Malcolm McKinnon: Māori and other nationalisms

Māori sovereignty, tino rangatiratanga, mana motuhake, a declaration of independence, partnership under Te Tiriti: these are all staples of Māori political mobilization. A succession of political movements – over the last 100 years Ratana, Mana Motuhake, the Māori Party, Te Pati Māori – have upheld the cause, with erratic political success but enduring moral, social and cultural impact, strikingly in evidence in the last few weeks.

As has been noted in some recent commentary, Māori political mobilisation can also be seen as an example of nationalism, a phenomenon of global history and politics for at least 250 years, in which a people with a distinct sense of identity seek a distinct political future, seek self-determination.

Readers might ask, how can Māori claim nationhood when the Māori population is intermingled with an existing – the New Zealand – nation? It’s a reasonable question to which there are reasonable, but complex answers. Comparative history is helpful, and in the discussion which follows three other nationalist movements – Irish, African-American and Hawaiian – are offered as guidance.

In the wake of a failed rebellion, Ireland was incorporated into the British state in the Act of Union of 1801. In the Parliament of the ‘United’ Kingdom in London, Irish nationalist MPs became over time (the expansion of voting rights helped) a thorn in the side of almost every British government and triggered the downfall of several, all as a way of leveraging greater freedom for Ireland and the Irish, until 1922, when Britain acknowledged the independence of the aptly named ‘Irish Free State’.

In contrast, while the distinct identity of the formerly enslaved African-American population was unquestioned in the 20th century United States, African-American nationalism only occasionally explored the notion of a separate state, not least because unlike the Irish, African-Americans were not a majority in any US state. Moreover the experiment of establishing such a state in Africa – today’s Liberia – was not successful enough to reshape thinking. The focus of African-American nationalism remained participatory, not separatist, notably in the post-World War II civil rights movement and its claims to full equality of citizenship with other Americans.

Both approaches – the participatory and the separatist – can be identified in Māori politics. Not being a majority population in most parts of the country, territorial separation, Irish style is not an option for Māori (Tūhoe have negotiated what might be considered an exception). So a quest to participate in the institutions and decision-making of the state is a natural goal. On the other hand the aspiration of African-Americans to equality of citizenship is inadequate for Māori because it overlooks the commitment to political distinctiveness that is rooted in the early dealings between Māori and the British crown and thereby, with the non-Māori population.

Again a comparative perspective is useful. Hawai’i, as Aotearoa, is home to a sovereignty and nationalist movement (and as it happens indigenous or native Hawaiians like Māori, are ethnically Polynesian).  A demographic minority in Hawai’i, as Māori are in New Zealand, native Hawaiians seek a greater role in the governance of the US state of Hawaii but revive their own nationhood, which was suppressed when the Hawaiian monarchy was overthrown in 1893 (compare the suppression of Māori autonomy in the New Zealand wars of the 1860s). That this latter, as with Māori, does not involve territorial separation does not make it any less potent.

A further consideration strengthens the parallel between Hawaiian and Māori nationalism. Indigenous populations in most contemporary states may be united by a shared history of dispossession and discrimination, but they are mostly divided in their allegiances to a multiplicity of ecosystems, social patterns and languages – Australia for example is home to no less than 250 distinct languages, most of them mutually unintelligible. In such a setting collective indigenous identity is in part a creation of modernity.

In contrast, Māori (like native Hawaiians) are as much united as divided by kinship. Most remarkably, from Te Rerenga Wairua to Rakiura a single language with overlapping oral traditions links all parts of the country, be it named Aotearoa or New Zealand. This inherited unity gives enormous traction – and purpose – to Māori nationalism and its relationship to the state that has jurisdiction over the exact same territory.

To recap (and simplify) – the Irish wanted to separate, African-Americans want to participate and not separate, and native Hawaiians want to both retain a separate identity and participate. The Māori situation is most like the Hawaiian (and would be even more alike if Hawaii was an independent, not a US, state).xx

These different facets of Māori nationalism are intuited by commentators and probably most non-Māori New Zealanders but not conceptualized. Comparative history helps bring them into focus and provides a pathway through the debates around Māori rights in Aotearoa.

What does this mean in practice, at a time when issues of Māori rights are so fraught? The distinctiveness of a Māori nation which aspires both to maintain a separate identity and to participate in the New Zealand state, could be a starting point for discussion, rather than itself a battleground. That in turn could allow the canvassing of ways forward that speak to both objectives of both Māori and their fellow New Zealanders, with whom they share these islands.

 

Malcolm McKinnon is a Wellington historian and writer on international relations. He has co-taught courses on the politics of nationalism for Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington’s School of History, Philosophy, Political Science and International Relations.

 

This article can be republished under a Creative Commons CC BY-ND 4.0  license. Attributions should include a link to the Democracy Project.