21/04/2026
Carl Mika: 'Wai' and it's Māori disposition.
22 April • 6:30 - 8pm
📍The Showroon Gallery, 63 Penfold St,
NW8 8PQ
'Philosopher Carl Mika addresses the challenges that the Māori term ‘wai’ - which means both ‘who’ and ‘water’ – brings for colonised realities and for Māori discussions about things in the world.
‘Wai’ asks who or what someone or something is, whilst also – unusually for Western-trained minds– establishing ‘water’ as fundamental to that question. At the same time it works vice-versa: meaning that when ‘water’ is brought to mind, the question of identity – the ‘who’ of someone or something – coexists with that thought.
Ultimately Mika challenges us to rethink our relationship with language, the world as a whole, and ourselves if we are to do full justice to the question ‘ko wai koe’: ‘who are you’?
Carl Mika is from the Tuhourangi iwi and is Professor of Māori and Indigenous Philosophies and Head of School of Aotahi: School of Māori and Indigenous Studies at the University of Canterbury. His research focuses on Indigenous metaphysics and ontologies, particularly in relation to the effects of colonisation and philosophical reductionism.'
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