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In her 1984 book ‘Māori Sovereignty’, Donna Awatere sustains a blistering polemic on ‘white culture’ that still retains its rhetorical force 40 years later. Her construction of a sharply delineated binary between a monolithic notion of ‘white culture’ as against ‘taha Māori’ can come at the cost of simplification. But this is not at all to say that Awatere is wrong when she says it is ‘Māori Sovereignty or death’. In this paper, we extend Awatere’s work by analysing relationships between colonialism and capital. We begin by situating Awatere’s work in its historical context, outlining major shifts in the global political economy, and drawing on Awatere’s analysis of Fascism to account for contemporary Far Right movements. Building from the inextricability of Fascism from the settler colonial/imperialist economy, we explore Awatere’s framing of whiteness as a system of racial exploitation and violence that enforces the state’s genocidal claims to sovereignty, defined through necropower – capitalism’s consumption of racialised death. We then consider the contradictions between capitalism and constitutional transformation. By scanning revolutionary movements elsewhere (in particular the Chilean movement for plurinationalism), we identify the need for extra-parliamentary, broad-based, popular power and constituent authority from below, as well as Indigenous solidarities and international alliances to circumvent anti-Māori populism and confront capital. In reflecting on the power of death, and the need for counter-hegemonic culture capable of securing the transition out of capitalism, we are drawn to the revolutionary essence of whakapapa as an Indigenous ontology that eternally resists necropower.
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The British relied on the legal fiction known as the Doctrine of Discovery to dispossess Māori of Aotearoa New Zealand and the Indigenous Peoples of Canada, the United States and Australia and to violently take over their territories. British colonisation continues to severely disadvantage these Indigenous Peoples who have never given up their fight to recover their lands, resources, and power. This chapter draws on the work of Indigenous scholars to provide a very brief overview of just some of the methods adopted by the British to dispossess the Indigenous Peoples of Canada, the United States and Australia and the struggles in those countries to achieve land restitution. It then considers the situation for Māori in more detail. It provides an overview of the schemes the British dreamt up to steal Māori land and the steps Māori have taken as we tried to achieve land and resource restitution over the past century.
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In the second half of the nineteenth century, settlers poured into Aotearoa demanding land. Millions of acres were acquired by the government or directly by settlers; or confiscated after the Land Wars.By 1891, when the Liberal government came to power, Maori retained only a fraction of their lands. And still the losses continued. For rangatira such as James Carroll, Wiremu Pere, Paora Tuhaere, Te Keepa Te Rangihiwinui, and many others, the challenges were innumerable. To stop further land loss, some rangatira saw parliamentary process as the mechanism; others pursued political independence.For over two decades, Maori men and women of outstanding ability fought hard to protect their people and their land. How those rangatira fared, and how they should be remembered, is the story of Maori political struggle during the Liberal era.
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Social and political change is occurring in Aotearoa New Zealand and tikanga, matauranga, te reo Maori (the Maori language) and Te Tiriti o Waitangi (Treaty of Waitangi) are increasingly being recognised in diverse political and legal contexts. This article explores whether the political science discipline in Aotearoa New Zealand is keeping pace with these political changes, whether research and course content is adequately reflecting these new realities, and if students are appropriately equipped to participate. In particular, we examine the state of university politics programs and outline the form and quantity of Maori politics in the teaching and research of these programs. From the assessment of the current state of politics programs, we make some observations about what changes may be required to ensure politics programs, their students and academics are fully equipped to work in the unique political and legal landscape of Aotearoa New Zealand. From the collection of this data, we have found that approximately 1% of political science lecturers are Maori, 1% of content taught can be classified as Maori politics and approximately 1% of publications in the New Zealand Political Science journal can be classified as kaupapa Maori politics. This 1-1-1 crisis provides a bleak picture of the existing arrangements in politics programs in Aotearoa New Zealand and must change.