Matua Kahurangi: Maybe everyone in New Zealand should identify as Māori?

At this point, perhaps the simplest solution to New Zealand’s growing maze of race-based policy is for everyone to just identify as Māori.

Not because it reflects whakapapa. Not because of culture, reo, or the tikanga mumbo jumbo. But because, increasingly, identity appears to be the key that unlocks access to extra benefits, priority lanes, special funding, separate governance structures, lower tax rates and exemptions from rules that apply to everyone else.

Matua Kahurangi: The pounamu laws reveal a racist system hiding in plain sight

I was casually browsing the Otago Daily Times when a headline stopped me in my tracks. A 26-year-old Dunedin man had allegedly been found with 820 kilograms of stolen pounamu [Greenstone]. Nearly a tonne. Whākn’ wild. However, the more I read, the more something else stood out. It was not the alleged theft itself, it was the rules surrounding pounamu that revealed just how racially stacked the whole system really is.

According to the article, pounamu is the legal property of Ngāi Tahu under the Pounamu Vesting Act 1997. Then comes the part that should make any New Zealander raise an eyebrow.