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The politics and practice of counting: ethnicity in official statistics in Aotearoa/New Zealand was produced as part of a broader project funded by Te Kete Hauora, Ministry of Health to investigate issues with ethnicity data in New Zealand and the implications of these for the Māori health and disability sector. The paper is one in a series of topic-based discussion papers. It aims to summarise key literature on the measurement of the Māori population in official ethnic statistics over time as a background to the accompanying discussion papers.

The population census is a universal tool of governance but has come under increasing pressure as governments look to reduce costs, gain efficiencies and counter declining response rates. In Aotearoa New Zealand, the census transformation strategy has a short-term focus on modernising the census and a long-term vision of a fully administrative census. The digital-first 2018 Census was an ambitious step towards modernisation but there are growing concerns that it may fail to deliver high-quality data, particularly for Māori and iwi. This research note considers the implications of lower response rates and reflects on the steps that might be taken to retain the trust and confidence of Māori in the census, including possibilities for Māori data governance across the official statistics system.

Lana Simmons-Donaldson speaks to University of Auckland Associate Professor Donna Cormack about the dire state of Maori health inequity and her thoughts on the government's health sector reforms.

Comprehensive exploration of Māori experiences of discrimination in Aotearoa New Zealand remains limited, particularly in relation to exposure to multiple and interlocking forms of discrimination. This paper presents findings from a secondary analysis of Te Kupenga 2013, the first Māori Social Survey, examining patterning and prevalence of different forms of discrimination for Māori (n = 5,549). Māori report experiencing multiple forms of discrimination, both over their lifetimes and within the last year. Although racial discrimination was the most commonly reported form, Māori also experience discrimination on the basis of other grounds including age, gender, and income. Māori also report exposure to multiple forms of discrimination. Discrimination occurred in a range of settings, with schools and workplaces common sites. The findings support the lived reality of Māori that racial and other forms of discrimination are pervasive, and experienced in multiple domains across the life course, representing a persistent breach of rights. It is critical that other forms of discrimination are measured alongside racism in order to understand and address the realities of multiple discrimination for Māori in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Similar to experiences of Indigenous peoples globally, Māori in the nation-state known as New Zealand (NZ) have been subjected to mass incarceration by the colonial state. Places of detention are dangerous environments for the spread of COVID-19. We are deeply concerned about the potential for disproportionate impacts of COVID-19 on Māori and other Indigenous peoples within these environments as many have health conditions and/or multiple comorbidities compounding the risks of severe illness and death from COVID-19. We call for the NZ government to honour te Tiriti o Waitangi obligations and uphold Indigenous rights contained within the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and other international rights instruments. A whole-of-government commitment to an equitable public health approach is required to: 1) rapidly reduce the numbers of Māori in sites of detention; 2) implement effective, timely, evidenced informed measures to reduce the risk of COVID-19, in line with World Health Organization recommendations; 3) prevent the torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment of detained Māori during COVID-19; and, 4) eliminate double-celling. Although focused on NZ, the themes we highlight are likely of relevance for Indigenous peoples across the globe in our collective resistance to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Background and objectives:‘Race’ and ethnicity data have become increasingly institutionalised within health research about indigenous peoples. While these data are critical to monitoring the differential distribution of risks and benefits in racialised societies, their uncritical and under-theorised use can perpetuate harmful biologically-deterministic and essentialist approaches to indigenous health. Additionally, indigenous rights and interests in data about us are often overlooked, with issues of indigenous data governance unresolved. The workshop objectives are to: Develop skills to critique uncritical use of ‘race’/ethnicity in indigenous health researchProvide examples from Aotearoa/New Zealand of frameworks or principles of indigenous data sovereignty

In New Zealand, there are significant and long-standing inequalities in a range of health outcomes, risk factors and healthcare measures between Māori (indigenous peoples) and Pākehā (European). This study expands our understanding of racism as a determinant of such inequalities to examine the concept of socially-assigned ethnicity (how an individual is classified by others ethnically/racially) and its relationship to health and racism for Māori. There is some evidence internationally that being socially-assigned as the dominant ethnic group (in this case European) offers health advantage.

In Aotearoa New Zealand (Aotearoa NZ), Māori (the Indigenous peoples of New Zealand) have long been objects of surveillance by state institutions and agents. State representations have centred on constructions of difference and deviance, on understandings of Indigenous peoples as dangerous, and on the management of Indigenous resistance to colonialism. This chapter considers how contemporary state surveillance practices in Aotearoa NZ, enabled by the expanded use of big data and linked government datasets, function to regulate and manage Māori. Through this lens, we explore continuities of current data practices for Indigenous peoples with the racialised logics and social orders set in place as part of global systems of imperialism and colonialism. Recognising that resistance has always been a part of Indigenous responses to colonialism, we also explore how Māori Data Sovereignty (MDSov), as part of broader Indigenous Data Sovereignty (IDS) movements globally, provides opportunities to counter and disrupt prevailing data relations and to imagine alternative futures.

Indigenous Data Sovereignty (IDS) and Indigenous Data Governance (IDG) art terms increasingly being used across community, research, policy and in practice. The IDS movement has emerged in response to poor data practices, from the conceptualisation of data items through to reporting of data about Indigenous peoples. This chapter aims to provide clarity concerning the definitions of IDS and IDG; provide an overview of the historical context in which IDS has emerged; and provide examples of IDS and IDG across the spectrum of community, policy and practice.

Colonization fundamentally disrupted Indigenous knowledge systems, establishing epistemic hierarchies that privilege Eurocentric colonial epistemologies and methodologies. In this chapter, the authors explore how epistemic hierarchies are (re)produced in the current context of “big data” and datafication, in particular for mokopuna Māori in the nation-state known as New Zealand (NZ). (We use the concept of “mokopuna Māori” to refer to and position Māori babies, children, and young people within the Māori world as the sacred reflection of our ancestors and a blueprint for future generations.) The chapter then considers the possibilities for Indigenous epistemic justice in the “zone of nonbeing” or beyond the “abyssal line.”

This book examines how Indigenous Peoples around the world are demanding greater data sovereignty, and challenging the ways in which governments have historically used Indigenous data to develop policies and programs. In the digital age, governments are increasingly dependent on data and data analytics to inform their policies and decision-making. However, Indigenous Peoples have often been the unwilling targets of policy interventions and have had little say over the collection, use and application of data about them, their lands and cultures. At the heart of Indigenous Peoples’ demands for change are the enduring aspirations of self-determination over their institutions, resources, knowledge and information systems. With contributors from Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand, North and South America and Europe, this book offers a rich account of the potential for Indigenous data sovereignty to support human flourishing and to protect against the ever-growing threats of data-related risks and harms.

Global disease trackers quantifying the size, spread, and distribution of COVID-19 illustrate the power of data during the pandemic. Data are required for decision-making, planning, mitigation, surveillance, and monitoring the equity of responses. There are dual concerns about the availability and suppression of COVID-19 data; due to historic and ongoing racism and exclusion, publicly available data can be both beneficial and harmful. Systemic policies related to genocide and racism, and historic and ongoing marginalization, have led to limitations in quality, quantity, access, and use of Indigenous Peoples' COVID-19 data. Governments, non-profits, researchers, and other institutions must collaborate with Indigenous Peoples on their own terms to improve access to and use of data for effective public health responses to COVID-19.