Antecedentes Investigativos.

loose one. There has always been considerable intermarriage between Måori and Påkehå. Anthropologists tell us that by 1900 there were no full-blooded Måori left in the South Island. By 2000, the same was true of the North Island. Today, nearly 70% of 24 to 34 year old New Zealanders who identify as Måori are married to someone who does not.

(quoted, in Scoop 2004).

Over the next two years, Brash would continue to question the authenticity of Måori

ethnicity, identity, culture and rights to define as indigenous on the grounds of “racial purity”. Brash’s comments would receive both support (National’s popularity rose after the 2004 Orewa speech) and strong criticism from opponents for his views (Scoop 2006; Stokes 2006; Berry 2006; Crewdson and Spratt 2005).

Don Brash’s views, however, and the rise in fortunes of his political party when expressing those sentiments to a public audience indicate that a change in terminology often does not eradicate beliefs that underpin those notions. Markers of identity that are race-based such as blood quantum, colour, geographical location and cultural proficiency were utilised in a nationhood speech to, contradictorily, herald a new era of race-relations under the guise of “we are all New Zealanders”. Thomas Eriksen (1993) highlights the inter-connection

between societies such as New Zealand where the idea of races were important by advocating that the category of “race” should be studied as part of the local discourses in understanding any alternative to “race”, such as ethnicity and/or culture, and race-relations.

3.3 The social construction of Måori or contextual understandings of

Måori?

How the term “Måori” is conceptualised is formed through a complex set of layers produced under a specific set of conditions that are influenced and maintained, by broader historical, political and social factors. “Måori” has been used to variously describe and define a racial group, an ethnicity, a Treaty partner, a culture, an identity, a legal entity, subjectivity, a sense of nationhood and nationalism, protest, pan-tribal, iwi, and urban movements, ways of being

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and social concerns that are attributed to the group as a homogeneous entity (Meredith 1998; Poata-Smith 2005, pp. 211-7). The limitations of conceptualising Måori as a “homogeneous entity” have been raised by a number of academics that advance the acknowledgement of a heterogeneous or plural approach to subject positions inside the Måori population. When discussing Måori protest politics, for example, Evan Poata-Smith (2005, p.214) states:

Måori protest politics embraces a range of conflicting political ideologies, which are informed by radically different assumptions about the causes of racism and Måori inequality in wider society, and in turn, different sets of strategies for ameliorating and transcending that inequality.

The different contextual understandings of “Måori” will be discussed throughout this thesis when the case studies are placed in their time and place for analysis, but it is important to be cognisant of the ongoing process of adding layers to what is meant by the term “Måori. Meanings, definitions, understandings and analyses of “being Måori” are constantly in the process of being reconfigured and/or renegotiated. The traditional definition of “Måori”, for example, meant “ordinary or normal” which took on greater group significance with contact and the settlement of Europeans (Biggs 1995). Prior to European contact and settlement, identification by Måori individuals rested upon the connection of whakapapa, whånau, hapu, iwi in rohe (particular territories), and importantly, turangawaewae (place to stand), rather than as a nationalised group. Thus descriptors, definitions, meanings and their significance change over time.

It is important to note that the acknowledgement of the heterogeneity of the Måori population and the advancement of plural subject positions contained within the group are crucial to contemporary discussions about Måori subjectivity, race-relations and national identity. The subject of difference and contestation of competing points of view about Måori will be discussed further in later chapters.21 _{What is of particular interest is the notion of layering} Måori identity with contextual meaning, whereby each generation places different ideas on what it means to be Måori that is framed by wider concerns about race-relations and national identity.

As Don Brash’s comments above serve to remind, socially constructed beliefs about individuals and groups are not easily dismissed in wider society. The descriptors of Måori may have changed over time, but remnants of earlier notions of racial categories, superiority, assimilation and where Måori are (or should be) situated in the national framework continue

to be raised, and reworked into the nationalised narrative of race-relations. It is argued that what influences analyses of Måori subjectivity and indeed, social roles, is the key thematic of race-relations.

Group beliefs and beliefs about groups are not only embedded in “common-sense

understandings” of people, but also at the institutional level of society. In the aftermath of Don Brash’s 2004 speech, there was a change in public social policy and terminology by the Labour-led Government in how goods and services would be distributed to ameliorate inequalities in the New Zealand population. Labour’s “Closing the Gaps” policy that was based primarily on closing the economic gap measured on ethnic indices (between Måori and Pacific Islanders, and non-Måori) was shelved due to the public response to Don Brash’s political speech about race-relations and nationhood (see Te Puni Kokiri 1998; 1999).