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The complexities involved in articulating an ethnic identity as a person of mixed Maori/Pakeha descent are explored in this study. Issues related to establishing a sense of belonging that ties a person to both ethnic groups are examined based on the life narratives of six people of dual Maori/Pakeha descent. What does it mean to be a person of mixed Maori/Pakeha descent in contemporary Aotearoa/New Zealand and in what ways are identities that reflect our dual heritage constructed? I use the term ‘our’ deliberately, because there is a place in the research for my own story as a ‘half-caste’ Maori/Pakeha. Constructing and articulating ethnicity when there has been historical ethnic inter-marriage, as well as ethnic conflict in New Zealand is complex. Negative and stereotypical images are continually being constructed of Maori in a society that aims to assimilate and promote Maori as a homogenous group. It is not only important that Maori articulate and explore their own experiences and realities, but also significant that Maori/Pakeha, as members of both groups, have an opportunity to explore and control their own definitions beyond the constraints set by the dominant groups. The Maori cultural and political renaissance has involved defining Maori in terms of difference from Pakeha/Europeans, but this study explores the overlap – genetic, cultural, and social – between two ethnic groups and provides new insights into the diversity within the Maori ethnic group. The key question guiding the research was: In what ways do people of mixed Maori/Pakeha descent construct and articulate identities that reflect their dual heritage? This study aims to provide insights and understandings about the challenges, issues and benefits associated with being of mixed Maori/Pakeha descent in Aotearoa New Zealand.
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This study discusses the origins, development and outcomes of the first wave of radical Māori activism between 1968 and 1978. It charts the events of the period and the body of politics, philosophies and strategies employed by Māori activists. It contends that the discipline of history as currently practised becomes problematic when it is applied to the study of non-western cultures, and that scholars undertaking research into Māori histories and communities need to develop a model or metaphor for writing history which is sympathetic to Māori epistemologies and priorities. To this end the text focuses primarily on the words and actions of the activists themselves in order to better understand the way activists conceptualized their world. Activists’ ideas and politics should not just be studied in a ‘race relations model’, that is, in terms of their impact on society and the Pākehā public, and the reaction of the government. Taking activism out of the race relations model and examining it on its own terms throws the movement’s concerns, subtleties and contradictions into sharper relief and provides a deeper understanding of its significance. The thesis is centrally concerned with how activists defined themselves, their actions and their politics, and will argue that Māori activism was implicated in the era’s emerging politics of identity. Māori activism was as much about reforming Māori and Pākehā attitudes towards Māori culture, society and identity as it was about policy and legislative reform. Furthermore, the thesis attempts to explain the influence on, and contribution to, the activist movement of three interrelated contexts: te Ao Māori, the Māori world, Aotearoa, national events, and te Ao Hurihuri, the international setting. It also pays special attention to the gender politics of the era. The work is divided into four chapters. The first covers the Māori world and the ‘big three’ issues of Māori activism: the Treaty of Waitangi, land loss and cultural alienation. The second chapter discusses the national context and the ‘big three’ issues of national politics during the era: apartheid sport, the Vietnam War and class politics. The third chapter deals with the international framework and the influence of global trends on local events, while the fourth chapter details the emergence of the Black women’s movement.
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This thesis considers Maori-state relations in the post-war period up to 1967. It focuses on the complicated and congested nexus at which tribal committees, branches of the Maori Women's Welfare League and the Welfare Division of the Department of Maori Affairs met and negotiated the particulars of the Maori-state relationship. Underpinning that relationship were the tensions inherent in the Maori world's ongoing task of balancing the old and the new, the traditional and the modem, the rural and the urban during a time of unprecedented change. The thesis draws on a mix of oral histories and documentary sources, especially government archives, to examine the motivations of Maori and the department in their interactions. It presents the department's broad integrationist philosophy and examines Maori peoples' drives for both engaging with the state and undertaking a range of development projects that built on Maori tribal concepts to mark out Maori socio-cultural spaces in modem environments. Maori policy and legislation including the Maori Social and Economic Advancement Act 1945 and the Hunn Report of 1961, and the major demographic changes associated with urbanisation, presented enormous challenges for Maori. Implementation of the Hunn report in particular fractured tense but workable co-operation apparent in 1950s Maori-state relations. The thesis illustrates how Maori creatively negotiated those challenges and progressed their own projects undeterred by the onerous constraints of integration. It achieves that by restoring the Maori narrative and the Maori concepts at its base. It finds intelligent, critical, vibrant Maori leadership involved in highly nuanced and complex interactions with state.
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Topic
- activism (1)
- assimilation (1)
- decolonisation (1)
- ethnic identity (1)
- history (1)
- identity (1)
- kāwanatanga (1)
- mana motuhake (1)
- protest (1)
- tiriti o waitangi/treaty of waitangi (1)