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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 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.

Dr Nin Tomas wrote a considered and substantial piece entitled “Indigenous Peoples and the Māori: The Right to Self-Determination in International Law - From Woe to Go” for the New Zealand Law Review published in 2008.² In her conclusion she notes two ways in which self-determination has been implemented by the state: first, by “greater tolerance and benevolence along a series of principled guidelines”,³ and, second, as a “peoples-centred, enabling principle that allows Indigenous peoples to re-establish their social, economic and political institutions”.⁴ In 2010, New Zealand reversed its position and supported the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (the Declaration).5 With this in mind, this short piece revisits the notion of self-determination by examining the differing dynamics of concepts of external and internal self-determination before a short discussion on pluralism and the relationship between tino rangatiratanga and self-determination. In conclusion some thoughts are offered on a potential form of self-determination that could be consistent with the exercise of tino rangatiratanga.

Māori customary rights to natural resources are a contentious issue between Māori and the New Zealand government and between Maori and non-Māori. The values and principles inherent in a treaty signed in 1840 between Māori and the British Crown have been undermined by the government’s refusal to allow Māori the right to go to the courts to determine proprietary rights to the foreshore, seabed and fresh water. Discriminatory Crown actions highlight the argument that when an injustice occurs then reparations should be made. The United Nations has chided the New Zealand government for its discriminatory behaviour and failure to provide guaranteed redress but it has had little effect.

In 1840, English officials on behalf of the British crown signed the Treaty of Waitangi—also known as Te Tiriti o Waitangi—with the Indigenous Māori population, affirming Māori sovereignty and guaranteeing their collective rights to the country’s land and resources. Since the 1700s, English settlers had been arriving in Aotearoa (the Māori name for New Zealand) to capitalize on the seal and whale trade. As the number of settlers increased, reports flowed back to Britain of general lawlessness and dubious private land deals, and the crown was forced to consider how best to control its citizens. A treaty with the Māori, officials decided, was the way to do so. The agreement, which established the basis for the relationship between the Māori and the British, is commonly cited as a shining example of how a treaty can recognize and protect Indigenous peoples’ rights by curtailing the reach of the state. But does te Tiriti live up to its sterling reputation? The answer, of course, is complicated.

https://muse-jhu-edu.ezproxy.auckland.ac.nz/article/646637

Following the annexation of Aotearoa/New Zealand by the British in 1840, Māori, as the Indigenous people of that country, experienced loss of sovereignty through the imposition of and application of new and transformative policies, including the law and unfamiliar legal and social codes. This paper considers the state and the influential legacy of an imposed, Settler-state social welfare and criminal justice system on Māori. An explicit, insider narrative will highlight how suppression, disconnection and abandonment, made manifest through particular and abusive state policies, has informed and constructed the life pathway of a member of a culturally and socially-submerged population, the Mongrel Mob gang.

This article draws on the personal experiences and state documentation of Stan Coster (Ngāti Kahungungu) whose life has been characterised by different forms of state confinement, including over 25 years in prison serving both short and long lags. Through the use of the Official Information Act, Stan recovered state documentation on himself spanning over 40 years. Stan is not a research participant, but a full research collaborator and is engaged in all elements of this paper, so while not a writer he is both auteur and author of this piece. Stan’s story is his own and yet many of its features speak to a much broader collective experience. His prison identity and gang identity can be seen as being both informed and generated by state sponsored activity. By traversing the issues that pertain to the crisis of mass imprisonment, Māori disproportionality in the prison system, the contribution of the state to prison, and gang identity, we look at the possibilities of drawing on knowledge acquired under conditions of state constraint.  

Intolerance toward indigenous people is a common feature of colonial societies, and New Zealand is no exception. Despite aspirations of equality, evidence suggests that discrimination toward Māori remains pervasive and may relate to continued inequalities in social, economic, and psychological domains. This article analyzes self-report questionnaire data from 1,790 Māori sampled as part of the New Zealand Attitudes and Values Study. We describe a Bayesian regression model assessing the links between perceived discrimination and 15 social, economic, and psychological indicators of well-being (including health care access, evaluation of own health, job security, self-esteem, life satisfaction, and psychological distress). The model adjusts for relevant covariates (including age, ethnicity, gender, and income). Forty-three percent of the sample reported experiencing either some discrimination or high levels of discrimination. Higher levels of perceived discrimination among Māori were associated with poorer outcomes in every measure, across multiple domains. This study demonstrates that New Zealand’s “bi-cultural” aspirations are far from realized, and should raise concerns for all countries with a history of colonisation. We call for more research on the incidences and impact of various forms of discrimination throughout New Zealand society, specifically in relation to the perpetuation of Māori disadvantage. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)

Reconciliation, Representation, and Indigeneity begins with the claim that it ‘offers an up-to-date analysis of the reconciliation process between Māori and the Crown’ (7). The editors do not stop at up-to-date analysis. They push the edited collection of thirteen essays that were once conference papers into more complicated territory, inviting a range of ontologies, nestled in the links between ‘contemporary politics, the notion of activist research and historical and anthropological analysis’ (7). This introduction seemed a lot for me to take in, though I fully appreciated the intellectual care the editors took as they combed through the argument, organisation, themes, and academic approaches and positions of the book.

While there is much research and writing on Māori self-determination, little of it focuses on how Māori individuals and organisations conceive the necessary antecedent to self-determination; Māori political agency. To remedy this research gap, we explored the political aspirations of Māori individuals with a research method built to study such subjective topics: Q method. Combining Q method with some practical innovations from Kaupapa Māori Research method, we developed a unique way of researching the stories our participants tell themselves about politics. Our results suggest some Māori individuals do think of politics as a collective endeavour as the self-determination literature suggests, but just as often Māori collective forums and other non-Māori political institutions are seen as barriers to Māori individual and collective political agency and thus to Māori self-determination. We also found that Māori view the political autonomy and participation necessary for self-determination as possible in numerous diverse spaces, suggesting the focus on low voter turnout amongst Māori in the literature is missing the point: the stories told by this research suggest Māori individuals perceive their political agency to be hindered, not by majoritarian politics of non-Māori, but by Māori and non-Māori elites.

The guaranteed Mäori seats are a distinguishing and controversial feature of New Zealand’s democracy. In recent years, a number of reports, commentators and politicians have called for the seats to be abolished on the grounds that they are no longer “needed” in New Zealand’s proportional electoral system. These claims are usually grounded in principles of equality. This paper makes the opposite claim: that principles of equality create convincing and coherent justifications for the Mäori seats. Drawing on feminist theories of representation, particularly the work of Iris Marion Young, Melissa Williams and Anne Phillips, this paper argues that the Mäori seats provide crucial mechanisms of accountability that ensure the fidelity of Mäori representatives to their constituencies. This notion of accountability has been largely absent in debates about the Mäori seats and challenges arguments against the seats that are based solely on perceived “need” relative to proportionate presence.

One of the great challenges for indigenous and non-indigenous entrepreneurs in the twenty-first century is to move beyond profit maximisation as an acceptable modality for doing business and gravitate towards the concept of socially optimal outcomes, where maximising community well-being and minimising externalities to the natural environment and social justice are paramount. We present findings from a case-study analysis of M?ori enterprises that demonstrate a wealth of successfully kaupapa M?ori (M?ori ideology)-attuned strategy and policy. The case studies provide practical examples of the incorporation and expression of kaupapa M?ori values into strategy and policy of M?ori enterprises. We also identify the numerous challenges to implementing kaupapa M?ori in the management of M?ori Asset Holding Institutions and offer a way forward. Although the case studies are context specific, they provide some key principles and learning that can guide the greater uptake of kaupapa M?ori entrepreneurship.