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Colonisation has deeply harmed Maori communities, seriously and consistently undermining their vitality, aspirations and potentials, particularly since the 1860s, at inestimable cost to the entire nation. The British arrival in Aotearoa commenced a relationship between two very different peoples that has profoundly influenced their distinct and collective fortunes ever since. Despite manifest breaches of te Tiriti o Waitangi, this relationship has centred settler interests ensuring that Maori sovereignty has been displaced in favour of colonial hegemony, entrenching longstanding, preventable inequities in health and other important domains of social life. In this paper we trace some broad indicators of relational health and wellbeing in Aotearoa and consider how Maori thinking about whenua, health and wellbeing might lead healing opportunities for people and whenua. We outline ways in which a unified, dynamic, relational Maori concept based on whenua as the determinant of health could contribute. We believe this could expand, strengthen and revitalise prevention, protection and promotion approaches, to counter the injustices of colonisation, contribute toward health equity and move toward just, sustainable shared futures for the benefit of all New Zealanders.

Colonial praxis has been imposed on the culture, epistemologies and praxis of indigenous Maori in Aotearoa, entrenching the settler cultural project that ensures the continuation of the colonial state, producing damaging disparities. This article theorises ways in which settler privilege works at multiple levels supporting settler interests, aspirations and sensibilities. In institutions, myriad mundane processes operate through commerce, law, media, education, health services, environment, religion and international relations constituting settler culture, values and norms. Among individuals, settler discursive/ideological frameworks are hegemonic, powerfully influencing interactions with Maori to produce outcomes that routinely suit settlers. In the internalised domain, there is a symbiotic sense of belonging, rightness, entitlement and confidence that the established social hierarchies will serve settler interests. This structure of privilege works together with overt and implicit acts of racism to reproduce a collective sense of superiority. It requires progressive de-mobilising together with anti-racism efforts to enable our society to move toward social justice.

In Aotearoa New Zealand, the arrival of imperial ideologies in the 19th century led to devastating land-loss and cultural marginalisation for Māori at the hands of settlers and successive governments. This article examines the damaging effects of a Crown-imposed treaty claims settlement system designed to address injustices inflicted on Māori. Interview data from a Taranaki-based (a West Coast region, central North Island of Aotearoa New Zealand) hapū (sub-tribe) that engaged with this system foreground the adversarial nature of this system and its continuation of trauma. We argue that, while the process provides voice to Māori, it does so within a paradigm that pits kin-groups against each other, unjustly limits redress and fails to resolve tension. A tikanga framing provides insights into how tensions are set up and ways tikanga (underlying values and principles that guide practice) can be used outside the redress system to seek healing and resolution.

Historical trauma is an important and growing area of research that provides crucial insights into the antecedents of current-day inequities in health and social wellbeing experienced by Indigenous people in colonial settler societies. What is not so readily examined is the flip side of historical trauma experienced by settlers and their descendants, what might be termed 'historical privilege'. These historic acts of privilege for settlers, particularly those emigrating from Britain, provide the antecedents for the current-day realities for their descendants and the structural, institutional and interpersonal levels of advantage that are also a key feature of inequities between Indigenous and settler. This article theorises an explicit link between historical trauma and historical privilege and explores how the latter may be examined with particular reference to Aotearoa New Zealand. Three core elements of historical trauma are posited as a useful framework to apply to historical privilege.

When racism is promulgated on a number of fronts, including the media, it becomes a powerful and pervasive force in society, detrimentally impacting on the lives of those who are its object. This paper analyses Mäori focus group interviews that traversed a wide range of sites where racism occurred, including print and broadcast media. We utilised a framework for understanding racism that is in line with key racism theorists and identifies four primary levels through which it operates: internal, interpersonal, institutional and societal. The core themes to emerge in the findings reinforce this framework and have been grouped accordingly: Internalised Racism, Interpersonal Racism, Institutional Racism and Societal Racism. Negative effects on health and wellbeing were articulated by participants as was the call for transformative, counter hegemonic representations of Mäori.

This article explores affect, colonial privilege, and the cultural politics of national commemoration in Aotearoa New Zealand. Based on focus‐group interviews around two major national days, we examine means through which feelings and emotions are deployed in ways that enable the reproduction of social advantage. Situating affect within patterns of relationship, four interrelated affective‐discursive practices are explored. In relation to Waitangi Day, agents tend to work under the rubric of anger and confusion. For Anzac Day, being grateful and moved shapes the interaction, although participants often indicate preferences towards "having a day off." Given the colonial context in which these practices circulate, analysis observes the associated freedom and ease by which affective‐discursive privilege is (re)produced. Often incongruent and rarely challenged, privilege allows associated actors to do what they want, when they want, however they want. This affective climate authorizes the ongoing reproduction of, and justification for, membership to a higher‐status ethnic group of which unearned opportunities and entitlements remain its everyday, expected currency.

Negative mass media representations of Maori are of major concern, impacting on Maori/Pakeha relations, how Maori see themselves, on collective health and wellbeing, and ultimately undermining the fundamentals of equity and justice in our society. In this article, we outline a number of important patterns that constitute the contextual discursive resources of such depictions identified in representative media samples and other sources and provide a set of alternative framings for each pattern. Our purpose is to challenge what Deuze (2004) has referred to as an 'occupational ideology' of journalism and ultimately to change Pakeha newsmaking practices that routinely undermine efforts to approach and attain social justice in the field of Maori/Pakeha relations in Aotearoa.

Objective: An initial exploration of the available conceptualizations of privilege in Aotearoa/New Zealand with the goal of developing a more in-depth qualitative study, incorporating kaupapa Maori and public health framings. Design: Interviews were conducted with a purposive sample of key informants that span the academic, community development, health service provision, and activist sectors. Participants were selected from multiple networks for their expressed interest and insight into the concept of privilege and its importance to analyses of social justice. Results: Six key themes emerged that include the invisibility of privilege; the weighting of different variables; individual vs group privilege; class; the active aspects of privilege; and links between privilege and Pakeha culture. Conclusion: Participants' constructions of privilege emphasize the multifaceted complexity and discursive ambiguities of the ways in which the concept is utilized within our political economy to account for disparity and covertly reproduce the status quo of Pakeha advantage.