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This article brings perspectives from three Māori activists, each promoting issues of self-determination in different ways. It centres on tino rangatiratanga and mana motuhake, two concepts that inform modern Māori activism and life and practice, and more recently conceptions of Māoridom as “nation”. Using a Gramscian framework we argue that the New Zealand state has over time created a notion of one people within one state, and has in the past incorporated challenges to its legitimacy within a framework of popular consent. The desire by some Māori activists for self-determination promotes a separateness that to some extent challenges this idea of nation–state unity. An examination of these modern Māori activist politics allows us to observe the operations of hegemony as it forms and reforms in modern New Zealand.

This paper will argue that the Treaty of Waitangi, signed on 6 February 1840 by Māori and the Crown, has a made significant contribution to informing and advancing Māori health practices in Aotearoa New Zealand. A key focus of this paper relates to (re)validating the Treaty to improve Māori health outcomes and providing a strategy for evaluating the current health status of Māori. There is a growing concern among Māori that the health sector continues to perpetuate notions of ?treating? Māori health more so than empowering M?ori to control their own processes for being healthy. Moreover, a major shift constitutionally (that is, self-determining the right to be healthy) as well as institutionally (that is, developing approaches to greater access to health provision) is required to enable Māori to achieve better health outcomes moving forward. Finally, a number of important culturally innovative, responsive and inclusive perspectives are shared to enhance our engagement with the Treaty and Māori health from a socio-cultural perspective.

Indigenous peoples across the world have a shared experience of colonisation; a process that has resulted in war, disease and the decimation of their lands, homes and peoples. In New Zealand, the effects of colonisation are still evident with Māori (the indigenous people of New Zealand) experiencing poorer outcomes compared with non-Māori citizens across a range of social, health and well-being indicators. This paper is a case study of work being done in New Zealand, which may have resonance with work in South Africa, and other countries with a history of colonisation. It begins with a brief history of the impacts of colonisation on Māori before considering the concept of decolonisation. The author outlines the work her organisation does as an independent, tribally owned, Māori health research centre to advance a decolonisation agenda. Reflecting on their emancipatory and democratising ambitions as researchers provides the opening for a discussion about indigenous ethics. The paper presents a number of Māori ethical principles that guide their work, arguing that were such principles applied in the development and implementation of social policy and legislation, the effect would be a fairer, more equitable policy that better meets the needs of Māori as citizens. Recent legislation enacted to improve New Zealand’s care and protection system for children is discussed to illustrate the need for greater consideration of Māori values when developing legislation that directly impacts Māori. The paper concludes with a challenge to policymakers, practitioners, academics, and researchers alike to actively contribute to an agenda of liberation, emancipation and decolonisation for indigenous peoples.

Māori and Pasifika populations in New Zealand experience poorer health outcomes than other New Zealanders. These inequalities are a deeply entrenched injustice. This qualitative study explores the experiences of six Māori and Pasifika leaders on health policy-making advisory committees. All had extensive experience in the health system. They were recruited, provided semi-structured interviews, the data coded, and a thematic analysis undertaken. Our findings show that inequalities in the health system are reproduced in advisory committees. Participants noted their knowledge and interests were devalued and they experienced racism and tokenistic engagement. Some indicated it took considerable effort to establish credibility, be heard, have impact, and navigate advisory meetings, but even then their inputs were marginalised. Health policy advisory committees need deeper engagement and more genuine recognition of Māori and Pasifika knowledge. Māori and Pasifika leaders have constructive solutions for eliminating health inequities that could benefit all New Zealanders.

Examines ‘significant’ reforms implemented in NZ over the past 30 years to recognise the rights of Māori as an indigenous people. Overviews the conceptual basis for settlements lodged under the Treaty of Waitangi, legal claims by Māori to natural resources and other reforms. Identifies a lack of measures that recognise Māori political authority, and asserts that successive governments have deliberately discounted the normative value of ‘historical conceptual categories’, instead choosing to emphasise categories that deliver lesser substantive rights.

This note reviews New Zealand's state practice regarding Indigenous peoples' rights under international law in 2015 and traces key international developments concerning those rights. In 2015 New Zealand demonstrated support for efforts to improve Indigenous participation in the United Nations (UN) and extend the mandate of the UN Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (EMRIP) to advance implementation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). But it indicated that - domestically - the UNDRIP would be implemented within existing legal and constitutional arrangements. There were several noteworthy developments regarding Indigenous peoples' rights during the year. Indigenous peoples and their rights received limited reference in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development agreed by the UN General Assembly (GA) and in the Paris Agreement negotiated under the auspices of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Nationally, draft bills proposing significant changes to the law governing Māori land and te reo Maori (the Maori language) were released, which will contribute to growing jurisprudence in these areas. In November the text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) was made public, which includes an exception clause on the Treaty of Waitangi (Treaty). The UN Committee against Torture (CAT) and the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) commented on the human rights situation of Māori. The GA, the UN Human Rights Council (HRC), international human rights treaty monitoring bodies and others also devoted attention to Indigenous peoples' rights in the course of their work.

This paper extends recent work in the geography of youth and childhood with an exploration of the ways that indigenous Māori teenagers who have grown up in regional tribal environments deploy land narratives as they construct a range of fluid socio-spatial cultural identities. The discussion is based on the findings of a multi-tribal study undertaken in the aftermath of government legislation that had led to widespread Māori political protest. Data generated in the course of the study took the form of digital photographs taken by the participants coupled with their explanations about the images. It is argued that Māori young people who are immersed in these environments draw on an extensive repertoire of tropes about the land which in turn influences a territorialized politics of belonging. These politics of belonging become particularly evident during periods of heightened political tension between indigenous peoples and the Crown.

Lower voter turnout and lack of political empowerment sees Māori engaging less than Pākehā (European New Zealanders) with the political system to the detriment of Māori development. This paper explores the potential of social media to enhance Māori development via political engagement. Mana Party Facebook pages are used as a case study to investigate if social media can encourage Māori political awareness and participation. Results found that social media has both positive and negative implications for political engagement and indigenous development. While social media aligns with tikanga Māori (values/customs) through tino rangatiratanga (self-determination) and whanaungatanga (relationships/networks), other aspects such as cultural misappropriation conflict with Māori values. The paper explores tensions in the use of social media for political engagement among indigenous peoples and offers a framework promoting e-whanaungatanga to illustrate how they might use social media in a way that emphasizes the positive and mitigates the negative aspects of the platform.

Reconciliation in New Zealand involves recognition, reparations and an apology for past injustices relating to breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi. In 1840, Māori and the British Crown signed a treaty that promised a beneficial relationship to both signatories. Almost immediately after the Treaty was signed and continuing through to today, promises inherent in the principles of the Treaty have been breached. However, in 1975, a government-appointed permanent commission of inquiry was established to investigate actions or omissions of the Crown that breach the promises made in the Treaty of Waitangi. The Waitangi Tribunal and the Ministry of Justice provide the institutional mechanisms used in New Zealand to foster reconciliation. This article will discuss how the state has moved iwi from being in Treaty ‘grievance mode’ to one of tino rangatiratanga/Māori self-determination and demonstrates how reconciliation has integrated Treaty settlement iwi into the mainstream New Zealand economy.

This article will argue that Māori prophetic movements were sites of political resistance where Māori prophets resisted colonisation and developed syncretic theologies that gave their followers a sense of hope within a tumultuous colonial environment. The movements of four Māori prophets will be discussed in chronological order: Te Atua Wera and the Nākahi movement; Te Ua Haumēne and the Pai Mārire or Hauhau movement; Te Kooti’s Ringatū movement; and Rua Kēnana and the Iharaira movement. This article will critically analyse these Māori prophetic movements as sites of religious and political resistance to show how Māori prophets challenged colonisation and land loss.

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.

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.

Obesity among M?ori is of growing concern in New Zealand with rates for M?ori being one-and-a-half times that of the total population. The New Zealand government's Healthy Eating?Healthy Action: Oranga Kai?Oranga Pumau (HEHA) Strategy has, in the past seven years, been a significant policy mechanism through which the health sector has been able to address the increasing prevalence of obesity and associated chronic diseases.

General Note: Includes note, references

In Canada and New Zealand, policies support Indigenous participation in the planning and delivery of community-based primary health services. However, these services represent only a fraction of the health services accessed by Indigenous peoples. In New Zealand, legislation enacted in 2000 introduced mechanisms to ensure that Māori have a voice in the decisions made by health boards. In Canada, neither policies nor legislation currently ensure that Aboriginal communities are represented in provincial health systems or regional health boards. The New Zealand experience shows that adding mechanisms of participation to legislation and policies creates opportunities for Māori and health boards to engage in discussions about how to best allocate resources to reduce disparities between Māori and non-Māori health outcomes. In Canada, this dialogue may not occur. Requiring that such mechanisms be created in all Canadian jurisdictions would establish meeting places for dialogue, and assist in closing policy and access gaps that remain.