New Zealand’s Maori settlement story is not a mystery: the scientific, linguistic, archaeological, and genealogical evidence all point to a series of oceanic migrations from East Polynesia, beginning around the 13th century. Māori are not “born of the land” nor sprung from some primordial connection to it — they were settlers. The idea of indigeneity as “original people of the land” simply does not fit the facts of New Zealand’s human timeline.
Yet in modern political rhetoric, indigeneity is increasingly framed not as a neutral historical descriptor but as a source of inherent political authority. The few centuries between Māori arrival and European settlement are presented as an absolute moral boundary, elevating one group of migrants into a quasi-sacred category while placing all others into a permanently lesser one. This is a distortion of history and a dangerous foundation for public policy.
The great irony is that traditional Māori knowledge — the very genealogy that is often invoked today — never supported the idea of Māori emerging spontaneously from the soil of New Zealand. Māori oral tradition is clear: the ancestors came from Hawaiki. The story is one of voyaging, exploration, adaptation, and conquest. Tribal histories contain accounts of displacement, warfare, territorial expansion, and the absorption or destruction of earlier groups. In other words, Māori tradition presents a dynamic, human story — not a myth of timeless possession.
There is also increasing discussion about evidence suggesting that New Zealand’s human timeline may be longer and more complex than the standard 13th-century settlement model. Some researchers argue that emerging scientific work hints at earlier human activity, potentially a thousand years or more before the recognised Polynesian migrations. This would point to New Zealand’s history being one of multiple waves of settlement. These claims are not settled, but their very existence shows how premature it is to anchor modern political structures to rigid historical narratives. (*)
Whether or not future evidence strengthens or weakens these possibilities, the key point remains: indigeneity as a political weapon relies on the assumption that one group holds a timeless, exclusive link to the land. That assumption is inconsistent with the archaeological record, with Māori oral history, and with the ways human migration has shaped every corner of the world.
Trouble begins when modern political frameworks attempt to freeze this fluid, complex history into a simplistic hierarchy of moral entitlement. The concept of indigeneity becomes a political currency: a justification for differential rights, veto powers, and governance structures that elevate ancestry over democratic equality. What began as an anthropological observation becomes a constitutional claim.
This harms everyone. It traps Māori identity within a narrow, politicised definition that reduces living people to symbolic representatives of a mythic past. It prevents New Zealand from building a civic, future-focused national identity. And it fuels resentment by creating categories of citizens — some whose voices are amplified by ancestry and others whose voices are diminished by it.
There is a more constructive path: to acknowledge the full sweep of New Zealand’s human history without mythologising any group. Māori arrived before Europeans, built a unique culture, and endured extraordinary challenges. Europeans arrived later and built institutions that shaped the modern state. Both stories matter. Neither requires the invention of mystical entitlement. A nation built on truth does not need to fabricate sacred origins.
New Zealand’s strength will come not from elevating one group above another based on ancestry, but from reaffirming the principle that took centuries of Western struggle to secure: the equal political rights of all citizens, regardless of birth.
* https://tinyurl.com/285swclp
Geoff Parker is a passionate advocate for equal rights and a colour blind society.
Yet in modern political rhetoric, indigeneity is increasingly framed not as a neutral historical descriptor but as a source of inherent political authority. The few centuries between Māori arrival and European settlement are presented as an absolute moral boundary, elevating one group of migrants into a quasi-sacred category while placing all others into a permanently lesser one. This is a distortion of history and a dangerous foundation for public policy.
The great irony is that traditional Māori knowledge — the very genealogy that is often invoked today — never supported the idea of Māori emerging spontaneously from the soil of New Zealand. Māori oral tradition is clear: the ancestors came from Hawaiki. The story is one of voyaging, exploration, adaptation, and conquest. Tribal histories contain accounts of displacement, warfare, territorial expansion, and the absorption or destruction of earlier groups. In other words, Māori tradition presents a dynamic, human story — not a myth of timeless possession.
There is also increasing discussion about evidence suggesting that New Zealand’s human timeline may be longer and more complex than the standard 13th-century settlement model. Some researchers argue that emerging scientific work hints at earlier human activity, potentially a thousand years or more before the recognised Polynesian migrations. This would point to New Zealand’s history being one of multiple waves of settlement. These claims are not settled, but their very existence shows how premature it is to anchor modern political structures to rigid historical narratives. (*)
Whether or not future evidence strengthens or weakens these possibilities, the key point remains: indigeneity as a political weapon relies on the assumption that one group holds a timeless, exclusive link to the land. That assumption is inconsistent with the archaeological record, with Māori oral history, and with the ways human migration has shaped every corner of the world.
Trouble begins when modern political frameworks attempt to freeze this fluid, complex history into a simplistic hierarchy of moral entitlement. The concept of indigeneity becomes a political currency: a justification for differential rights, veto powers, and governance structures that elevate ancestry over democratic equality. What began as an anthropological observation becomes a constitutional claim.
This harms everyone. It traps Māori identity within a narrow, politicised definition that reduces living people to symbolic representatives of a mythic past. It prevents New Zealand from building a civic, future-focused national identity. And it fuels resentment by creating categories of citizens — some whose voices are amplified by ancestry and others whose voices are diminished by it.
There is a more constructive path: to acknowledge the full sweep of New Zealand’s human history without mythologising any group. Māori arrived before Europeans, built a unique culture, and endured extraordinary challenges. Europeans arrived later and built institutions that shaped the modern state. Both stories matter. Neither requires the invention of mystical entitlement. A nation built on truth does not need to fabricate sacred origins.
New Zealand’s strength will come not from elevating one group above another based on ancestry, but from reaffirming the principle that took centuries of Western struggle to secure: the equal political rights of all citizens, regardless of birth.
* https://tinyurl.com/285swclp
Geoff Parker is a passionate advocate for equal rights and a colour blind society.
17 comments:
Luxon and co don’t seem to want to rock the boat and point out the glaringly obvious fact that Māori are no more indigenous to NZ than a more recent coloniser. The more Māori insist on referring to colonisers as visitors in their own country, the wider the gap becomes. The contradiction of Māori opposing apartheid in South Africa is breathtaking.
Perfect factual summary. But , the gaslighting has worked.
As Trump is suing the BBC for fake news, so NZ citizens should sue the Iwi Leaders Forum, the Waitangi Tribunal - and persons such as Ardern, Jackson, Charters, Finlayson and many others - for peddling " fake history."
Don't forget Geoff that the Polynesians settled in the Pacific islands after migrations from east Asia. Before that, the human diaspora began in Africa, the true source and origin of indigeneity. All but Africans are migrants.
"Myths of timeless possession" aside, I would like to opine that there is a such a thing as indigeneity. It is when a people have lived in relative isolation in a defined area for long enough to have developed a unique culture and language. This would make Maori indigenous, but so are the Sami and the Basques of Europe, to which I would add the Dutch and, at a little stretch, the Afrikaner. Once indigeneity goes back to being an anthropological term rather than a political one, it would cease to be weaponised as indigenous status is actually common and no real big deal.
Māori culture did not originate in New Zealand — it developed from the Polynesian culture the first settlers brought with them, then evolved in response to New Zealand’s environment and inter-group dynamics.
This adaptation created what we now recognise as distinct Māori culture, but its FOUNDATIONS were clearly Polynesian.
You can say the same for ANY culture as none appear out of a vacuum. The question is not whether culture Y descended from culture X (which it invariably did) but when it became different enough to regard it as a unique culture. This involves some value judgements as it invokes the Sorites Paradox viz the absence of a sudden clear delineation between two opposite states of being separated by a spectrum of intermediate conditions. The same argument largely goes for language.
My (Dutch) language and culture clearly developed from ancient Germanic precedents, but that does not invalidate their uniqueness.
The ancestors of today’s Māori came with a fully developed East Polynesian culture, including:
Language: An Eastern Polynesian tongue that became te reo Māori in New Zealand.
Social structure: Tribal groupings (iwi, hapu, whānau) based on kinship and chiefly leadership.
Belief systems: Polynesian gods, cosmology, and ancestral traditions.
Technology: Outrigger canoe and navigation knowledge, stone tools, fishing methods, horticulture (especially kūmara), and methods of food preservation.
Artistic forms: Carving, weaving, tattooing traditions (which evolved into tā moko).
Indigenous from the Latin Indigena: sprung from the land or native to. So no, Maori are not indigenous. They are early settlers. The came here from another place. Then the question must be: Are very early settlers to be accorded more rights than all other citizens? In a democracy the answer is no. Also, we must remember the tremendous contributions of many people over the years, of all ethnicities. Probably the greatest contributions came from our early British and European settlers. So in conclusion, the U N has redefined the word indigenous.
Likewise, my pre-Dutch ancestors spoke Old German, had tribal groupings based on kindship (as all primitive peoples do), had belief systems that featured gods adapted from the ancient Germanic pantheon (e.g. Wotan, from the old Germanic Odin), had early Iron Age technology, and characteristic artistic forms (e.g. the swastika-like symbol). There is no precise time at which old Germanic morphed into Dutch - the Sorites Paradox looms at this point - but at the end of the day we have a culture and language different enough from its antecedents to recognise it as unique.
From an anthropological perspective, this is a matter of academic interest. Unfortunately, the status of indigeneity has become overly politicised, indeed weaponised, and so people read far more into it than is warranted.
You are right about the redefinition of the label 'indigenous', Janine. It has become politicised/weaponised whereas previously it was merely an anthropological term.
If you’re indigenous, tangata whenua, people of the land, why would you need to leave in the afterlife to return to the spiritual homeland of Hawaiki? Doesn’t really make sense, unless of course, you know that you’re not really from around these parts. Cook Islanders have a similar situation where the dearly departed leap off a spot known as Black Rock, on Rarotonga, and make the same spiritual journey.
Precisely
I like the American constitution which as we know says " We hold these Truths to be self-evident , that all Men are created equal that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights , that among these are Life Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness . "
These rights are not derived from the fact that he is a national of a certain state but are based upon attributes of his human personality
. Since Maori likely stole land and killed off the original inhabitants ' People of the Land' is an invalid category for them to claim.and does not give them any special rights. The history of
regular tribal warfare and consequent land grabs invalidates this special designation as well.
"
Count me in - class action! And keep it away from all woke judiciary.
And Maori history basically now taught from 1840 (or sometimes from 1769); earlier periods are generally treated as a utopian happiness when of course like all other peoples in the history of the world, at different times, it would have been savage and brutal, warriors competing for captives and women and other tribute. The Waitangi Tribunal is simply a different tribute system.
And Anon@11.29, if they were the tangata whenua, why did they not insist in being recorded as such in NZ's purported 'founding document' - Te Tiriti? Simply, because back in 1840, they were honest enough to acknowledge that they weren't. Hence why they were referred to there-in as "tangata maori". Since then, we obviously had more revision, more distortion, and more grift!
Maori Claim Indigenous Status.
Under this falsity, Maori could have the right to separate self-rule … through their own political and legal systems. And also separate education, health, and housing (all funded by the State) with entitlement to much of NZ’s land; and all key natural resources from which income is derived.
This is despite the Cambridge Dictionary defining an indigenous race of people as: "Having always lived in a place".
And the Oxford Dictionary says, quote: "People who belong to a place, rather than coming to it from ELSEWHERE".
Due to a ‘woke’ agenda, the definition of “indigenous” has been extended to include any race of people who were living in a country when it was colonised.
But that should certainly not apply to Maori … as they were quite recent arrivals from ELSEWHERE.
An extremely ‘woke’ (fake) method of defining ‘indigenous’ is self-identification i.e. if you feel you are, then you are!
When, the genuine (real) classification of “indigenous” means as a race you originate from your present country of residence … or have existed there for a very long time, i.e. thousands of years.
Well, radiocarbon dating proved that Maori had arrived about 390 years before Abel Tasman … i.e. Maori settled in NZ approx 590 years before the Treaty was signed.
Whereas, Aboriginal people have existed in Australia for over fifty thousand years.
CONCLUSION … being an indigenous race really involves having no knowledge or handed down memories of your arrival.
FACT: Maori know the names of all seven canoes (waka) their ancestors arrived in.
Another criterion of being indigenous is there should be no knowledge of any other homeland from whence you came.
There’s no getting round that one either, because at Cape Reinga a sign says it is where the spirits of dead Maoris leave from on their journey HOME to Hawaiki.
The false (fake) assertion that Maori are indigenous to NZ is also due to National underhandedly signing us up to the “UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples” … solely for political advantage. Despite Labour having refused to do so!
However, it should be noted that signing was purely tokenism, and is NON-BINDING.
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