Search

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.

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.

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.

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 First World colonised nations such as Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia, population statistics form the evidentiary base for how Indigenous peoples are known and `managed' through state policy approaches. Yet, population statistics are not a neut

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.

Addressing Indigenous rights and interests in genetic resources has become increasingly challenging in an open science environment that promotes unrestricted access to genomic data. Although Indigenous experiences with genetic research have been shaped by a series of negative interactions, there is increasing recognition that equitable benefits can only be realized through greater participation of Indigenous communities. Issues of trust, accountability and equity underpin Indigenous critiques of genetic research and the sharing of genomic data. This Perspectives article highlights identified issues for Indigenous communities around the sharing of genomic data and suggests principles and actions that genomic researchers can adopt to recognize community rights and interests in data.

Governments in multicultural democracies are increasingly being challenged to justify the collection of ethnic and racial data, and the targeted policies they support. Given mounting opposition to ethnicbased policies in New Zealand, it is timely to consider two questions that have arisen from ongoing debate. The first is what criteria ought to apply to determine who is Mäori for policy purposes. The second is which Mäori ought to benefit from targeted policies and programmes. This paper addresses both questions empirically and makes two suggestions: (1) that statistical and legal definitions of Mäori be amended to take account of both self-identified ethnicity and descent; (2) that programmes which seek to militate Mäori disadvantage be oriented towards those who strongly identify as Mäori, since they are the most likely to be in need.

Is this the springboard for a bigger resurgence in 2023?

In 2014, the Internet Mana alliance unsuccessfully ran in the New Zealand general election gaining just 1.42% of the party vote and failing to secure an electorate seat. The leaders of the alliance attributed their poor election result to the narratives constructed by the mainstream media, which they believed negatively influenced the public?s perception of Internet Mana. This study agrees that the mainstream media was complicit in the alliance?s poor election result, and drawing upon the discourse dynamics framework for metaphor analysis, it shows how these potentially damaging public narratives were predominantly constituted through complex sets of systematic metaphors which together created broader schematic frames or conceptual scenarios and carried certain evaluative and attitudinal perceptions. This analysis shows how systematic metaphors such as the internet mana alliance is a marriage of convenience and the internet mana alliance is a colonial trade were used to construct a negative public narrative.

In the run-up to the 2017 General Election, the economy, housing, health, education, inequality and justice were important policy issues. General Elections are a time when voters exercise their democratic right to vote for their preferred party and parliamentary candidate to represent themselves, their whānau and community. In many cases, political parties’ policies seek to improve the wellbeing of people who are living in more deprived communities, but people in deprived communities are typically less likely to vote. The recently released New Zealand Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) enables users to explore deprivation in electorates across the country. This paper compares the distribution of deprivation and voter turnout across a selection of General Electoral Districts (GEDs) and demonstrates that while overall patterns of deprivation may be similar between GEDs, the drivers of these patterns can differ immensely.

Colonisation has deeply harmed Maori communities, seriously and consistently undermining their vitality, aspirations and potentials, particularly since the 1860s, at inestimable cost to the entire nation. The British arrival in Aotearoa commenced a relationship between two very different peoples that has profoundly influenced their distinct and collective fortunes ever since. Despite manifest breaches of te Tiriti o Waitangi, this relationship has centred settler interests ensuring that Maori sovereignty has been displaced in favour of colonial hegemony, entrenching longstanding, preventable inequities in health and other important domains of social life. In this paper we trace some broad indicators of relational health and wellbeing in Aotearoa and consider how Maori thinking about whenua, health and wellbeing might lead healing opportunities for people and whenua. We outline ways in which a unified, dynamic, relational Maori concept based on whenua as the determinant of health could contribute. We believe this could expand, strengthen and revitalise prevention, protection and promotion approaches, to counter the injustices of colonisation, contribute toward health equity and move toward just, sustainable shared futures for the benefit of all New Zealanders.