114 ● Anaru Eketone and Shayne Walker
because they live in a settler-dominated society and by necessity have had to
learn Pākehā cultural conventions, theory, and practice. Most Māori expect
non-Māori to similarly be able to work biculturally: to work with knowledge
of Māori worldviews, key concepts, and practices.
True epistemological equality in terms of bicultural practice is already
being evidenced by the many Māori human service workers who competently
work biculturally with Pākehā. They are well versed in dominant Pākehā
language, culture, and social work practice. Māori human service workers
also need a certain amount of cultural literacy and fluency that relates to
other cultures. The people of different Pacific Island ethnicities (Fijian, Tongan,
Samoan, et cetera) all have their own languages, knowledge, social structures,
and protocols, and they resent being treated as if they were the same as Māori
(Faletolu 2010). We suggest that attaining cultural literacy for one culture
other than one’s own enhances one’s capacity for learning in any culture.
The critical issue is how human service workers’ positions with regard to
cultural literacy and fluency affect outcomes for the people with whom they
work. When workers refuse to learn and demonstrate cross-cultural knowl-
edge and skills, they use a “power-over” approach that results in domination
(Bishop 2002, 43). It may not be the worker’s intent, but clients can be left
feeling completely powerless because the worker is operating from a basis that
shares no commonality in terms of meaning-making frameworks (Waldegrave
2012). All people have power within: their own centeredness, their ground-
ing in their own beliefs, wisdom, knowledge, skills, culture, and community.
Power exercised cooperatively is “power-with” people (Bishop 2002, 43); this
develops our cultural literacy and fluency.
Bicultural practice sits within the suite of theories and models that chal-
lenge oppression (see chapter 2 for relevant frameworks for practice). Clients
often come with any number of features that may disadvantage them: being
poor, black, female, disabled, indigenous, and so on. To turn these features
into strengths, human service workers may need to ally themselves with
multiple oppressed groups. Bishop (2002) and Gibson (2014) discussed the
interconnectedness of oppressed groups and oppressor groups and proposed
an approach that could apply to all three of the worker/client configura-
tions described at the start of this discussion about bicultural positions—the
approach of being an “ally.” In the ally model of social justice (Gibson 2014),
an ally is one who can stand alongside someone from an oppressed group
(such as a different socioeconomic class, sexual orientation, or ethnicity) and
create a space where oppressed groups can be supported and where persons
from advantaged groups can participate genuinely and supportively, beyond
tokenism. According to Bishop (2002), understanding oppression and the
various types of oppression are the building blocks of becoming an ally. The