wednesday 8 July 2020, 3:30pm
Burns 5 Lecture Theatre, University of Otago
In collaboration with the New Zealand Indian Central Association, Associate Professor Leckie is producing a brief history of Indian exclusion and discrimination in Aotearoa. After the 15 March 2019 Christchurch mosque massacre, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern declared that this ‘is not us’. Yet the tragedy pointed to the presence of white extremism and tacit or unintentional support within Aotearoa. 15 March raised manifold questions about what it means to belong to an ethnic and religious minority in a country that has experienced a very long history of underlying prejudice and racism. This is not a history of celebration or integration, but outlines the discrimination Kiwi-Indians have faced, to recognise and address the nation’s uncomfortable history. It can be tempting to dismiss past anti-Asian rhetoric as crackpot, but it is too easy to sweep this history under the carpet, and to do the same with contemporary racism directed at Indians. Aotearoa’s legacy of exclusion towards Kiwi-Indians — sometimes overt but often in less sensational ways — problematises if the nation is genuinely inclusive.
This talk is co-hosted by the Centre for Global Migrations and History Programme at the University of Otago.
