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Te Pati Māori (The Māori Party) proposes removing the British monarch as head of state so that Te Tiriti o Waitangi’s (the Māori text of the Treaty of Waitangi) (Te Tiriti) promise of fulfilling partnership may be realized. The ACT (Association of Consumers and Taxpayers) Party’s alternative argument is that partnership is among a body of treaty principles that give Māori people (Indigenous peoples of New Zealand) political advantage over others. These alternative perspectives transcend time because neither partnership nor equality as the ACT party presents it meets the possibilities of liberal democratic citizenship that may be read into Te Tiriti. Instead, equality is enhanced by interpreting Te Tiriti as constituting a commonwealth with hapū (sub-tribes) as existing political communities, and kāwanatanga (government) as a new one, with powers and responsibilities grounded in equal tikanga (cultural practices and proper conduct). The powers of government may then be shared, through participatory parity.

During the 1980s and 1990s biculturalism was the ascendant political philosophy for managing the relationship between the New Zealand Crown and the indigenous Maori population. Biculturalism understood Maori politics as a partnership between Maori and the state, grounded in the Treaty of Waitangi, the agreement signed in 1840 from which British government was established. Biculturalism was presented as morally superior to multiculturalism which was understood as setting aside Maori Treaty rights and rights of prior occupancy in favour of less substantive rights available to Maori as one of many ethnic minorities. However, a deeper reading of multicultural political theory provides an instructive critique of biculturalism's inherent limits from the perspective of the Maori right to self-determination. It shows why biculturalism's influence waned. It also shows why Matike Mai o Aotearoa, a blueprint for constitutional transformation commissioned by tribal leaders is unlikely to succeed as a contemporary attempt to reassert biculturalism's influence. Multicultural theory is not a panacea for the right to self-determination, but it does not restrict the development of a broader Maori-centred differentiated liberal citizenship in the ways that biculturalism precludes.

This article draws on the politics of indigeneity to distinguish the claims of first occupancy from simple ethnic identity politics, illustrating that relative political marginalization in Australasia is not so much a function of minority status but of indigeneity itself. The politics of indigeneity's aim is to create political space for self-determination and a particular indigenous share in the sovereign authority of the nation-state itself. The Australasian states are compared with Fiji to demonstrate that the significance of historical constraints on political authority transcend the withdrawal of a colonial power and the restoration of collective indigenous majority population status.

In 2004 the appointment of a Coordinating Minister Race Relations, signalled a shift in elite Maori policy thinking from a long-standing cautious bipartisan acceptance of self-determination towards a re-emergent assimilationist 'one law' for all discourse. The question simplistically posed by the Leader of the Opposition was should welfare entitlements be granted on the basis of need or race? (Brash 2004). Beneath this question lies an ideological assumption which privileges assimilation over indigeneity as the basis of Maori participation in public affairs. This paper therefore asks: are Maori peoples with rights, or individuals with needs? Is there a deeper politics of indigeneity providing a legitimate foundation for rights which are not necessarily superior to the rights of citizenship, but are important and distinguishable adjuncts? These questions transcend the issue of welfare entitlements to wider questions about the nature and terms of Maori belonging to the liberal polity. The paper highlights the political tension between government attempts to remove indigeneity from the public agenda in response to populist pressure and a pragmatic acceptance that New Zealand 'needs' Maori to increase their contribution to the national economy and that the realisation of this goal may in fact depend on the fuller citizenship imagined by the politics of indigeneity.

This paper demonstrates that the philosophical premises underlying biculturalism and self-determination lead to different conclusions about where power properly resides with respect to Crown/Maori relations in New Zealand. It is argued that biculturalism is not the panacea for the realisation of legitimate Maori aspirations that has been assumed by both Maori and Pakeha policy elites over the past twenty years because it makes assumptions about power relationships which limit greater degrees of Maori autonomy ' one step towards self-determination is permitted, but the next prevented. Biculturalism can not realise greater autonomy because it is concerned primarily with relationships among people in institutional settings and within and among bureaucratic institutions. Therefore it is less likely to meet Maori aspirations than self-determination which is concerned with creating, to the greatest extent possible, independence and autonomy for groups, not necessarily in isolation from wider society, but certainly apart from controls and regulations imposed from outside the would be self-determining community. Self-determination locates power, at least to some extent, within traditional Maori social units, while biculturalism, although assuming a sharing of power, inevitably gives Maori the status of junior partner in a project designed to modify state institutions to make them more responsive to Maori interests. While in itself this is advantageous to Maori, biculturalism is not a substitute for the affirmation of traditional social structures as the central point in a Maori quest for greater independence from an historically intrusive state.

BackgroundTe Tiriti o Waitangi was negotiated between the British Crown and Indigenous Māori leaders of Aotearoa New Zealand in 1840. Māori understood the agreement as an affirmation of political authority and a guarantee of British protection of their lands and resources. The Crown understood it as a cession of sovereignty. The tension remains, though legal and political developments in the last 35 years, have established that the agreement places a mandatory obligation on the Crown to protect and promote Māori health. It also requires that Māori may exercise rangatiratanga, or responsibility and authority, in relation to health policy development and implementation.MethodsTe Tiriti is, then, an instrument against which health policy is justly and efficaciously evaluated. This paper introduces critical Tiriti analysis as such an evaluative method. Critical Tiriti analysis involves reviewing policy documents against the Preamble and the Articles of te Tiriti o Waitangi. The review process has five defined phases: (i) orientation; (ii) close reading; (iii) determination; (iv) strengthening practice and (v) Māori final word.ResultsWe present a working example of critical Tiriti analysis using the New Zealand Government’s Primary Health Care Strategy published in 2001. This policy analysis found poor alignment with te Tiriti overall and the indicators of its implementation that we propose.ConclusionThis paper provides direction to policy makers wanting to improve Māori health outcomes and ensure Māori engagement, leadership and substantive authority in the policy process. It offers an approach to analysing policy that is simple to use and, inherently, a tool for advancing social justice.

Te Tiriti o Waitangi, a treaty negotiated between Māori (the Indigenous peoples of Aotearoa) and the British Crown, affirmed Māori sovereignty and guaranteed the protection of hauora (health). The Waitangi Tribunal, established in 1975 to investigate alleged breaches of the agreement, released a major report in 2019 (registered as WAI 2575) about breaches of te Tiriti within the health sector in relation to primary care, legislation, and health policy. This article explores the implications of this report for the New Zealand health sector and the decolonial transformation of health systems. The tribunal found that the Crown has systematically contravened obligations under te Tiriti across the health sector. We complement the tribunal’s findings, through critical analysis, to make five substantive recommendations: (1) the adoption of Tiriti-compliant legislation and policy; (2) recognition of extant Māori political authority (tino rangatiratanga); (3) strengthening of accountability mechanisms; (4) investment in Māori health; and (5) embedding equity and anti-racism within the health sector. These recommendations are critical for upholding te Tiriti obligations. We see these requirements as making significant contributions to decolonizing health systems and policy in Aotearoa and thereby contributing to aspirations for health equity as a transformative concept.

The British relied on the legal fiction known as the Doctrine of Discovery to dispossess Māori of Aotearoa New Zealand and the Indigenous Peoples of Canada, the United States and Australia and to violently take over their territories. British colonisation continues to severely disadvantage these Indigenous Peoples who have never given up their fight to recover their lands, resources, and power. This chapter draws on the work of Indigenous scholars to provide a very brief overview of just some of the methods adopted by the British to dispossess the Indigenous Peoples of Canada, the United States and Australia and the struggles in those countries to achieve land restitution. It then considers the situation for Māori in more detail. It provides an overview of the schemes the British dreamt up to steal Māori land and the steps Māori have taken as we tried to achieve land and resource restitution over the past century.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, settlers poured into Aotearoa demanding land. Millions of acres were acquired by the government or directly by settlers; or confiscated after the Land Wars.By 1891, when the Liberal government came to power, Maori retained only a fraction of their lands. And still the losses continued. For rangatira such as James Carroll, Wiremu Pere, Paora Tuhaere, Te Keepa Te Rangihiwinui, and many others, the challenges were innumerable. To stop further land loss, some rangatira saw parliamentary process as the mechanism; others pursued political independence.For over two decades, Maori men and women of outstanding ability fought hard to protect their people and their land. How those rangatira fared, and how they should be remembered, is the story of Maori political struggle during the Liberal era.

This article explores some of the key features of co-governance, or shared decision making, between Māori and the Crown. Co-governance models create the conditions for making better decisions by sharing decision making with Māori where Māori communities have a distinctive interest. Such models are able to draw on the distinctive experiences, knowledge and expertise that Māori communities can bring. Shared decision making enhances the legitimacy and durability of decisions by giving effect to rights under te Tiriti o Waitangi. The article also identifies some key principles of effective co-governance and provides some brief examples where shared decision making is being implemented to illustrate the range of situations in which such models are applicable.

New Zealand is a peaceful nation, but ongoing political tensions and inequities between Māori (the indigenous peoples of New Zealand) and Pākehā (the majority group of Europeans) persist as a result of its colonial history. Identifying ways to redress the enduring legacy of colonialism are therefore of critical importance. Accordingly, this paper examines data from 7017 Māori, as well as 37,233 Pākehā, to examine the impact of regional-level Pākehā warmth towards Māori on Māori support for progressive collective action. Results reveal that Pākehā warmth towards Māori varies markedly across 257 regional wards (regional units created for New Zealand electoral purposes). Moreover, multilevel modelling demonstrates that Pākehā warmth towards Māori at the region-level correlates positively with Māori identity and political efficacy at the individual level which, in turn, both correlate positively with collective action support. Collectively, these results demonstrate the impact of the broader social climate on social change, while identifying a previously-unknown facilitator of collective action support (namely, a broader context of warmth towards structurally disadvantaged groups).

Kaupapa Maori theory is broadly underpinned by a politics that has strategically promoted forms of cultural essentialism and oppositional political stances/power analyses, which have been useful to the revitalisation of culture and the assertion of rights and recognition. Although they serve Maori struggles, these positions often become less self-consciously strategic, and more often lead to accepted political orthodoxy. At the same time, Kaupapa Maori has asserted the importance of theory developed from indigenous - Maori ways of thinking and acting. In this article I contribute to such a project by reflecting on Maori cultural ethics and what they might offer to theorising social and political relations beyond the oppositional colonised-coloniser binary. With particular reference to the work of Emmanuel Levinas, I argue that Maori orientations suggest an imperative to relationship - not opposition, and to responsibility for others - not simply the assertion of rights claims. A politics informed by Maori cultural ethics glimpses a different, certainly riskier, but ultimately more radical and productive politics.

Different participatory mechanisms for the representation of Indigenous peoples have been proposed across states. Since their creation in 1867, the Māori electorates in the national Parliament have led to dedicated representation for Māori (Indigenous peoples of New Zealand). However, only half of Māori choose to vote on the Māori roll, the remainder choosing to vote on the General roll, illustrating that roll choice is not based simply on group representation. This survey aimed to ask Māori (N = 1,958) in their own words why they made their roll choice. Through a deductive codebook thematic analysis, a range of codes were constructed around the reasoning behind roll choice. Māori on the Māori roll made their choice because they valued Māori representation; as an expression of their identity; to support the electorates; as a strategic choice; or they had been influenced by others or through education. Those on the General roll felt their roll was the default or a more familiar option; the Māori roll had less of an impact; it was a strategic choice, or they appreciated greater candidate variety; or they valued the smaller geographic electorate size. Some felt Māori no longer needed separate representation or felt less connected to their identity as Māori. The results have implications for both Māori and Indigenous representation through dedicated representational mechanisms.

When Jane Mansbridge’s (1999) article was first submitted, more than 80% of the world’s parliaments featured less than 20% women (IPU 2015). Calculating the parliamentary presence of ethnic and cultural minorities and Indigenous peoples has proved more difficult (Protsyk 2010). This is despite the adoption of two United Nations Declarations, on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities (1992) and on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007. In Aotearoa New Zealand, the representation of women and Māori (the Indigenous peoples) was comparatively better than global averages. In 1996, 29% of parliamentarians were women and 14% were Māori. By 2020, these figures had increased to 48% and 21%, respectively, while in the cabinet, women made up 40% of ministers and Māori accounted for 25%. Reported as the country’s historically most diverse parliament and cabinet (Curtin 2020), it appears that both new (proportional representation) and old (reserved seats for Māori) institutional mechanisms had achieved near proportionality, and a heterogeneity of experiences, potentially enhancing opportunities for deliberation.