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This article is a response to the recent surge of interest over extractive industry in New Zealand and the opposition to this by many iwi. The New Zealand government has in recent years made offshore exploration and production a high priority. By the extractive industry, we mean the people, companies, and activities involved in removing oil and gas, metals, coal, stone and other useful resources from the ground.

In 2021, Aotearoa New Zealand's Foreign Minister, Nanaia Mahuta, sketched out a kaupapa Māori (collective Māori vision) foreign policy for New Zealand based on four tikanga Māori (Māori customary practices and behaviours): manaakitanga (hospitality), whanaungatanga (connectedness), mahi tahi and kotahitanga (unity through collaboration), and kaitiakitanga (guardianship and the protection of intergenerational wellbeing). This article makes a novel contribution to the global International Relations body of literature by questioning to what extent New Zealand's ‘Māori foreign policy’ has been applied to its relationship with China. Through assessing the communications of Mahuta and other officials, it is found that New Zealand is utilizing a kaupapa Māori framework towards China: ‘the taniwha and the dragon’. It is argued that New Zealand is attempting to consolidate the maturity of the Sino-New Zealand relationship, as well as differentiate itself from the other Anglosphere countries that have recently pushed back on China. In doing so, not only is New Zealand something of an outlier, it is demonstrating how eschewing a western-centric understanding of foreign policy for a more relational view based on indigenous knowledge and perspectives (in this case, from te ao Māori: the Māori worldview) can be applied at a time of increasing great power competition.

The latest Maori Electoral Option (MEO) resulted in a seventh Maori seat in Parliament contested in the recent election. Over a four-month period in 2001, 18,738 Maori exercised their Option to shift electoral rolls - three-quarters of them moving from the General roll to the Maori roll. This paper looks at the latest Option and its effectiveness as a communication campaign. The MEO is controversial because many New Zealanders are divided about the democratic fairness of separate Maori seats. The spectre of a dozen Maori electorates, if all Maori join the Maori roll, is unnerving to opponents who concentrate their fire upon the cost and conduct of the campaign. The MEO challenges traditional assumptions about objective political communication. The Option pioneered a systemized method of kanohi ki te kanohi (face-to-face) communication. Developed by Maori for Maori, the model has been used in other government communication campaigns but remains controversial because of the lack of centralised control over the delivered message and the difficulty of measuring the campaign’s success. This paper explores the issues surrounding its methods and effectiveness.

This article discusses the place of Mana Wahine theory in decolonising gender relationships in Aotearoa (New Zealand). Mana wahine theory is grounded upon and informed by Māori language, practices, protocol and knowledge forms. It is through this lens that we are able more deeply come to understand and theorise issues faced by Māori women and in doing so to reclaim and reassert our place on our own lands. This is both a movement and a theory that has at its centre the resurgence and reaffirmation of the mana of Māori women, past, present and future.

This article provides an overview of the history of the Maori Land Court, as well as present day developments of the Court. It considers the role that tikanga (Maori customary values and practices) plays in the Maori Land Court, and how the Court has applied tikanga in a number of contemporary judgments. It then considers the Waitangi Tribunal (a Commission of Inquiry which examines Crown breaches of its obligations to Maori), and how tikanga can be demonstrated in the process and the findings of the Tribunal. It discusses how both judicial bodies have approached the challenge of competing tikanga claims. Finally, the article poses ideas of how tikanga can be applied going forward.

In 1840, some of the sovereign nations of Maori signed te Tiriti o Waitangi (the Maori language version of the Treaty of Waitangi) with the British Crown. Hone Heke was the first Maori leader of the northern nation of Ngdpuhi to sign, but by 1844 he was leading a significant revolt against British colonialism in Aotearoa New Zealand by chopping down British flagpoles erected on his lands. While Maori may have initially welcomed the intent of te Tiriti as a means for seeking British help to protect their international borders, the British prioritised the English version of the Treaty which recorded the transfer of sovereignty from Maori to the British. As the British transposed their dominant legal traditions of governance, including bringing to the fore their doctrine of parliamentary supremacy, Maori have been seeking their survival ever since. We extend this by focusing on why the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty needs to adapt to the Treaty's promise of bicultural power sharing.

This paper extends recent work in the geography of youth and childhood with an exploration of the ways that indigenous Māori teenagers who have grown up in regional tribal environments deploy land narratives as they construct a range of fluid socio-spatial cultural identities. The discussion is based on the findings of a multi-tribal study undertaken in the aftermath of government legislation that had led to widespread Māori political protest. Data generated in the course of the study took the form of digital photographs taken by the participants coupled with their explanations about the images. It is argued that Māori young people who are immersed in these environments draw on an extensive repertoire of tropes about the land which in turn influences a territorialized politics of belonging. These politics of belonging become particularly evident during periods of heightened political tension between indigenous peoples and the Crown.

Treaty principles have provided the framework for Māori-Crown relationships to advance Treaty settlements and other outcomes since the 1980s. Principles are Crown interpretations of the Treaty’s intent, even if they are widely utilised by Crown and Māori alike. If both language texts of the Treaty/Te Tiriti o Waitangi are considered from a kāinga perspective, we can consider different approaches to its interpretation and implementation. Foundational to a kāinga view is a reciprocal relationship of accountability between Crown kawanatanga (Article 1) and Māori tino rangatiratanga (Article 2). At the heart of this relationship is as a double trusteeship: the protection of rangatiratanga (trusteeship leadership; sovereignty; self-determination), in exchange for kawanatanga (governance) which in the context of Crown-Māori relationships means the Crown has fiduciary-like obligations to protect rangatiratanga. The potential of the double trusteeship is explored through a multi-marae-based venture “Pā to Plate” as an example of a novel food sovereignty system that harnesses economic and cultural wealth generation. While the Crown—in this case the sixth Labour government struggled to engage with the venture, Pā to Plate demonstrates significant potential for rangatiratanga advancement. The double trusteeship can underpin any kāinga-led endeavour that calls on Crown engagement, commitment and support.

This article considers the relevance of identity and history for Māori development policy. It explores community-based priorities for socioeconomic development in defining “gaps” and compares this with programmes initiated and implemented by government. This article argues that major gaps are historically based and provide clues for present gaps that are measured cross-culturally in, for example, education, health, housing, justice and employment, as well as for some gaps that are not represented in statistical analysis and are inadequately considered in officialdom. Moreover, cultural principles remain fundamental to individual and group identity and, therefore, socio-economic and political survival. Thus, some major gaps are measured internally within the group and are concerned with cultural vitality. However, in order for cultural principles to have proper legitimacy and development programmes to have rigour, it is necessary to consider carefully various shades of meaning and establish which dimensions are applicable to particular gapclosing policies. And while history and identity are essential features of community development policies, it is important that there is a clear relationship between analysis, policy and practice.

Mana wahine, often referred to as Māori feminist discourses, is a theoretical and methodological approach that explicitly examines the intersection of being Māori and female. There is little published academic work that engages with Māori women’s embodied, spatial and spiritual experiences from an explicitly mana wahine standpoint. The exceptions, however, are significant. I draw on these, in this article, to highlight the exciting possibilities of mana wahine, an extension of Kaupapa Māori theory, as a localised and place-specific theoretical approach that examines the diverse and complex geographies of Māori women. The article reflects on Linda Smith’s discussion of four mana wahine projects: wairua, whānau, state, and indigenous and white women’s discourses. It is argued that the need to sustain and further develop mana wahine as an epistemological framework is still as pressing as ever. I contend that applying a mana wahine perspective not only challenges the dominant hegemons that continue to Other Māori women but, and more importantly, validates mātauranga wāhine (Māori women’s knowledges) and subsequently mātauranga Māori (Māori knowledges).

Globally, the creation and implementation of climate change policies continues to be contested amongst politicians, international institutions, and civil society. Carbon markets, designed to incentivize greenhouse gas emission reductions, are one of the main climate mitigation approaches worldwide. Existing scholarship highlights how carbon markets provide fertile ground for research into the changing nature of environmental governance and political contestation. Swyngedouw locates carbon markets as part of broader “post-political” changes, which reduce alternative pathways through “depoliticisation”. MacKenzie, in contrast, argues that carbon markets are a form of “techno-politics” that provide new avenues for politically designed markets. This paper engages with and contributes to these scholarly debates by exploring the creation and operations of the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme between 2003 and 2016. We demonstrate how New Zealand policy-makers employed various discursive constructs that emphasized uncertainties (in climate science, in international climate policies, in markets) as a means to justify “urgent” and “exceptional” state interventions into the emissions trading scheme. These interventions emphasized the role of experts and the experimental nature of New Zealand's carbon market, and employed parliamentary processes that limited public participation. Such moments of state intervention in a nation with a strong history of neoliberal governance both reinforces and complicates existing scholarship about the “depoliticisation” of climate change and the role of the state in post-political neoliberal governance. It highlights the ways in which rendering climate change a technical challenge can translate into democratically-worrying moments of state-initiated but expert-led approaches to environmental governance.