9 - Ethnic Change among the Māori in New Zealand

Summary

Here I examine the case of the Māori in New Zealand, which provides me with a second case study of how processes of declining and then increasing values for tribal land has affected ethnic identity. As in the USA, population growth and subsequent urbanization in the mid-twentieth-century led to a rise in pan-Māori nationalism, with evidence that native language loss in cities did not halt the rise of Māoritanga (Māori-ness). However, judicial rulings that attempted to compensate the Māori for their historical loss of land and livelihoods gave resources to individual iwi (tribes) rather than the Māori community as a whole, which has had led to a renewed emphasis on iwi identity above and beyond a common Māori identity. In particular I focus on fisheries policy that has allocated money to iwis according to their coastline length and show that those iwi with longer coastlines have seen higher population growth in recent censuses. I conclude the chapter with a brief examination of indigenous peoples in both Australia and Canada, where I show that industrialization has induced assimilation into pan-tribal identities.