Race Relations Crisis: Why it will soon resolve in favour of Māori

This piece was originally published in The Post as part of a series on six crises facing New Zealand.

A century ago, the average Pākehā had probably never met a Māori. At the 1926 census there were approximately 64,000 Māori making up a little over 4% of the country’s population. The vast majority of those 64,000 people - up to 90% - were living in remote kāinga far from the Pākehā majorities in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin. For the average urban resident, what they knew of Māori was more likely acquired somewhere in print than in person.

The Māori of 1926 were the descendants of “raupatu” – New Zealand’s first race relations crisis. Raupatu, the period spanning the confiscation of the Waikato in 1863 to the declaration of its “expensive failure” in 1869, represents the first iteration of the country’s race relations crisis. The second crisis would manifest in reaction to the urbanisation of the Māori population from 1945, and the third - and current - crisis is emerging as a reaction to the institutionalisation of the Treaty of Waitangi.

Marketing scam

History is contingent, and when prior conditions change then alternative trajectories can unfold. What could have happened if the Treaty was never signed? In 1840 the Colonial Office in London was exceedingly reluctant to colonise New Zealand. The country’s economic potential was hardly apparent, and commercial shipping between what would become the gold rush ports between Sydney and San Francisco could transit in Tahiti or Honolulu, avoiding a roundabout route via New Zealand. If it weren’t for the New Zealand Company’s marketing scam, promising keen settlers a plot in a subtropical paradise, the Colonial Office may have dispatched Captain Hobson with dramatically different instructions.

But settlement did occur, and the British government did intervene, and widespread conflict did break out. Governor Grey characterised the New Zealand Wars of the 1860s as a “war between the races”. In truth, the New Zealand Wars had nothing to do with “race”. The war was fought over whether the North Island’s richest agricultural land in Waikato, Bay of Plenty, Hawkes Bay and Taranaki would retain its status as “whenua” or acquire the status of “property”. If the land were to remain under the control of iwi and hapū according to their tikanga then it’s unlikely that the fledgling colony could carve out a productive (and taxation) base to sustain colonial settlement.

Urbanisation

This, then, was the first race relations crisis, and its source was the requirement for an unlikely colony to carve out a productive and taxation base. The second race relations crisis took hold in the Post-War period. The social democratic Labour Party had swept to power under Michael Joseph Savage and Peter Fraser, and the export receipts and financial surplus the productive (agricultural) economy was generating were applied to the incipient industrial base. Under Savage and Fraser the government implemented “import substitution” to foster domestic manufacturing, and the chief requirement of that manufacturing sector was labour.

In 1945 roughly a quarter of the Māori population were living in the towns and cities. Come 1956 it was 35%, in 1966 it was 62%, and in 1986 it was over 80%. The pace of urbanisation was so rapid, and so devastating, that in the 1960s the government adopted a formal policy of urbanisation – a “progressive” successor to the policy of assimilation in the 19th century. The Māori who were moving from their rural kāinga to the towns and cities were almost uniformly low paid, and for the most part shut out of educational or professional pathways. But the upside, such as it was, is that those Māori became increasingly integrated into New Zealand’s labour movements. Many of the leading figures of the “Māori renaissance” in the 1970s and 80s had cut their teeth in the labour movement, from Hone Tuwhare to Syd Jackson, and they understood how to convert their demands for redistribution and honouring the Treaty of Waitangi into action.

Bolger then backlash

And so when the 1990s arrived, and the Catholic conservative Jim Bolger took up the prime ministership, he was facing one of history’s contingencies: he could stare down the children of the urban migration and resist their demands for a reconciliation process for breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi. Or he could implement a reconciliation process, and attempt to effect a small redistribution as part of it. Mr Bolger took the second choice, and the second race relations crisis came to a close.

In offering a negotiated pathway to settle outstanding grievances for breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi, the Treaty settlement process institutionalised Māori resistance shifting activists from the streets to the boardroom. If urbanisation meant Māori were integrated into labour, the Treaty settlement process saw Māori integrated into capital as their Treaty settlement redress was applied to growing businesses in the primary industries, long term infrastructure investments, and local and overseas equities.

At the same time as that integration into capital was occurring, Māori were also penetrating the state. When Sandra Lee, who became the first Māori woman to win a general electorate, was campaigning in the first MMP election she would half joke that the new electoral system stood for “More Māori in Parliament”. She was right. And as more Māori entered Parliament and ministerial office, and as the Māori share of the population grew, the concessions they could etch out the state grew too.

In addition, Māori culture is now more or less synonymous with New Zealand’s secular culture. As religious observance declines, the role of tikanga in national life grows, so much so that parties on the right feel the need to campaign against the use of “karakia” in resource management decisions.

Crucial to capital

This, then, perhaps represents the third race relations crisis as some on the right resist the institutionalisation of both the Treaty of Waitangi and tikanga Māori in general. On taking office the coalition moved quickly to, as one example, abolish the Māori Health Authority. This is certainly the realm of a genuine ideological contest. But issuing directives to reduce or remove te reo Māori names - for example, “Waka Kotahi” - indicates a deeper reaction is at work. But, in the end, that reaction is likely to come to nothing.

The last frontier for the development of New Zealand’s primary industries is the exploitation of the last pockets of land held in Māori title. The most far-sighted infrastructure investments - such as Waikato-Tainui’s inland port at Ruakura - are iwi-led. Just as in the 1860s, it is what iwi and hapū control that is crucial to developing New Zealand’s productive base - that is, it is crucial to capital.

For that reason, the third race relations crisis is almost certain to resolve in favour of Māori and those who are comfortable with how the country has evolved since the 1990s.

Morgan Godfery (Te Pahipoto) is an Atlantic Fellow for Social Equity. This opinion piece is based on his chapter in the Helen Clark Foundation's latest book, Facing Up to Our Future: Challenges and Choices for New Zealand.