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Anti-Māori sentiment, broadly defined, is the dislike, distrust, discrimination, andracism directed againstMāori people as an ethnicity andMāori culture. Various scholars have characterised anti-Māori sentiment as stemming from thecolonisation of New Zealand byBritain.[1][2]
Assimilationist policies pursued by successive early New Zealand governments were all marked by anti-Māori sentiment, often justified through false claims Māori were "dying out". Anti-Māori sentiment developed as views of Māori amongPākehā evolved, from the earliest notions of "noble savages" to 20th-century stereotypes of Māori as being fat, lazy, dirty, happy-go-lucky and unintelligent, or as criminals.[3] Although racial segregation was never legally sanctioned in New Zealand, some towns practised it anyway until the 1960s. Anti-Māori bias in the media is well-documented and extensive.[4] In 2020, media giantStuff, which owns theDominion Post andThe Press, formally apologised for anti-Māori coverage in its newspapers dating back 160 years.[5][6]
In the 21st century, anti-Māori sentiment has become more prominent and widely alleged as Māori culture has become more revitalised in public life, and Māori issues of greater concern among non-Māori. As of the2023 census, one in five New Zealanders are of Māori descent.[7] The 2004Foreshore and Seabed controversy led to a resurgence of theMāori protest movement, which in turn was used by the political right to challengetino rangatiratanga, or Māori sovereignty, as illegitimate or racist in itself.[8] Such movements includeHobson's Pledge, ananti-Treatyist lobby group founded by formerNational Party leaderDon Brash to oppose Māoritreaty settlements andaffirmative action, as well as Tross Publishing,Whale Oil, and elements of theACT New Zealand political party.[9][10] This is part of a wider trend against theWaitangi Tribunal and increased Māori political agency andbiculturalism, including tropes of "Māori privilege",[10][11][3][12] Other examples include a wider backlash towardsMāori language revitalisation, alleged "Māorification" of Pākehā societal norms, andco-governance.[13][14] A rise in anti-Māori sentiment, particularly against Māori women, was reported in the lead up to the2023 New Zealand general election.[15][16]
There are also marginal extremist groups, such as the defunctNew Zealand National Front and activeAction Zealandia, who arewhite nationalist in character anddeny Māori are indigenous.[17]
Anti-Māori sentiment existed after the arrival of Europeans in New Zealand. As New Zealand transitioned from a collection of self-governing Māori polities to a Britishcolonial possession and then self-governing country, anti-Māori attitudes were soon present in both administration and amongPākehā (European New Zealanders). Although Māori are well regarded in popular culture as having been treated better than other indigenous people,[18] anti-Māori sentiment has been a constant fixture of New Zealand society since colonisation.[2]
Some 19th century legislation acknowledged traditional Māori practice and custom.[19] Māori law involved the principle ofcollective ownership of land. In thepre-emption clause,Article Two of theTreaty of Waitangi, the Crown had theright of first refusal of all land sales by Maori. This was intended to protect Maori interests in land dealings with Europedian settlers and land speculators, and to prevent a disorganised structure of land ownership.[20][21] The sale of land by Māori undermined their culture and law and helped British settlement of New Zealand.[22][23]
Māori were also discriminated against in suffrage. Although the Māori version of the Treaty of Waitangi gave the Crown the right to govern British subjects, Māori who wanted to partake in the earliest New Zealand democracy were largely shunned due to theland-ownership franchise, which restricted the right to vote to men aged 21 and over who owned property worth least 25 pounds. Since most Māori land was communally owned, very few Māori had the right to vote.[24] This changed in 1867, when theMāori seats were established, but there were only four, when Māori would have been entitled by population quota to between 14 and 16. Māori were prevented from switching between the Māori and General electoral rolls until 1975, meaning they were under-represented for more than a century.[25]
TheNative Lands Act 1865, the successor to an 1852 act, established theNative Land Court, whose primary purpose was to aggressively expand land purchases for British and Irish settlers in theNorth Island through individualising Māori land title inEnglish law. This method of outlawing collective ownership by refusing to acknowledge multiple property owners was justified by Minister of Justice (and first Prime Minister)Henry Sewell as essential for "thedetribalisation of the Māori – to destroy, if it were possible, the principle ofcommunism upon which their social system is based and which stands as a barrier in the way of all attempts to amalgamate the Māori race into our social and political system." This manifested through land confiscations (raupatu) during the concurrentNew Zealand Wars. TheWaitangi Tribunal's 1996 Taranaki report emphasised that theTaranaki raupatu "carried the germ for cultural genocide".[26] In 1867, colonial politicianIsaac Featherston said "the Maoris are dying out fast, nothing can save them; our plain duty as compassionate colonists is to smooth the dying pillow of the Maori; then history will have nothing to reproach us with."[3]
TheNative Schools Act 1867 soon followed, to strongly discourage the speaking of theMāori language in New Zealand schools. Although children were to be encouraged to speak English, there was no official policy banning children from speaking Māori. However some native school committees made rules banning this,[27] and Māori children were sometimes physically punished for speaking their native tongue at school.[28] This practice, which persisted for decades after the act was introduced in 1867, contributed to the Māori language's steep decline, and further alienation of Māori fromMāori culture.
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Māori were subject to a patronising line of analysis by Pākehā ethnographers, who viewed them as "noble savages"[29] who were "dying out". This was a flawed and sometimes welcomed interpretation of Māori population decline, which was caused by the introduction of European diseases to which they had no immunity, as well as theMusket Wars andNew Zealand Wars.[30][31][32] In 1898, New Zealand politicianWilliam Pember Reeves wrote that "the average colonist regards a Mongolian with revulsion, a Negro with contempt, and looks on an Australian black as very near to a wild beast; but he likes the Maoris, and is sorry that they are dying out." As a result of the more mild view of Māori inferiority,racial intermarriage was accepted and widespread.[29]
Although belief inwhite supremacy was widespread, it was based less on an assumption of genetic superiority than one of British cultural superiority. It was believed that if Māori culture was suppressed and Māori people were forcibly assimilated, they would be equal to British settlers.[32]
Māori were increasingly made into comical figures in the Pākehā imagination. Historian Peter Gibbons has described how "Māori themselves and their cultures were textualized by Pakeha, so that the colonists could 'know' the people they were displacing. It is not too much to say that the colonists produced (or invented) 'the Maori', making them picturesque, quaint, largely ahistorical, and, through printed materials, manageable."[33]Racial slurs such ashori are an example, with the term originally referring to a stock character of an uneducated, lazy Māori man.[34]
Unlikein the United States orSouth Africa, New Zealand never enforced formalracial segregation. However, racial segregation did exist in some places in a formal or local level against Māori, to favourPākehā andAsians.[35] From 1925 to the early 1960s inPukekohe, a small town now withinSouth Auckland, Māori had designated sections of cinemas to sit in, refused service fromtaxi drivers,barbers, and mostpub landlords, prevented from accessingswimming pools except on Fridays, forced to stand for Pākehā bus passengers, and were forced to live inslums where preventable diseases were rife. More than 200 Māori infants and children are recorded to have died frommeasles,diphtheria,whooping cough andtuberculosis, linked to slum living conditions, including 29 in 1938 alone.[35] Pukekohe was also home to the country's sole racially segregated school, which operated fromc. 1952 till its closure in 1964.[36] Other cities enforced some minor segregation, such as segregated public toilets inTauranga in the 1940s and libraries inKaitaia.[35]
TheBattle of Manners Street in 1943 was one memorable event of Pākehā protest against anti-Māori segregation, in which New Zealand Army soldiers fought American Army soldiers who were allegedly attempting to prevent Māori servicemen from entering the Allied Services Club on Manners Street,Te Aro,Wellington.[37]
In March 2024, Winston Peters compared co-governance toNazi Germany andNazi racial theories. His remarks were described as offensive by Ben Kepes, a spokesperson for the Holocaust Centre of NZ.[38]
Maori committees are very enthusiastic sometimes. They make such rules as " Only English to be spoken in the playground."
