In Wakefield's laboratory: Tangata Whenua into property/labour in Te Waipounamu (original) (raw)
Related papers
Beyond the Coloniality of Economic Thought: Mātauranga Māori and Decolonial Kōrero Across Worlds
Beyond the Coloniality of Economic Thought: Mātauranga Māori and Decolonial Kōrero Across Worlds, 2022
This master's thesis is concerned with the historic and ongoing epistemic colonisation of Aotearoa. It seeks to examine the relationship of thought to the material conditions of settler colonialism and capitalism, and to discuss the conditions and possibilities for new, hybrid forms of decolonial thought and knowledges to emerge. I conceptualise the colonisation of Aotearoa as a meeting and entanglement of two worlds, te Ao Māori and te Ao Pākehā. What makes this meeting and entanglement colonial has been the ongoing displacement and subsumption of te Ao Māori by te Ao Pākehā. This occurs materially, but also epistemically, as each world has its own mode of thought and respective knowledges that emanate from its distinct mode of life, bound up with its relation to colonisation. To look at how the thought of the Pākehā world colonises, I have chosen to focus on economic thought, a certain form of Pākehā thought. In contrast to this, I have also chosen to engage with mātauranga Māori to see how it proposes a decolonial alternative to economic thought. Following my first chapter on methodology, in chapter two I argue that economic thought is situated within European thought and that it is an anatopism to apply economic concepts and ideas beyond Europe’s mode of life. I then trace out the development of capitalism and argue that economic thought is intimately part of capitalism and serves to reproduce it. In chapter three I critique the coloniality of economic thought by discussing its dual strategies of nonrecognition and assimilation based in the respective logics of white supremacy and capital, the thingification of the economy and its arrival to Aotearoa. In chapter four I look at the decolonial mātauranga Māori of Te Uri o Hikihiki and the colonial economic thought of the Ngātiwai Trust Board. In chapter five I discuss the decoloniality of mātauranga Māori by identifying three aspects that makes it decolonial; its materially grounded thought, relational ontology, and kaitiakitanga. To conclude, I argue that for decolonial kōrero to occur in Aotearoa, Pākehā thought needs to understand itself as manuhiri in Aotearoa.
Te Peeke o Aotearoa: colonial and decolonial finance in Aotearoa New Zealand, 1860s–1890s
The entangled legacies of empire: Race, finance and inequality (Manchester University Press, 2023), 2023
The familiar narrative of the British colonization of Aotearoa New Zealand is one of military violence and legal coercion that stripped Māori of their communally held lands and left them impoverished, ravaged by disease and, by the end of the nineteenth century, apparently destined for oblivion (Te Rangi Hiroa 1924). A banknote issued by the Kīngitanga, the Māori King movement, in the 1880s, however, hints at a less linear, more complicated regime of financial colonization waged by the British in Aotearoa New Zealand. The kotahi pāuna (one pound) note is one of few existing examples of currency issued by Te Peeke o Aotearoa, The Bank of Aotearoa, and is, indeed, one of few testimonies to the bank's existence. Very little is known about the bank, save that it operated as an exclusively Māori alternative to prevailing colonial financial institutions for approximately twenty years (1885-1905). In this chapter, I take the banknote as an artefact that reveals historical and material entanglements of finance and colonization and that, moreover, points towards political potentialities of finance for decolonial struggle.
THE MAORI AND THE CROWN An Indigenous People's Struggle For Self- Determination
While it has generally come to be accepted that most Western settlement and colonization of non-European countries should more properly be seen as invasion, 'fatal impact' accounts have been largely discounted in light of overwhelming evidence of the tenacity and adaptability of societies and cultures. This book traces the course of the courageous determination of the Maori of Aotearoa (New Zealand) to maintain their heritage and autonomous identity during two centuries of intense and sustained 'impact' since the beginnings of European settlement. To a reviewer forced to read many academic books in obscure and turgid prose, Alves's writing style is refreshingly readable, clear and jargon-free. Her account is well-researched but treads lightly on the pages, stating its position undogmatically yet persuasively. After briefly presenting current views on Maori migrations and pre-contact life, it moves through early contacts, missionization and British annexation. It explains how the Maori translation of the Treaty of Waitangi differed from its English original, encouraging a very different reading of it by the two sides. Thus the 'agreement,' which Britain brandished to validate its annexation of the whole country, was not merely contracted with a relatively few North Island chiefs, it was fundamentally counterfeit.
AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples, 2015
This article considers some key themes in messages promoted to New Zealand Māori by European colonists. With a focus on the period prior to 1870 when a number of factors came together to end Māori economic dominance, it considers whether the promoters of those messages were correct to claim that Indigenous peoples were not interested in material benefit or that individual ownership and individual endeavour for personal advantage were a greater spur to labour and productivity. Evidence pertaining to Māori is set against similar evidence from North America to argue that claims of laziness, incompetence, and inefficient land use were not merely incorrect but served to justify the transfer of land ownership from Māori to settlers in a process which appears to have parallels in North America and elsewhere.
This practice-research based article explores the relationship between mana motuhake (indigenous sovereignty) and white patriarchal sovereignty in Aotearoa New Zealand, focusing on Ngāti Tūwharetoa as a case study. It seeks to find the relevance of Aboriginal academic Aileen Moreton-Robinson's white possessive doctrine to the Aotearoa New Zealand context. In particular, it highlights the racist nature of the law and planning systems and their inadequacies to provide for hapū and iwi (indigenous nation/s). It provides a key theoretical analysis regarding the nature of white patriarchal sovereignty in Aotearoa and the need of the state to appear virtuous, to continue the legacy that started with the Treaty of Waitangi to maintain this whenua (land) as a white possessive. Lastly, the piece questions the position of Britishness within Aotearoa New Zealand and asks key philosophical questions for all about the need to find common understandings or māramatanga about our collective future as a society.