“Modernizing” Māori Marriage in New Zealand

In 1952, Māori forms of customary marriage were made legally invalid. This article investigates the application of a state marriage registration system to Māori in the early decades of the twentieth century that was designed to encourage Māori to conform to European marital models. It focuses, in particular, on how Christianity and English law were deployed as modernising forces by a new generation of Māori intellectuals who emerged in the 1890s under the banner of the Te Aute College Students' Association (TACSA), later known as the Young Māori Party. United by their Anglican faith, TACSA favoured a process of adaptive acculturation in certain areas of social life, where select customs were to be retained and protected, so as to secure demographic and cultural survival. Marriage was highly valued because it was linked to the collective interests of whānau (family) and iwi (tribe) in matters of land and inheritance. As marriage was linked to collective futures, the article argues that maintaining and protecting marriage customs was one strategy for holding on to culture, land and autonomy in the face of increasing state efforts to require Māori to conform to European norms and traditions.     

‘The miserable remnant of this ill-used people’: colonial genocide and the Moriori of New Zealand's Chatham Islands

Genocide scholars have not engaged with the killing of the Moriori people of New Zealand's Chatham Islands by two Māori iwi (tribes). New Zealand historians who have discussed Moriori have not used the paradigms and language of genocide studies. This article argues that Moriori were victims of genocide, and that their experience both challenges and deepens how colonial genocide is understood. Narratives of colonial genocides that assume the destruction of an indigenous people by a colonizing power are inadequate for understanding events on the Chathams, as are genocidal frameworks that assume perpetrators must be state actors. The colonial role was important but indirect: the encounter of Māori with Britain and Australia provided the physical and ideological tools that made the Moriori genocide possible. Māori behaviour on the Chathams diverged from tradition, with the racial tropes, destructive behaviours and justification for invading the Chathams all acquired through the colonial spread of British people into Polynesia. More recently, the use of imported imagery and politicization of the Moriori experience has revealed the consequences of successive generations’ failure to properly remember or even identify the genocide.     

What's in a Name? The Practice and Politics of Classifying Māori Textiles

Abstract

Textiles form an important part of Māori culture, of interest to Europeans since contact with New Zealand in 1642. The need to describe Māori textiles in English has determined the terminology chosen to describe them, and also affected understandings of Māori weaving. Ethnographic observation and recording of Māori textile production by European non-weavers, inaccurate translation of Māori words, as well as incorrect use of terms have all contributed to difficulties in understanding Māori textile structures. The development of current terminology for describing Māori textiles is discussed, highlighting how it arises as a result of temporal, cultural and political factors, and the consequent importance of names. The values implicit in names given to Māori textiles then affect knowledge, scholarship and communication of their attributes. One Māori textile form, rāranga, illustrates how basing classification on structure alone could clarify understanding, remove implicit value judgements, and enable accurate communication of the properties of artefacts.     

Shared heritage,shared authority,shared accountability? Co-generating museum performance criteria as a means of embedding ‘shared authority’

Abstract

This New Zealand case study presents insights from the perspectives of Māori and non-Māori museum stakeholders. It aimed to understand which activities and responsibilities mattered to stakeholders, in order to develop more meaningful accountability for their shared heritage. Using a participatory mixed method, the research explored how museum stakeholders assess their museum’s performance. Māori and non-Māori generated, sorted and rated 'possible performance statements’. A cultural analysis, using proprietary software, produced concept maps which illustrate differently nuanced museum constructs with different relative importance for constituent elements. Pattern-matching revealed divergent priority accorded certain museum activities, but also commonalities. Both cultural groups prioritised factors not generally featured in compliance-driven approaches to accountability reporting. For Māori, greatest importance was placed on care of taonga (‘treasures’), Māori-specific practice and engagement with Māori, while collections and staff were the key assessment factors for non-Māori. Incorporating stakeholder perspectives in a museum performance framework provides opportunities to report performance on dimensions which matter to wider communities. Where shared authority is taken seriously and stakeholders are involved, accountability becomes meaningful. This collaborative approach to performance framework development offers a tool for embedding the realities of shared authority into planning and delivering the museum’s activities and responsibilities.     

‘Vague Native Rights to Land’: British Imperial Policy on Native Title and Custom in New Zealand, 1837–53

What is often referred to as a common law doctrine of aboriginal or customary title neither underpinned imperial policies towards Māori property rights in the 1830s and 1840s nor was it viewed as a settled or broadly accepted legal doctrine. Rather, critics of imperial policies applying to New Zealand deployed these legal sources in order to challenge and influence the workings of imperial policy on British settlement within New Zealand. The particular emphasis of such policy was on disciplining the extent of such settlement and providing a land fund from crown grants. Imperial policy-makers did not endorse these legal sources despite their use in the decision of the New Zealand Supreme Court in Regina v Symonds (1847). In this context, there was no consensual legal view or approach as to the nature or content of indigenous property rights. Ultimately, in the face of disagreement, diverse views of the nature and extent of Māori property rights persisted. The perceived non-justiciability of such rights meant that political spaces rather than the courts were of ongoing significance to characterising and debating such rights.     

Missionaries and the Māori Language in Nineteenth‐Century New Zealand: A Mixed Inheritance

The historiography dealing with New Zealand's colonial period (1814 – c.1900) underwent a substantial revision during the second half of the twentieth century. In particular, the role and activities of the missionaries in the country during the colonial era was subject renewed scrutiny, which served as a much‐needed antidote to the largely uncritical depiction of these proselytisers in earlier histories. However, this revisionism sometimes took a reductionist approach to the work of the missionaries, and in the process, overlooked some of their accomplishments in a colonial environment that was at best unsympathetic and often hostile towards the Māori culture and language. Since then, a more nuanced and considered historiography has emerged – one which also incorporates the histories of imperial missionary activity in the realms of literacy and indigenous languages in other parts of the world into New Zealand's experience. This work examines the seminal role that Protestant missionaries and their parent churches played in the colonial era in converting Māori into a written language, in spreading the use of literacy within Māori society, with consideration given to the role of Māori agency in this process, and the challenges in policy and practice that the Protestant missionaries had in this period.     

Ornamentalism,Empire and Race: Indigenous Leaders and Honours in Australia and New Zealand

The imperial honours system, David Cannadine has argued, was a means for binding together ‘the British proconsular elite’ and ‘indigenous colonial elites’ throughout the settler colonies and dominions of the British Empire (Cannadine, David. Ornamentalism: How the British Saw Their Empire. London: Penguin, 2002). Yet in settler colonies like Australia and New Zealand indigenous populations were marginalised and often disregarded, and it was local white elites who became knights of St Michael and St George, the Bath and the British Empire. Focusing on Australia and New Zealand, this article explores the complex relationships Aboriginal and Māori leaders have had with honours during the twentieth century. Building upon Cannadine's analysis, I examine the ways in which indigenous leaders navigated the political complexities involved in the offer of an honour, and how their acceptance of awards was received by others, shedding light on how honours systems intersected with post-war struggles for indigenous rights in the former dominions.     

Ano te mahara e reka,how sweet the memory: The changing remembrance of Bishop Jean-Baptiste François Pompallier in the Twentieth Century*

In 2001, Catholic pilgrims, led by Māori priest Henare Tate, travelled to France to exhume the remains of Jean-Baptiste François Pompallier (1821–1872), the first Catholic Bishop of Aotearoa New Zealand. Placed in a lead-lined coffin, the remains were taken back to New Zealand and laid to rest in Motuti, Hokianga. The interment — 131 years after Pompallier's death — marked the end of an extraordinary renovation of the Bishop as a historical figure, shaped by the tides of Māori and non-Māori Catholic life, and fulfilling, it seemed, a sentiment expressed in this memorial song which Pompallier himself had composed as a parting gift to his Katorika (Catholic) faithful: “Ano te mahara e reka/a ki nga motu o Nuitireni i/sweet is the memory I hold/for the islands of New Zealand.” This article explores the shifting remembrance of Pompallier that underpinned the repatriation and its legacy for New Zealand Catholic communities, especially Hokianga Māori. Three interrelated themes emerge: locally, Hokianga as a foundational place of Māori Catholicism, and the institutional remembrance of Pompallier as the apostolic Bishop of Auckland; and, globally, the reshaping of collective memories in the theological and social changes of the Catholic Church.     

The Waikato River: Changing Properties of a Living Māori Ancestor

In Māori cosmology, rivers and other waterways are conceptualised as living ancestors, who have their own life force and spiritual strength. The special status of rivers in Māori society also explains why they are sometimes separated from other Māori claims to natural resources of which they were dispossessed in the 19th century. Until recently, Māori were often eager to contend that ownership of rivers is not their prime interest, but instead, they argued that they feel obliged and responsible to keep rivers fresh, clean, and flowing. This perspective, however, changed under the impact of a new government policy of selling shares in energy corporations that use freshwater and geothermal resources for energy production. In this paper, I provide an ethnohistorical account of the Waikato River and show how conceptions of this ‘ancestral river’ changed in the course of colonial and postcolonial history, more specifically in response to a recent shift in government policy. In 2008, a joint management agreement was signed between the government and Waikato Māori for a ‘clean and healthy river’, leaving the issue of ‘ownership’ undecided. Only two years later, however, Māori felt forced to claim ownership when the government moved to sell shares of power‐generating energy companies located along the river, which effectively transformed their ‘ancestor’ into a property object.     

Documents and Sources I: Memoirs of Two Eighteenth-Century Framework Knitters

Abstract

Textile fibre aggregates can be extracted from the leaves of Phormium tenax (New Zealand flax), a plant endemic to New Zealand and Norfolk Island. This research note, which was developed from N. M. Cruthers' Masters thesis, aims to review early trade between Māori and western settlers to New Zealand, the industrial development of a mechanised extraction industry and to examine reported reasons for failure of the industry. Hand extraction by Māori produced low volumes of fibre but traditional end uses were for prized cultural items. In comparison, fibre produced industrially was produced in high volume and was intended for commonplace items such as rope and sacking.     

The Politics of Knowledge: Anthropology and Māori Modernity in Mid-Twentieth-Century New Zealand

This article argues that growing confidence in anthropology as a tool for managing the adaptation of a resurgent Māori population to modernity shaped a “politics of knowledge” regarding New Zealand's indigenous people in the mid-twentieth century. We examine the relationship between anthropological discourse, state policy, and the Māori struggle to uphold traditional ways, through the prism of Ernest and Pearl Beaglehole's psycho-ethnographic study entitled Some Modern Māoris (Beaglehole, E., and P. Beaglehole. 1946. Some Modern Māoris. Wellington: New Zealand Council for Educational Research). This paper demonstrates that the study was the product of a nexus between concerns for Māori welfare, a perceived need for empirical research that could be applied to the “problem” of indigenous adjustment to contemporary conditions, and American philanthropy. For this reason, and as a detailed record of a small community when Māori society was on the cusp of post-Second World War transformations, we contend that the study deserves to be recovered from historical obscurity.     

Whatever Happened to Otaheitan Jem?

A diaspora of Polynesian travellers on foreign ships began with the foreign discoverers. Jem, a young Tahitian boy, lived in Sydney for some years before shifting to New Zealand. There he married and became a Māori chief. He helped Revd Samuel Marsden in 1814 and later joined a private ship on a disastrous expedition to get sandalwood from the New Hebrides in 1829–30. About 350 Rotumans, 120 Tongans, 500 Hawaiians and various others, including some Māori, died, mostly from fevers caught at Erromanga. Jem survived and was reported in Tonga in 1832, but whatever happened thereafter?     

Multiple sites of Māori political participation

This article examines what might be included in a definition of Māori political participation that moves beyond a predominant focus on voting in New Zealand general elections. I suggest that the proliferation of Māori governance organisations in recent years means that Māori participation within these organisations must also be considered as part of wider political participation. In addition, I argue that Māori engagement with local authorities deserves further close examination to explore the multiple ways in which political participation occurs. Using a broader definition of Māori political participation and highlighting its many facets indicate that Māori engage in more varied ways in New Zealand politics than previously recognised.

在新西兰,普选的投票是关注的焦点,毛利的政治参与不在其内。本文讨论了毛利政治参与的界定还可以包括哪些内容。作者认为,毛利治理组织近些年的兴旺发达说明毛利人的参与这类组织,也应被视为更广泛的政治参与之一部分。另外,毛利人与地方当局的交往也值得密切的关注,需要探讨其政治参与的多重方式。广义地理解毛利人的政治参与,关注其多面多相,可以让我们看到,其实毛利人参与新西兰政治的途径要比以往我们所看到的丰富变化得多。     

Intimate Relations: Kinship and the Economics of Shore Whaling in Southern New Zealand, 1820–1860

Recent scholarship has situated shore whaling as a key industry connecting southern New Zealand to the global economy and the imperial world during the mid-19th century. An economically-driven view of this period, however, tends to obscure the enduring importance of Māori forms of kinship in the establishment and success of this resource-based industry. In this article, we argue for the significance of Māori concepts such as whanaungatanga (connectedness) and whakapapa (genealogy) to understanding shore whaling in southern New Zealand. Kinship connections formed through marriage tied newcomer whalers to the region, as well as bringing Ngāi Tahu into the emerging coastal economy. The depth of these relationships went beyond the economic, creating enduring social bonds and mixed communities across generations.     

Ta‘isi O.F. Nelson and Sir Maui Pomare Samoans and Māori Reunited

ABSTRACT

This paper unearths the friendship between Samoan nationalist leader Ta‘isi Olaf Frederick Nelson and Māori politician Sir Maui Pomare during the early period of New Zealand's administration of Samoa. It examines the role this friendship played – especially as a line of communication between the Samoan protest movement or Mau, of which Nelson was a leader, and the highest echelons of the New Zealand government – in those years of fraught relations between Samoa and New Zealand. It also explores the significant historical connections that were made, or remade, through this friendship. The relationship between these two men brought Polynesian peoples together in new ways and also directly linked Parihaka, a 19th-century Māori community known for its non-violent resistance against European colonialism, with the later Samoan Mau.     

Official Statistics and the Contemporary Politics of Indigeneity

Critical scholarship on colonisation tells us that official statistics have reflected the perspectives of the colonisers. However, the colonised, in asserting ‘Indigenous rights,’ have begun to use official statistics to advocate policies that will relieve the continuing structural injustice that is colonisation's legacy. This paper examines Aboriginal and Maori intellectuals' efforts to quantify, using official statistics, the ‘unfinished business’ of settler colonial liberalism. Examining Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioners' annual Reports, the paper argues that their quantitative comparisons of Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations highlighted the contested implications of ‘equality.’ Turning to New Zealand, the paper reviews two issues: the appropriate boundary of the ‘Māori population,’ and whether it is possible to measure Māori well-being according to Māori norms. The paper draws on the work of Andrew Sharp to make sense of the difficulties and opportunities that face Indigenous intellectuals in Australia and New Zealand when they operationalise ‘social justice’ in the terms of a comparative statistical archive. The paper argues that there are now two distinct idioms in which to represent the collective Indigenous presence within settler colonial nation-state—one signified by the concept ‘population,’ the other by the concept ‘people.’ The tensions between ‘population’ and ‘people,’ resonating with undecided issues about the claims of Indigenous citizenship upon a liberal policy, are a feature of contemporary Indigenous political discourse.     

Polarized Light Microscopy: An Old Technique Casts New Light on Māori Textile Plants

Understanding the composition of an artefact has ramifications for advancing human history and behaviour knowledge, providing cultural information about trade, agricultural practices and adaptation to new environments. However, accurate plant identification from artefacts is problematic, since textile production, age, dirt and/or conservation treatments obscure morphological features, and specimen size and/or ethical considerations hamper modern analytical methods. This study tested the efficacy of polarized light microscopy (PLM) in the identification of New Zealand plant species commonly used in Māori textiles, and demonstrates that morphological and birefringent features observed using PLM have the potential to distinguish between‐ and within‐plant genera.     

“Empirical Anthropologists Advocating Cultural Adjustments”: The Anthropological Governance of Āpirana Ngata and the Native Affairs Department

In 1929, āpirana Ngata published an article titled “Anthropology and the government of native races in the Pacific”. This would appear to confirm the link between anthropology and the rule of indigenous populations in New Zealand and its Pacific empire, but the evidence presented in this article suggests a more complex situation. This paper examines the “empirical anthropology” of Ngata and Peter Buck and the ways in which their activities reshaped the policy and practice of the Department of Native Affairs between 1920 and 1935, particularly through the notion of cultural “adjustments” or “adaptation”. Archival research reveals that behind the activities of the Dominion Museum, the Polynesian Society and its Journal was a Māori-led body, the Board of Māori Ethnological Research, which redirected government collecting, research and publication from salvage to the maintenance and revival of Māori cultural heritage in the service of tribal social and economic development. Seen through the theoretical framework of assemblage theory, we can see how a malleable idea of culture was employed in social governance in quite different ways to the colonial governmentality at work in other settler colonies at this time. The paper argues that this form of “anthropological governance” effectively de-territorialized state institutions, thereby creating a distinctive space for the native exterior to the nation.     

Māori Textiles from Puketoi Station,Otago, New Zealand

Abstract

A group of Māori textile artefacts were discovered in a rock shelter in the southern South Island of New Zealand in 1895. The assemblage comprised a significant number of textile and textile-related artefacts including large and small bags, footwear and prepared leaf and fibre for textile production. The artefacts were privately owned until the 1920s when they were acquired by the Otago Museum, remaining there until new techniques made further investigation possible. This paper presents information from an interdisciplinary investigation of the Puketoi Station assemblage of textile artefacts, which examined artefact structure, form and function, and materials of construction. Interpretation of these artefacts using contemporary textile analysis methods, traditional weaving knowledge, and recent archaeological research, turns them from static objects into dynamic components of culture. The Puketoi Station artefacts embody and illustrate a unique material culture associated with the late prehistoric southern New Zealand Māori lifestyle.     

Christianity,Gender, and the Working Class in Southern Dunedin, 1880–19401

This article is a study of the southern suburbs of Dunedin, which during the late nineteenth century became the most industrialized and working class urban area of New Zealand. Analyzing the social composition of fifteen southern Dunedin churches, I question the idea, widely held by New Zealand historians, that the working classes had largely turned their backs on organized religion. In keeping with recent scholarship in the social history of British and Irish religion, I show that unskilled workers were better represented in many southern Dunedin congregations that previous historians have acknowledged and that skilled workers numerically dominated most churches. When women are included in the analysis, working class predominance increases further. Signing the suffrage petition in remarkable proportions, working class Christian women turned the southern suburbs into a world‐leading first wave feminist community. Moreover, varieties of popular Christianity flourished beyond the ranks of active churchgoers. I conclude by suggesting that New Zealand historians need to rethink the old “lapsed masses” and “secular New Zealand” assumptions and to investigate the diverse varieties of Christianity shaping the culture, and their sometimes conflicting this‐worldly meanings.