Mason Durie - Nga Kahui Pou: Launching Maori Futures

Ng Khui Pou: Launching Mori Futures contains a series of addresses delivered between 1999 and 2002 at national and international conferences. They span a range of topics but are brought together by a common thread woven around contemporary Mori development and the advancement of Mori into the twenty-first century. At the same time, although the emphasis in this book is clearly on modern times and the future, Mori development itself is part of a much older journey initiated in Te Moananui a Kiwa, the Pacific, and continued within Aotearoa New Zealand over a period of several centuries or more. Development is not the prerogative of a single era.

Nonetheless Mori development has come to refer to Mori economic, social and cultural advancement in modern times. Positive Mori development certainly emerged as the core of Mori policy in 1984 after the Hui Taumata, the Mori Economic Summit. The new direction was part of the wider manifesto of the fourth Labour government to reduce the size of the State and devolve functions and accountabilities to the private sector as well as to communities. However, it also coincided with Mori aspirations for greater autonomy, revitalisation of culture and language, and a more direct role in delivering services to Mori.

After the upheavals of the nineteenth century, when depopulation and alienation combined to place survival at risk, Mori had become increasingly dependant on a state that was essentially committed to policies and programmes that would assimilate Mori into the prevailing systems of colonial New Zealand. So it remained, virtually until 1975 when the Treaty of Waitangi Act was passed. Although the Act was primarily about establishing a pathway that could lead to the resolution of grievances against the Crown for breaches of the Treaty, it marked the beginning of a new era in New Zealand constitutional and political reform. The Crown now appeared more serious about recognising Mori as a partner in the ongoing development of the nation and Mori were even more determined to live as Mori.

The new era did not arise in isolation of events elsewhere in the world. While New Zealand was grappling with the relevance of an 1840 Treaty to modern times, indigenous people around the globe, including Mori, were debating strategies for undoing the shackles of colonisation, and asserting their rights as First Nations peoples in countries where their standing had been seriously eroded. They engaged in actions at several levels and loss of life, imprisonment, and further marginalisation were not infrequent. But their determination was so unswerving and their collective action so compelling, that the politics of indigeneity were eventually to find a place on agenda of the United Nations and the schedules of many governments.

Meanwhile, having more or less accepted the right of Mori to maintain their own language, culture and social institutions, and having recognised some of the injustices of the past particularly as they applied to the alienation of land and other resources the New Zealand State embarked on a process of reformation. Frequently the reformation process highlighted differences between Mori and the State; often the debate was both acrimonious and confusing, and at times the goals seemed so incompatible that the prospects of any agreement dimmed as the debate progressed. Yet since 1975 the New Zealand ethos has changed. The debate is now less about whether the Treaty of Waitangi should be recognised but how it might be best implemented. There is little discussion about the rights and wrongs of having Mori providers in health or early childhood education or social services, instead the focus is on building their capacity so they might be more effective. Restitution for the glaring injustices of the past is no longer argued as if it were a matter for state generosity, instead it is seen as a state obligation, consistent with common law and with solemn undertakings made in 1840.