Search

When researchers want to study indigenous populations they are dependent upon the highly variable way in which states or territories enumerate, categorise and differentiate indigenous people. In this volume, anthropologists, historians, demographers and sociologists have come together for the first time to examine the historical and contemporary construct of indigenous people in a number of fascinating geographical contexts around the world, including Canada, the United States, Colombia, Russia, Scandinavia, the Balkans and Australia. Using historical and demographical evidence, the contributors explore the creation and validity of categories for enumerating indigenous populations, the use and misuse of ethnic markers, micro-demographic investigations, and demographic databases, and thereby show how the situation varies substantially between countries.

Studies of multiethnic families often assume the ethnic identification of children with the minority group results from the minority parent. This study examines an alternate view that mainstream parents also play an important role in transmitting minority ethnicity. It explores this argument using data from New Zealand on the ethnic labels mothers assign to their Maori-European children. It finds that European mothers are just as disposed as Maori mothers to designate their child as Maori, either exclusively or in combination. Two explanations, grounded in ethnic awareness and gendered inheritance, are proposed. Although neither satisfactorily predicts maternal designation decisions, the readiness of European mothers to identify their child as Maori underscores their role in diffusing Maori ethnicity.

The current model of ethical governance in research involving humans in the social sciences and humanities relies on prospective ethics review in ensuring that research in conducted ethically. One of its key features is distrust to researchers and their initiatives regardless of the subject matter, discipline, research methodology or settings, sources of funding, or researcher's experience. This article discusses the New Brunswick Declaration on Research Ethics adopted by the participants of the Ethics Rupture: Alternatives to Research-Ethics Review Summit in 2013. In particular, it provides background for the regulatory capture of the social sciences by the biomedical institutions of ethics review. It concludes by examining the limitations of the Declaration, and offers a set of principles for the development of the New Brunswick Declaration following its discussion at the Ethics in Practice: Tensions around Ethics Review and Maori Consultation Conference at the University of Otago in Dunedin in May 2015.

Using indigenous citizenship as a frame, the article examines the deeply ambiguous effects of globalisation for indigenous peoples in the Antipodes. We demonstrate that processes of economic globalisation have had an impact upon New Zealand Maori and Australian Aboriginals in ways that have heightened their vulnerability and undermined their citizenship entitlements. However, we also argue that Maori and Aboriginal peoples have used the reforms of state practice brought about by globalisation to gain greater control over their existence.

Reforms of local government legislation in the United Kingdom (2000) and in New Zealand (2002) both introduced well-being powers. The UK reform gave local government a new power to promote social, economic and environmental well-being, but New Zealand added a fourth dimension - cultural well-being. This paper examines the background to New Zealand's 'quadruple bottom line' approach. It explains that it was the result of policymakers in New Zealand grappling for 25 years with the question of how to give effect to what the Town and Country Planning Act 1977 described as 'the relationship of the Maori people and their culture and traditions with their ancestral lands'. New Zealand's legislation requires a fully integrated approach by decision-makers using the well-being power, and the essay concludes with a discussion of how this has provided a forum for contests and compromises over cultural well-being to take place within a framework of democratic local decision-making by communities.

This report is the result of 252 hui between 2012 and 2015. The Working Group was established at a meeting of the Iwi Chairs’ Forum in 2010 with Terms of Reference: “To develop and implement a model for an inclusive Constitution for Aotearoa based on tikanga and kawa, He Whakaputanga o te Rangatiratanga o Niu

Māori land data produced through colonial systems of dispossession lack interoperability, preventing kin-based communities from tracking their land. Our novel approach to repatriate and harmonise historic land data traces the history of the 45,500 acre Opuatia Block allocated to hapū Ngāti Tiipa in 1866, following the confiscation of 1.2 million acres of Waikato land. Ngāti Tiipa resisted Crown and settler pressures for 30 years, but 80% of Opuatia was alienated within a decade. We discuss the devastation of ‘judicial raupatu’ and the implications of this work for hapū data sovereignty and wider international efforts to achieve Indigenous data sovereignty.

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 the last decade iwi have begun to shift their focus from challenging the state to developing internal capacity. In so doing, the need for accurate, relevant data on iwi populations has been amplified. Using Waikato-Tainui as a case study, we examine the potential gaps between the statistical needs of iwi in a postsettlement context and the official data available to them. Our analysis uses two time points: 1996, shortly after the raupatu settlement, and 2006, the most recent census. Comparing data from the Waikato-Tainui register with those from the 1996 and 2006 censuses, we find significant variation in the parameters and characteristics of Waikato-Tainui in official statistics versus the tribe’s own register. We discuss some of the implications of these gaps and suggest ways in which the statistical needs of iwi could be better met. Our key recommendation is that the existing iwi question in the census be expanded to prompt for tribal registration status. This change would better align official data with the concept of membership used by iwi authorities and yield data that are more relevant for their policy and planning needs.

In 2007, the UN General Assembly endorsed the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. In the following years, there has been a strong call from a range United Nations agencies and spokespersons for countries to act to improve their statistics relating to Indigenous peoples as part of their response to the Declaration. These calls have emphasised the need for a holistic approach, describing strengths and resilience of Indigenous peoples and not just a focus on gaps and disadvantage. National responses have been mixed and overall statistics remain inadequate. Significantly, there has been no international statistical effort through the United Nations statistical structures to respond to the Declaration and the increasing array of calls for improved statistics. The United Nations Statistical Commission in particular has an array of mechanisms to study statistical needs and develop solutions across a broad international statistical agenda. It is time for countries to make a concerted effort to improve their own statistics on Indigenous peoples, and to insist that the Statistical Commission work in partnership with the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues and other stakeholders to lead a major international drive to improve statistics on and for Indigenous peoples.

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.