New Zealand’s Treaty of Waitangi — which upholds Maori rights over their land — has long been seen as an important precedent in the global fight for recognition of First Nations people.
That is now under threat from a draft law that seeks to redefine the principles of the 1840 agreement between hundreds of Maori chiefs and the British Crown. The divisive move drew tens of thousands of protesters outside New Zealand’s parliament in Wellington on Tuesday in one of the largest demonstrations in the nation’s history. Even 184 years later, the shadow of the empire still hangs over the former colony.
Although it is unlikely to ever become law — New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s National Party has said it would not support the bill beyond the first reading which it already passed — it has brought an ugly side of Kiwi life to the surface: race politics. The leader’s party sits in a conservative coalition, joined by the right-of-center ACT Party and the New Zealand Party. To get ACT’s support, Luxon agreed to allow the bill to be deliberated, acknowledging internal debate had caused “tension.”
The Maori are not sitting by quietly. In scenes that have now gone viral across the world, Maori MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke led her colleagues in a haka, a traditional Maori dance performed in battles and ceremonies that has been made famous by the All Blacks rugby team. It brought Parliament to a halt on Thursday last week, briefly stopping members from voting on the Treaty Principles Bill, which is now open for public submissions.
The controversy over one of the nation’s founding documents touches a raw nerve. The agreement has two versions, one in English and the other in Maori, leaving the two sides with differing interpretations about what it means in practice for indigenous rights. The confusing arrangement put much of the power in the hands of the Crown. By the mid-20th century, Maori owned only a fraction of their original land. Just like colonized First Nations populations elsewhere, they became marginalized minorities in their own country.
Some redress was granted in the 1960s and 70s under a reparations tribunal, and as the treaty’s core values were gradually incorporated into national laws. As a result, indigenous communities in New Zealand are mostly better off than their Australian, Canadian and US counterparts, with more representation in government and public life. However, this progress risks being undone. Luxon’s new center-right coalition government, which took office last year, has unwound some of the policies that gave the community prominence.
A Guardian investigation in July revealed the effect of legislative and policy changes in six key areas, ranging from health, treaty and language, justice, social and housing, to environment and education, that experts say would adversely impact Maori and might deepen existing inequalities. The administration also plans to wind back world-leading anti-smoking laws that would have made it illegal for anyone born after 2008 to buy cigarettes — a decision experts say would affect the community more, because of higher smoking rates than other New Zealanders.
Maori make up about 20 percent of New Zealand’s 5 million people, but are worse off in comparison to fellow citizens. They are jailed in much higher numbers, accounting for more than half of the people in prison, and are disproportionately represented in crime and poverty statistics. The community also fares badly when it comes to life expectancy rates, with Maori males at the bottom of the table.
Despite that, ACT leader David Seymour, who has Maori ancestry, said the community gets greater privileges on the basis of race. He wants to redefine the founding document, and is pushing for “equal rights” for all, contending that special provisions for people based on ethnic origins are divisive.
For some Kiwis, Seymour’s argument might resonate. Perhaps they feel the Maori hold unfair advantage over land claims and fishing rights. For those with no historical context, these perceived privileges chafe.
However, Seymour’s assertions are Trumpian in nature, as Sir Ian Taylor, a prominent tech entrepreneur and the founder and managing director of Animation Research Ltd, said in a recent editorial.
“Seymour is setting himself up as the victim, the man of the common people,” he wrote. “It’s a role he played to perfection on the first reading of his bill, even going as far as suggesting that members of the Maori party threatened to shoot him with their gestures. Ring any bells?”
New Zealanders are right to be wary of these cynical political games. Even if Seymour does not succeed in getting the treaty renegotiated, he has ignited an emotive issue that he would use to win support from more conservative voters ahead of elections in 2026.
Education, particularly about the atrocities of the empire, is one way out. Under the administration of former New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern, the curriculum was changed to ensure that from last year, schoolchildren would understand colonization’s lasting effects. An honest reckoning is necessary, no matter how uncomfortable. In this way, New Zealand is far ahead of the UK, its former colonial master, which until today struggles to come to terms with the legacy of imperialism.
Discussions about why the Maori are disproportionately represented in poverty and prison metrics also need to take place. None of this is easy, but it could bring to the surface viewpoints that need to be carefully thrashed out, before they are exploited for political gain. The alternative is an environment where Seymour’s dangerous rhetoric can thrive.
From India to Indonesia, colonial history has been difficult to confront. The debate over indigenous rights shows how deep these old wounds can run. In comparison to their global counterparts, Kiwis are still doing relatively well. It would be a tragedy to lose so much progress.
Karishma Vaswani is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Asia politics with a special focus on China. Previously, she was the BBC’s lead Asia presenter and worked for the BBC across Asia and South Asia for two decades.
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
The military is conducting its annual Han Kuang exercises in phases. The minister of national defense recently said that this year’s scenarios would simulate defending the nation against possible actions the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might take in an invasion of Taiwan, making the threat of a speculated Chinese invasion in 2027 a heated agenda item again. That year, also referred to as the “Davidson window,” is named after then-US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson, who in 2021 warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Xi in 2017