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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.

This paper theorizes how knowledge of indigenous tribal epistemologies was made ‘knowable’ through Enlightenment rationalism in an early colonial context. Specifically, the paper determines how and what knowledge of Mäori tribal physical activities was interpreted and authenticated through early travellers' tales and missionaries’ accounts in New Zealand. The central thesis argues that what was established as authentic and truthful aligned with Enlightenment rationalism, while those Mäori physical practices incomprehensible to Western understandings were deemed inauthentic and, consequently, were obscured and/or discarded. Throughout, the article theorizes the translation of knowledge into meaningful Western discourses and how these translations came to be crystallized in the colonial imagination.

This article asserts that elite indigenous tribal masculinity is a particular type of masculinity that has developed since colonisation, in part at least, mimicking dominant forms of invader/settler masculinity. While most commentators have outlined that the dominant forms of invader/settler masculinities were held to be inversely related to the mind of indigenous men, the productive nature of power imposed a different set of rules that challenged this dialectic so that aspects of invader/settler masculinity were necessarily imbibed into burgeoning post-contact indigenous masculine leaders. This masculinity has since been allocated disciplinary and authoritative power through notions of tradition and authenticity. Further, indigenous masculinity was often asserted as reflecting the collective will for liberation; in reality, elite indigenous masculinities have habitually served to exclude alternative forms of indigenous masculinity and indigenous women from leadership roles. Via a post-hegemonic analysis of indigenous masculinity, this article appraises the Janus-faced and ambivalent figure of the indigenous heterosexual patriarch; both oppressor and oppressed. The dialectics between hetero-patriarchal masculinity and feminism, and colonised/coloniser become complicated, as indigenous masculinities are both imbibed with privilege and denied it; both performing colonial hetero-patriarchy and resistant to it.

This commentary reflects upon the major Māori land reforms in te Ture Whenua Māori Bill (2016). The reforms implement more bureaucracy and replace some mechanisms used by the Māori Land Court to protect against Māori land loss. The Waitangi Tribunal, which has dealt with Māori grievances over land loss for over 30 years, issued a critical report in March 2016 along with recommendations about the reforms. That report was largely ignored by the New Zealand Government. This commentary contains a review of the literature on Māori land to date, as it helps to understand the ideas behind the Tribunal's report as well as the reforms. There is also an examination of the main points made by the Waitangi Tribunal, as well as aspects of te Ture Whenua Māori Bill (2016). The overall conclusion is that the Māori people should be very nervous about the reforms for their lands.

This article explains that the concept of citizenship for Maori in New Zealand has evolved. The 'Native Rights Act 1865' declared all Maori to be subjects of the Crown. This implication then justified the confiscation of lands in the 1860s from those Maori deemed to be disloyal to the Crown. By the beginning of the twentieth century, politicians began to use the concept of citizenship to force Maori to fight in World War I. In the mid-twentieth century, the Maori politician Apirana Ngata used the term 'price of citizenship' to gain social and political rights for all Maori, as a result of the efforts of Maori soldiers fighting as New Zealand citizens in World War II.

He tuhinga tēnei hei whakamārama i te whakatewhatewhatanga i ngā raru o ngā kaipupuri whenua kei ngā whenua tarahiti. Arā noa atu ngā hua kei ngā whenua e takoto ana, heoi anō, arā noa atu ngā aupēhinga ka piri ki ngā whānau kia huihui rātau mō ō rātau whenua. Ko tēnei rangahau ka whai whakaaro mō ngā raru kei roto i ngā Taitara Whenua Māori. Me pēhea e taea ai te whakapakari i ngā hiahia o te whānau kia kore ai e warea te one tapu? 1.4666 miriona heketea o ngā whenua kei ngā ringa o Māori e pupuri ana. E hāngai ana tēnei ki te 5.5% o te katoa o Aotearoa. Ināianei, e 27,308 ngā Taitara whenua, e 2.7 miriona heketea ko taiapahia hei whenua takitahi. Koianei ka titiro ki ētahi raru i puta mai e pā ana ki ngā Kaipupuri Whenua, kei ngā kare ā-roto pea ētahi whakamārama.

In 2010, the Electoral (Disqualification of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Bill marked a significant change in prisoner voting rights policies in New Zealand, disenfranchising all prisoners regardless of sentence length. A decade later in 2020, the Electoral (Registration of Sentenced Prisoners) Amendment Bill re-enfranchised prisoners serving sentences of less than three years. Over this time, a Waitangi Tribunal Inquiry and a number of Māori politicians and public figures highlighted the disproportionate effects of prisoner disenfranchisement for Māori given over-representation of Māori in the prison population. However, less attention has focused on the specific effects of disenfranchisement for wāhine Māori (Māori women) in prison, and what this reflects about the relationship between wāhine Māori and the state. While women make up a significantly smaller percentage of the general prison population than men, wāhine Māori made up 61% of the women’s prison population in 2021 (Office of the Inspectorate, 2021). Additionally, wāhine Māori had a drastically different experience of colonisation to tāne Māori (Māori men). Colonial actions worked to destroy traditional Māori social organisation, which disrupted the balance between men and women and confined wāhine Māori to a social position that falls behind Pākehā men and women and Māori men. This thesis takes a Māori-centred, Mana Wahine lens to draw on the content of interviews with key informants and analysis of parliamentary readings of the 2010 and 2020 bills in order to explore how prisoner disenfranchisement in the 21st century reflects broader patterns regarding the treatment of wāhine Māori by the state. Disenfranchisement is likely to uniquely affect wāhine Māori due to their importance in te ao Māori as nurturers, the managers of households, and their centrality to the intergenerational transfer of knowledge. This not only presents barriers to voting and re-enrolment on the electoral roll post-release from prison, but also serves to practically disenfranchise the whānau and communities that wāhine Māori belong to. The lack of consideration of the needs and experiences of wāhine Māori in state discussions of prisoner voting rights mirrors the ongoing invisibility of wāhine Māori in state policy. The state has framed prisoner voting rights around male and tāne Māori norms, which cannot account for wāhine Māori. Moving forward, if prisoner voting rights policies are revisited in the future, an intersectional approach must be taken that effectively addresses the needs of wāhine Māori.

The State of Maori Rights brings together a set of articles written between 1994 and 2009. It places on record the Maori view of events and issues that took place over these years, issues that have been more typically reported to the general public from a 'mainstream' media perspective. It is an important documentation of these fifteen years of New Zealand history, recording the assertion of Maori rights as the indigenous people of Aotearoa New Zealand, focusing on Maori issues and experiences and written from a Maori perspective.