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The 6th of February is New Zealand's annual day of cultural performance par excellence. It is not a rememberance and reflection of what is undoubtedly this country's most important historical moment, but instead an enactment of contemporary understandings of the Treaty of Waitangi by both Māori and the Crown. Architecturally this performance is played out at, and between, Te Tii marae and the Treaty grounds at Waitangi. The partnership between Māori and the Crown is spatially expressed each year by symbolically important rituals being conducted and protocols observed at each specific site. People gather, welcomes occur, addresses are given, entertainment provided, bridges crossed, debates take place, demands are made, and protests held. The actions of the various parties are frequently beamed into households by the television networks and reported in the national newspapers, leading to a national construction of space that represents current perceptions of cultural and race relations. The 1980s saw a significant shift in the construction of Waitangi as space. Following the rise of the land rights movement in the 1960s and 1970s, Māori activists focussed their efforts on Waitangi and Waitangi Day more than ever before. The government responded by denying access to the Treaty grounds, then retreating from Waitangi celebrations, and then eventually returning by the end of the decade. Waitangi as space became a pawn in a political contest, and its place in the national psyche moved with each action and counter-action.

In 2009 international legal negotiations of particular relevance to Indigenous peoples continued under the United Nations (UN) Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC); the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD); and the auspices of the World Intellectual Property Office (WIPO). As in previous years, international human rights monitoring bodies developed jurisprudence on the rights of Indigenous peoples, contributing to the development of customary international law in the field. New Zealand was the subject of the UN Human Rights Council's (HRC) universal periodic review (UPR) process for the first time in 2009. The HRC focused on Maori and their rights during the UPR with calls for New Zealand to support the UN General Assembly's Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (Indigenous Peoples' Declaration) and to consider constitutional entrenchment of international human rights instruments and the Treaty of Waitangi.New Zealand's reluctance to recognise Indigenous peoples' rights persisted in 2009. New Zealand did not endorse the Indigenous Peoples' Declaration and Indigenous peoples' rights did not feature prominently in New Zealand's statements in international fora.

The developments that have taken place in New Zealand in relation to Indigenous Peoples rights under International law are discussed. Details of different committees formed and laws enacted to ensure and protect the same are highlighted.

2007 was a significant year for Indigenous peoples and international law. The United Nations (UN) General Assembly adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (the Declaration on Indigenous Peoples), after more than 20 years of negotiations, and the Human Rights Council established the Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (the EMRIP). Further, the World Intellectual Property Office (WIPO) continued its work on traditional knowledge, as did the working groups associated with the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD). Indigenous issues were considered in institutions such as the World Health Organisation (WHO) and, of course, the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. New Zealand was also the subject of review by the UN Committees on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD Committee) and the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW Committee) on its compliance with its human rights obligations, some of which raised issues involving Maori. This review details New Zealand's state practice in these institutions.

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 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.

This paper considers the implications of the liberalization of the New Zealand economy for entrepreneurial development by indigenous New Zealand Maori tribal organizations. Since 1984 the economic objective of the State has been to create a modern market economy free of price distortions, bureaucratic management and government protectionism. One of the State’s responses to enabling tribal organizations to provide for increased self‐determination and to lessen Maori State dependency was to seriously address the issue of compensation to Maori of resources that had been expropriated or confiscated during the past 150 years. While there have been difficulties in reaching agreement on appropriate or adequate allocations of Crown‐owned resources or compensation, the transferal of resources to private (but collective) Maori ownership is now providing a substantial economic base to build corporate and other entrepreneurial activities. It is argued that such willingness and commitment to transfer resources from the State back to the original owners was a manifest outcome of government’s adoption of liberal economic policies.

This article investigates the 2005 pre-election print media coverage of the Maori Party and its candidates. It shows that while the reporters and journalists generally represented the Maori Party in a fair and unbiased manner, at times their reporting was undermined by unbalanced or biased editing or subediting.

This paper explores the implications of prevailing political thought for the extent to which Māori (native to New Zealand) are able to pursue self-determination, which, although theoretically legitimate, is constrained by elite political pragmatism. While the long-fashionable bicultural paradigm offers some opportunity for self-determination, its utility for meeting Māori aspiration was further limited by the change in political climate following the National Party Leader Don Brash's Nationhood speech in 2004 and by the Foreshore and Seabed Act of 2004. These events encouraged and legitimised a renewed public suspicion of Māori aspiration so that the political space available for the pursuit of self-determination was reduced.

Recently, the Australian government apologised to the “stolen generation” for past abuses. The apology had been long awaited and when delivered was well received by the indigenous people of Australia and the world in general. The question was then raised in the New Zealand parliament as to why Māori had not yet received a similar apology from the New Zealand government. The abuse of Māori by past governments is well documented involving not only land theft and illegal confiscations but numerous human rights abuses including racial discrimination, murder, armed aggression, and illegal incarceration. If reconciliation between Māori and Pākehā is an important part of nation building then an apology would seem to be in order. The concept of trans-generational justice is as valid as trans-generational resource transfer and trans-generational obligations. The argument supporting trans-generational justice is based on the authority of government residing not with individuals but with the office of government itself. Without an apology the marginalization of Māori will be difficult to overcome. This essay examines reasons why Māori should or should not receive an apology from the New Zealand government.

To standardise the use of a single factor measure of cultural identity based on the cultural indicators developed by Te Hoe Nuku Roa (1996). The single measure of cultural identity proposed in this paper was supported by statistics drawn from a longitudinal study of Maori households, Te Hoe Nuku Roa (n = 650). The measure of cultural identity displayed a normal distribution with a theoretical range of 0 to 18 (where a higher score is consistent with a more secure identity), a mean of 11, and a SD of 2. 7. The measure is expected to be particularly useful in understanding Maori cultural identity within a statistical framework.