about

werte,

i am on a journey of reclaiming creativity from productivity. to do it i have borrowed a kupu from te reo Māori. specifically i’ve adopted ‘mahi’. creative mahi; something i commit to, that drives me, but which is not, strictly, work. the literal translation to english is ‘work’; but it means much more. like other Indigenous languages, it carries a relational requirement and mutual understanding.

my standpoint: i am an urbanised Aboriginal person, a descendant of colonial destruction of relationality from Arrarnta and Pashtun descent. my genealogy also carries the destructive kaupapa’s origin nations, as i’m a descendant of scottish, german, and cornish ancestries who invaded, or were displaced into, this place. but there is nuance to this too, enclosure and colonialism share a bloodline; and capitalism dominates all epistemologies now. we’re in this ride together.

i identify as queer (bisexual, genderfluid). i am diagnosed neurodivergent. i live with two diagnosed chronic illnesses (PTSD and fibromyalgia).

the capitalist world abused and rejected me for decades to the point where i can never return. so, instead of selling meaningless ‘achievements’, i hope my works here speak for themselves. because we share a time where the ‘labels’ which identity often carries beget bullying or lateral violence, i choose to be up front. with a disclaimer: bullies beware, i’m past it.

what does all this really tell you about me? very little. it might tick some diversity markers on a form, and if you’re on the lookout to do that before you engage someone’s creative mahi then there is more thinking to be done¹.

i was given the name aidan by my parents. i carried two surnames, each for a grandfather. this quietly erases my maternal lines and the names and stories they carry. still, this is not a space in which we can truly share a yarn and work out our commons². now i carry different names, you’ll find them if you look at my profile site, or just over there in the top left, one of these a descended name from my Aboriginal family, the other is a marital joining with tōku wahine.

Arlewatyerre is an adopted name. Elders of several countries of significance to my whakapapa have told me to follow goanna law/lore, and this has treated me well³. i have also come to totemic obligation with the white necked heron. these law fire my creativity and my thinking.

for about ten years i worked as an academic, in cultural studies, Indigenous studies, sociology, academic leadership and higher education; ending on leadership of an Indigenisation of curriculum project across two australian universities. i co-designed institution-wide programs, led the work of putting First Nations knowledges at the core of whole degrees, and supervised doctoral candidates.

i have left those worlds. i am not going back.

i share this experience, though, because it taught me that decolonising ‘the content’ changes nothing while the process and system stays colonised. so here i engage in a decolonial process, as well as output, i follow what is right by me and my mob; my family; and all those around me with whom i’m in relation.

so as a learner, philosopher, technologist, designer, creative, artist and writer turned loose, i create ‘stuff’. i am no expert, i am far from a godhead, and i will always be humbly learning. this is about all of that, the mess in between, the good stuff that comes from healing, and the bad stuff too.

so this is a place to share mahi that i hope provokes thought, or makes you wonder what (the living hell) i was thinking or feeling when it happened. i hope you’ll enjoy this, or at least become otherwise puzzled by it.

big love and gratitude to those walked this place before, and those custodians working in reciprocal relation with their whenua and Country with us now.

Footnotes

1. i don’t mean this to be disparaging, but to judge someone’s corpus on the identity markers they or you can ‘see’ is still just racism, sexism, and classism dressed for show. ↩

2. to be clear i’m open to a good yarn, so hit up ursa for contacts - honestly. ↩

3. since as young as 3 and a half i have been drawn to lizards, and at 4 i drew a goanna with an Aunty which shaped my thinking for decades. those that care to look deeply see goanna as totemic for me, and i adhere to them-all’s reads of this. ↩