Forty years on from my 1985 Fulbright Grant, my disquiet over the war in Gaza evoked some troubling questions.

The answer to my first question – What is the primary purpose of the Fulbright Programme? – was on the Fulbright NZ website. It says:

The Fulbright programme was established in 1946 as an initiative of US Senator J. William Fulbright, to promote mutual understanding through educational and cultural exchanges between the US and other countries. Informed by his own exchange experience as a Rhodes Scholar, Senator Fulbright believed the programme could play an important role in building a lasting world peace in the aftermath of World War II.

The Fulbright Programme has been described as one of the largest and most significant movements of scholars across the face of the earth and now operates in over 155 countries, funding around 8,000 exchanges per year for participants to study, research, teach or present their work in another country.

In Senator Fulbright’s words, the programme aims “to bring a little more knowledge, a little more reason, and a little more compassion into world affairs and thereby to increase the chance that nations will learn at last to live in peace and friendship.” This goal has always been as important to the programme as individual scholarship. (ref. https://fulbright.org.nz/ )

My next question was: If Senator Fulbright really did say that, why isn’t the international Fulbright community in an uproar over the anti-Palestinian war-mongering being pursued by the USA, Israel, Germany and the UK? They’re all Fulbright countries, but instead of working for peace they’re faciliating genocide by supplying arms and ammunition for the war in Gaza.

After finding no answer to that question, my inner protester told me to speak out, and my inner editor told me to check my sources first. So after scrolling through scores of unsourced quotes, I took my search for reliable sources to Dunedin second hand bookshops – and found a treasure.

The Arrogance of Power by J. William Fulbright, Chairman of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was published by Jonathan Cape in 1967. Here are some quotes:

Having done so much and succeeded so well, America is now at that historical point at which a great nation is in danger of losing its perspective on what exactly is within the realm of its power and what is beyond it. Other great nations, reaching this critical juncture, have aspired to too much, and by overextention of effort have declined and then fallen.

The causes of the malady are not entirely clear but its recurrence is one of the uniformities of history: power tends to confuse itself with virtue and a great nation is peculiarly susceptible to the idea that it’s power is a sign of God’s favour, conferring upon it a special responsibility for other nations — to make them richer and happier and wiser, to remake them, that is, in its own shining image. Power confuses itself with virtue and tends also to take itself for omnipotence. Once imbued with the idea of a mission, a great nation easily assumes that it has the means as well as the duty to do God’s work. The Lord, after all, surely would not choose you as His agent and then deny you the sword with which to work His will. German soldiers in the First World War wore belt buckles imprinted with the words “Gutt mit uns [God is with us].” It was approximately under this kind of infatuation — an exaggerated sense of power and an imaginary sense of mission — that the Athenians attacked Syracuse and Napoleon and then Hitler invaded Russia. In plain words, they overextended their commitments and they came to grief.

The stakes are high indeed: they include not only America’s continued greatness but nothing less than the survival of the human race in an era when, for the first in history, a living generation has the power of veto over the survival of the next.

When the abstractions and subtleties of political science have been exhausted, there remains the most basic unanswered questions about war and peace and why nations contest the issues they contest and why they even care about them. As Aldous Huxley has written:

There may be arguments about the best way of raising wheat in a cold climate or of reafforesting a denuded mountain. But such arguments never lead to organised slaught. Organised slaughter is the result of arguments about such questions as the following: Which is the best nation? The best religion? The best political theory? The best form of government? Why are other people so stupid and wicked? Why can’t they see how good and intelligent we are? Why do they resist our beneficent efforts to bring them under our control and make them like ourselves?

Many of the wars fought by man — I am tempted to say most — have been fought over such abstraction. The more I puzzle over the great wars of history, the more I am inclined to the view that the causes attributed to them — territory, markets, resources, the defence or perpetuation of great principles — were not the root cause at all but rather explanations or excuses for certain unfathomable drives of human nature. For lack of a clear and precise understanding of exactly what these motives are, I refer to them as the “arrogance of power”— as a psychological need that nations seem to have in order to prove that they are bigger, better, or stronger than other nations. Implicit in this drive is the assumption, even on the part of normally peaceful nations, that force is the ultimate proof of superiority — that when a nation shows that it has the stronger army, it is also proving that is has better people, better institutions, better priciples, and in general, a better civilisation.

Evidence for my proposition is found in the remarkable discrepancy between apparent and hidden causes of some modern wars…

The United States went to war in 1898 for the stated purpose of liberating Cuba from Spanish tyranny, but after winning the war — a war which Spain had been willing to pay a high price to avoid — the United States brought the liberated Cubans under an American protectorate and incidentally annexed the Philippines, because, according to President McKinley, the Lord told him it was America’s duty “to educate the Filipinos and uplift and civilize and Cristianize them, and by God’s grace do the very best we could by them, as fellowmen for who Christ also died.”

Isn’t it interesting that the voice was the voice of the Lord but the words were those of Theordore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge, and Admiral Mahan, those “imperialists of 1898” who wanted America to have an empire just because a big powerful country like America ought to have an empire? The spirit of the times was expressed by Albert Beveridge, soon thereafter elected to the United States Senate, who proclaimed Americans to be “a conquering race;” “We must obey our blood and occupy new markets and if necessary new lands,” he said, because “In the Almighty’s infinite plan . . . debased civilisations and decaying races” must disappear “before the higher civilisations of the nobler and more virile type of man.”

Christina Dawa Kutsmana Thomas is on a mission to save her indigenous language from extinction. There are only eight people from her reservation in the state of Nevada who are fluent in Numu Yadooana — Northern Paiute, and they’re aged 70+.

“I feel like I’m under immense pressure. If I don’t do this, then who will? My people have become assimilated into modern life and we have to face the harsh reality that few people speak our language,” she says.

“It’s harder for my people to have a language renaissance because there are so many different tribes in America — 574. That’s 574 completely different languages, cultures, and histories.”

Thomas has spent the last eight months in New Zealand as a US Fullbright Scholar, attending kohanga reo, kura kaupapa, and classes at the University of Auckland, to observe and understand how te reo is being taught.

It’s been an eye-opening experience compared to how indigenous languages are treated in the US, she says.

“It’s hard for people to find time to learn our language, it’s a struggle to get people to attend community classes or seek it out on their own. We also don’t have resources, books, or a strong curriculum that ensures fluency for new language speakers.

“I feel grounded being in Aotearoa because I can see the support and the love for te reo and Māori culture, and it gives me the reassurance that I can do this.”

Growing up not speaking
Thomas grew up on the Pyramid Lake Paiute Reservation in Wadsworth, Nevada. Although it was a close-knit community, their Native language was discouraged from being spoken at home.

“My grandmother’s first language was Paiute, but she didn’t speak it to her own children, and discouraged my great-grandma to teach it to my mom. I then in turn grew up not speaking.

“At this time, Native people in the US were discouraged to speak their language and were trying to blend in with society in order to save their children from ridicule and racist remarks.”

Thomas was in her 20s and attending the University of Nevada in Reno when she came across an elder from her tribe who was teaching Paiute language classes at the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony.

“I grew up on a reservation and I knew my tribal affiliations but I did not know my history or the language. I started going to language classes and caught on quickly.”

Driving force
She was encouraged to take one-on-one lessons and found a new passion. Thomas has since been a teacher of the Paiute language in public high schools, a language consultant, and instructor for her tribe. She was the driving force behind the Paiute language being established as the first Indigenous language course at the University of Nevada.

For the past decade, Thomas has also been involved in Native arts and language regeneration projects. She was set to study to become an orthodontist, but her passion for language revitalisation and her culture made her change careers.

She enrolled to study to earn a PhD in Native American Studies at the University of California in the city of Davis.

She spent two weeks in New Zealand in 2018 as an undergraduate student conducting research on te reo, visiting language nests, primary, secondary, and tertiary schools.

In 2019, Christina returned to present her research at the University of Waikato for the Native American Indigenous Studies Association yearly international conference. She vowed then that she would be back for an extended period to focus and observe further about language regeneration.

Thomas returned to Aotearoa in February 2023 and will be flying home at the end of this month.

“New Zealand is known for its revitalisation of the te reo Māori. I had previously made connections here, so I knew that whānau would be able to help place me into schools and spaces for me to observe and learn.”

20 percent “native speakers”
Until World War II, most Māori spoke their te reo as their first language. But by the 1980s, fewer than 20 percent of Māori spoke the language well enough to be classed as native speakers.

In response, Māori leaders initiated Māori language recovery-programs such as the kōhanga reo movement, which started in 1982 and immersed infants in Māori from infancy to school age.

In 1989, official support was given for kura kaupapa Māori-primary and secondary Māori-language immersion schools.

The Māori Language Act 1987 was passed as a response to the Waitangi Tribunal finding that the Māori language was a taonga, a treasure or valued possession, under the Treaty of Waitangi and the Act gave te reo Māori official language status.

“I’d love to see everything that has been accomplished here in Aotearoa happen back home in my community,” Thomas says.

“My dream after I complete my PhD is to go home and open our very own kohanga reo.”

Thomas says what she has observed in New Zealand has been invaluable and will carry with her for the rest of her life.

“I’ve seen how teachers and kura are working towards Māori-based learning, by, with and for Māori.”

Trans-indigenous connection
“There’s a trans-indigenous connection. Our language is connected to our land and our ancestors by our songs, languages and stories. The beliefs we have as Indigenous people are connected and similar in so many ways.”

Throughout this journey, Thomas has brought her seven-year-old son, Jace Naki’e, along for the experience.

“I was really excited for him to be able to go to school here and have this experience. He loves kapa haka and learning about Māori culture. He’s also been able to share his culture in return.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

By Simon Smith

Guled Mire says his new Fulbright NZ scholarship to study at an Ivy League university in the United States sends a strong message to other refugee kids that they can believe in themselves.

The policy adviser and advocate for ethnic communities graduated from Auckland University of Technology with a Bachelor of Arts in 2013, majoring in international studies and policy.

Now he will take up his award, initially studying online, at Cornell University after being awarded a Fulbright General Graduate Award.

READ MORE: Guled Mire’s mission is to improve lives for migrants and refugees in NZ

“Getting this Fulbright scholarship means a lot. Growing up, I was a high school dropout and since I was young I’ve had messages instilled in me telling me I was not good enough for university,” Mire says.

“It sends a strong message to other refugee kids growing up in the country that they too can do it. I’m really excited to be helping to help shape and inspire the next generation of youth who are growing up in this country.”

Guled says New Zealand likes to consider itself as a country that is free of bias and discrimination.

“Perhaps it’s not as overt and open as it is in places overseas, but when you start to dig deeper you start to realise that isn’t the case,” he says.

“I want to look at that and I want to explore how that informs the narratives around discourse, around race, ethnicity and so forth – and I want to actually influence our policy direction.”

Academic success not a given
Mire’s path to academic success was not a given, however.

As a toddler he fled from Somalia to Kenya with his mother and eight siblings, where they spent time in a refugee camp. Four years later, Guled’s family was fortunate to resettle in New Zealand.

Escaping Somalia’s civil war was lifesaving, but the relocation to Hamilton presented new battles for the youngster in the form of racism and negative stereotypes.

Chased by skinheads and told by school teachers that university was not a place for people like him, Mire says he began to internalise these negative messages and wider societal stereotypes of people from refugee and ethnically-diverse backgrounds.

“Those messages that were relayed to me when I was growing up impacted on me, in terms of having confidence in my own abilities,” he says.

“I want young kids to see my success and, I hope, believe in their own abilities – regardless of those negative messages passed down, either unintentionally or intentionally.”

His thinking changed when he later visited Africa again. The trip instilled a new sense of inspiration and he returned to New Zealand and attended AUT.

Education opened doors and opportunities. He developed a keen interest for research and became involved in a highly-publicised study with AUT Associate Professor Camille Nakhid, the chair of the Pacific Media Centre advisory board, on African youth experiences with the New Zealand police and within the justice system.

Mire went on to spend years as a senior public policy adviser in the public service, as well as volunteering in community and governance roles.

“It sends a strong message to other refugee kids growing up in the country that they too can do it. I’m really excited to be helping to help shape and inspire the next generation of youth who are growing up in this country.”

In 2017, Mire co-founded Third Culture Minds with Veena Patel, a non-profit organisation dedicated to advancing positive mental health and wellbeing outcomes for ethnic youth in Aotearoa.

Third Culture Minds recently launched a three-episode mini-documentary series, with the support of the Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand.

Simon Smith is a writer for AUT News.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz