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Michael Belgrave suggests the public history in New Zealand since the 1990s has been often dominated by the need to acknowledge New Zealand’s colonial past.

Image courtesy of interviewee. March 21, 2024

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This video video discusses the complex history and ongoing dynamics of New Zealand's colonial past, particularly regarding its indigenous Maori population. Starting with New Zealand's inclusion in the British Empire in 1840 and the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, the narrative highlights how the treaty's commitments were frequently broken, leading to ongoing struggles for Maori rights and recognition.

In the past few decades, efforts have been made to acknowledge this colonial history, including the establishment of the Waitangi Tribunal and treaty settlements, which have empowered Maori economically and culturally. However, recent political changes and a backlash against these efforts have arisen, particularly post-COVID. A new coalition government emerging from the most recent election has shifted toward more conservative policies, including revisiting the role of Maori terminology in government and education.

This video video also emphasizes significant changes in the educational curriculum to include Maori history more prominently, which has been met with critiques regarding its depth and inclusivity of other cultural histories. While there has been a push for biculturalism and acknowledgment of historical injustices, the political landscape is currently shifting, raising concerns about the future trajectory of these efforts.

The historical context and the debate surrounding the treatment of Maori culture highlight a broader struggle for identity and recognition in post-colonial societies. Overall, while progress has been made in integrating Maori perspectives into mainstream society, political tensions indicate an uncertain future regarding race relations and historical reconciliation in New Zealand.

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New Zealand is a debt colonial society.

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It became part of the British Empire in 1840.

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Most significant aspect of that is it became part

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of the British Empire at a time of,

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great concern about the impact

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of colonization on indigenous people.

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So it came, the initial part of the inclusion

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of, of, of New Zealand

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and the Empire was the signing of the Treaty

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of Waitangi in 1840, which was a treaty with all,

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not all tribes signed it.

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There, very substantial number of,

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of leading chiefs throughout the country signed this treaty,

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which provided a series of commitments about recognition

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of their chiefly authority, particularly over land.

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And much of our history has been a history of

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how this treaty was broken,

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reinterpreted, and certainly broken.

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And over the last 35, 40 years,

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or now nearly 50 years,

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we've had something called the Yang Tribunal.

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And we've had processes of, of kind of investigation of,

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of New Zealand's colonial past since 1985.

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And more recently we've had treaty settlements.

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So the general process over the last 30

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or 40 years has been to recognize colonial colonialism

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and its impact on New Zealand

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and to also reestablish Maori

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as a living central part of New Zealand life.

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And you use Thero to describe New Zealand was given a name

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by the Dutch for heaven's sake.

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And more recently people have started to use the term rro,

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which has become politically controversial,

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both alongside Aro New Zealand.

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I've got a book coming out where I will use the term,

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it's a relatively recent term for the country.

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It's not a deeply rooted Maori term,

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but doing so is recognized something we call Biculturalism,

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which is the increasing importance of New Zealand,

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of Maori and New Zealand life.

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So things like language, art, music, a revival

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of Maori language, which has been given a priority

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by Maori since the 1980s, means

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that Maori are much more central to New Zealand's life.

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Treaty settlements have given Maori a much stronger place in

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the economy with very large organizations in some parts

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of the country that have become the major economic

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player in their regions.

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However, over the last three

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or four years we've had in the general post covid angst

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that most countries have suffered.

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We've had the beginnings of a backlash.

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And we've seen in the last election,

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a coalition government emerge in a,

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we have a mixed member proportional representation system,

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MMP, and to get elected,

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the center right National Party has had to do deals

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with two more on the edge minority parties, both

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of which have pushed national into a stronger, you know,

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which its opponents say is an anti anti Maori,

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but certainly to put the brakes on some of that direction.

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So things like government departments had Maori names

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first and then English names.

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So then under the new thing, the English names are gonna go

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back again because everyone understand the English names

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like MOT the acronyms are supposedly meaningful in

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English and not Maori.

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So subtle changes, changes in interpreting the Treaty

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of Wang have been suggested by one in one extreme position.

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So things are in a state of flux.

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Yeah, that's where we are,

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like everywhere else in the world.

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It's getting really confused.

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This is, it's important to locate just when

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and how this came about.

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Obviously with this, we've had this, you know,

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reconsideration of colonization

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and there's been a move over a long period of time in 30

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or 40 years to include much more New Zealand history

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and particularly history about colonization in

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New Zealand in the school curriculum.

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But we've had a curriculum since the 1990s

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where schools really determine what teachers

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and schools will decide the content.

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And there's been a major concern that key parts

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of New Zealand's history, like the New Zealand wars

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that were fought in the 1860s are not being taught.

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And the ministry of Ed did not want to bring in this form

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of curriculum

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because it, it ran against how the curriculum worked.

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But the Prime Minister in 2019,

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Jacinda Dern really initiated, she said,

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we're gonna have a new curriculum.

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We're gonna put New Zealand history at the center of it.

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And that got broken by Covid a bit.

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But at the beginning of last year, we had the introduction

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of the new curriculum, and that curriculum was established.

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And it is a post-colonial curriculum.

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I mean, it does take, make Maori history, the center

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of New Zealand's history,

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and it does deal head on with colonization,

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which doesn't mean that some Maori haven't criticized it

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for not focusing even more strongly on, on,

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on Maori centered history.

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But compared with what happened, you know,

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debates over in Australia and North America,

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or in Britain about history,

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the curriculum emerged in a very apolitical fashion.

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Um, there were criticisms from

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political parties about it being a little bit too

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post-colonial, a little bit too wokes or,

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or leftish, which is even very hard to see.

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There's very little labor history in here at all.

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But it went through. But point thing to make here is

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that went through at a time when Jacinda ER's star had risen

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and was, was at its peak.

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And New Zealand had gone through the first wave

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of covid very, very successfully, had managed to

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eliminate the first round of the virus.

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We were still cocooned,

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and the economy had survived and done reasonably well.

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So in a sense, I think one of the reasons why

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that curriculum was so relatively apolitical

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and yet relatively post-colonial, was

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because of when it happened.

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If that curriculum was being produced today,

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I don't think it would've had a hope in hell of being,

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of being recognized as the curriculum.

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And in fact, one of the political parties has called for one

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of the minor political parties, has called for a revision

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of the curriculum to make it more balanced.

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Um, but I would say even in the, you know,

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there are people on the edges of this debate, who,

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but the attack on, on New Zealand, on on an understanding

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of New Zealand's history is nowhere near as, as adamant

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or as virulent as we have overseas.

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So even the Act party, which is promoted, this revision

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of the curriculum is not saying that we shouldn't continue

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to reconcile the problems of our past.

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It's not saying that the things

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that happened in the past shouldn't be confronted

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and they shouldn't be treaty settlements.

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So in a sense, it's one of those things

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where we have a revisionist debate,

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but it's still much more accepting

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of New Zealand's colonial past

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and perhaps would be the case in Australia.

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Um, though things have changed there

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and changing there as well to some of that, you have

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to look at the process that was put in place

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to create this curriculum.

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And some of this is just a very technical

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or policy issues of, of

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how government the New Zealand deals with curriculum.

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As I said earlier, the curriculum that was model

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for curriculum that was established in the nineties came out

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of a very neoliberal idea about decentralizing education,

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giving a great more authority to schools

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and communities to determine their own curriculum.

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Now, or even though that might be regarded as sort

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of a neoliberal position, it was a view

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that was strongly appreciated by Maori

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because it gave the emphasis, you know, Maori are,

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are local, that iwi

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and hapu are the terms for tribal communities.

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At a local level,

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these communities can be in competition with each other.

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They have their own histories, their own identity,

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and they see a national history as often something

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that is not in their interests.

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So the idea of local control over curriculum sits well, both

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with, you know, sort of right wing ideas of

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how education should work,

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but also with how Maori understood how those ideas should.

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But at the same time,

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there's been a real concern about the lack

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of engagement at in schools with some of the more,

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what we call difficult histories.

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Those things about the colonial past that involve violence,

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particularly the wars of the 1860s.

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So in New Zealand, despite the Treaty of Wa Tangi, we had

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between 1869, 18 59, 60

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and 1872, a period of warfare

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and quite substantial warfare taking

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place in the central north island.

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Uh, the, the causes of the war involved both competition

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for the land insistence that Maori conformed

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to the sovereignty of the British crown.

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And I would put a very big impact of fact that in the 1850s,

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the settlers got their own parliament

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and that parliament excluded Maori,

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it had electoral laws,

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which basically said only those people

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with individualized property could vote.

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And that excluded Maori who had collective

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property ownership at that time, not at

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that time recognized title.

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So that shift in power has a major contribution to

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what happens in the war.

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And in the war. There are events that are controversial,

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obviously, and we talk these about

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these as difficult histories.

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We did some work with schools while the curriculum was being

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reconsidered, and we need to be really careful about

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what we mean by difficult histories

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because it appears that our young students,

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don't find anything difficult no matter how violent it is.

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So in a, in classrooms where students,

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because again, this is competition, history's not compulsory

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beyond social studies, earlier studies,

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and it tends to get lost in other aspects of social studies.

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And then once you get into the last three years of school,

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history is just an option.

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So his history, teachers have to get

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bums on seats, as we say.

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Um, and to do that, of course, they end to cover things

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that students want cover.

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So we have the Holocaust, world War I, world War ii,

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Vietnam, we have the Civil Rights Movement.

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So conflict is sort of the basis of what is taught

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because these teachers can choose things

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and they choose things that are gonna bring students in.

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Um, the only sort of topic

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that isn't particularly conflict related is suffrage.

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'cause New Zealand became the first country in 1893 to

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to have women voters.

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And in contrast to say Britain, it happened

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with very little conflict and no violence.

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So it was just a, you know, one of those things

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that happened in 1893.

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Um, so that's the one sort of what we saw, tame, topic.

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So by difficult histories, we don't mean violence,

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we mean conflict that resonates in the present.

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So conflict where contested histories understood at the

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present may make it very difficult for students to deal

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with each other or for teachers to deal

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with conflict about the present.

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This is the Black Lives Matter type issue or privilege.

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These sort of the other debates,

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they're not really about the past, they're about the pa

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how you pass, use the past ancestry in the present.

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So in a group of school, kids at OT High School,

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who lived very, very close

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to battle sites in 18 63, 64, went

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and visited those sites

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and were told stories about them

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that they had not heard at all at school,

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were completely unaware of these sites.

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So there was a push by those students, a petition.

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And that kind of initiates the debate.

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It's always been there, but brings it to the attention

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of government and leads step by step

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to Jacinda ER's announcement.

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When they took their Petition to Parliament, the Ministry

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of Education said, no, we don't really need to do this.

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We'll just provide some more resources.

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Not because they were opposed to this form of history, but

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because to actually prescribe what students need to know,

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ran against the whole tenor of

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how the curriculum was, was being rolled out.

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So we had a, a series of committees that were set up.

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And I think it's really important to understand that,

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you know, back in the 1980s

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and nineties when there was talk

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of putting New Zealand history into the curriculum,

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you know, the history academics

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and the history teachers got together

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and designed this comprehensive long curriculum.

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But in this case, the academics were very much,

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they were there, but very much on the sideline.

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There were a few academics in the process of, I I was one.

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In the process of the larger process of discussion,

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there were writing groups that were more teacher led

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and community led than academics,

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but there were some academics in them.

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But they tended to be history teacher academics rather than

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historians as such.

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And the ministry dealt with the academic side of it

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by getting the Royal Society

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and New Zealand to create a committee, a joint committee.

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And I co I co-chaired it to comment on the curriculum.

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So they, they kept that academic advice at a distance.

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When they released the draft, all hell broke loose

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because while the draft had a very strong bicultural

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colonial emphasis, almost everyone else was left out.

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So all of the other migrant groups

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and New Zealand is a country of migrants.

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Uh, we have one of the highest percentage

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of migrants in our population than anywhere else.

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Um, Auckland, our major city has around 40%

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of its population born outside of New Zealand.

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That's colossal transformation since the 1980s.

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And one of the main reasons

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that the spared down curriculum was presented is

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that the ministry just wanted to keep it as brief

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as possible, but in the consultation process, it had

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to expand it out

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and include much more of the group, you know, so

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that groups could see themselves in the curriculum

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who weren't necessarily Maori

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and weren't necessarily of European heritage,

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which were described to New Zealand as Pakeha.

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Um, so we ended up with a curriculum that was, pretty,

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pretty extensive.

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And I find that as one of the best things about it

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because if any student gets to understand about 20% of

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that in the 10 years of understanding it,

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they're gonna have a good grasp of New Zealand's history

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and maybe even world history

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because one of the big criticisms

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of if we focus just on New Zealand,

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how do we put New Zealand in the context

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of what's happening elsewhere?

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So all of those things for historians

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living in interesting times.

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Certainly the question that I've always asked,

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and always kind of been apprehensive about in New Zealand,

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it's gone a long way in the last 40 years,

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in recognizing Maori difference in

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just integrating Maori ways of doing things into the way

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that the public service operates

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and the way that schools operate.

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Things like or formal welcomes.

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Um, saying a prayer at the beginning of things,

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have just become taken not just from the Maori world,

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but they've been really incorporated.

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The amount of Maori words

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that have been integrated into our everyday language is,

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you know, hasn't occurred since

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the middle of the 19th century.

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This reintroduction of Maori words.

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Um, the treaty settlement process,

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which has created this strong, in many cases, not all

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because not enough money went to some groups,

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but those groups who got reasonably substantial amount

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of money have been able to use that, that core settlement

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to become major financial players

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and cultural players in their regions.

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I suppose that for me, I've been waiting for the backlash,

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you know, to occur

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and certainly in the last six months

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that backlash has certainly occurred

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and had political teeth,

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but it's still far too early

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to tell just where this is going.

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Uh, my feeling is that, I hate doing predictions.

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Historians shouldn't be prophets.

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Um, my feeling is that the more extreme parts

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of this anti Maori agenda,

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because there is an anti Maori agenda out there, are going

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to be worked back by the National party who's the, you know,

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we have two main parties in New Zealand national and Labor.

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They are both considerably to the left of the Republicans

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and the Democrats in an American sense,

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probably much more like the British labor and, and,

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and conservative parties.

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But in fact, they have a consensus

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that we need a welfare state for instance.

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There's no, no question about that,

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that we should have a public health service

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that we've had since 1938.

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But there's also been a really strong consensus

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among those parties about recognition

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of New Zealand's colonial past, investigations

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of the Waitangi Tribunal into those histories.

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And the National Party has actually been more effective at

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signing treaty treaty settlements

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with Maori groups than has, you know,

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the supposedly more left wing, labor party

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that gets far more Maori votes than does national.

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So I think that the best aspect, one of the best aspects

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of New Zealand's treatment of this has been the consensus

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among the main parties that this is important,

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that Maori are important, that Maori need

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to be included in the mainstream life of the country.

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I don't think the current conflict over all of these things

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is going to escalate.

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Some things have been turned back,

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but I think quietly we'll see alternatives.

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So for instance, there was a Maori health authority

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established, which was accused, you know, we have a ministry

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of health and we have,

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and we had this Maori health authority both established

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and the Maori Health Authority was

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to give a major responsibility

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and a degree of autonomy in dealing

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with Maori health issues.

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'cause as in most colonial post-colonial societies,

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Maori life expectancy

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and morbidity rates are far worse than the rest

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of the population that was seen

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as separatism accused of being apartheid.

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Uh, and as part of the coalition agreement,

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that has been taken away,

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but I would expect that the current government will still

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continue to fund Maori health providers will continue to,

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you know, along the general path, just not

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with this particular authority.

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But again, as a historian, we should be really wary about.

New Zealand's Colonial Legacy and Māori Reclamation

00:00:00 - New Zealand is a debt colonial society. It became part of the British Empire in 1840. Most significant aspect of that is it became part of the British Empire at a time of, great concern about the impact of colonization on indigenous people. So it came, the initial part of the inclusion of, of, of New Zealand and the Empire was the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840, which was a treaty with all, not all tribes signed it. There, very substantial number of, of leading chiefs throughout the country signed this treaty,
00:00:35 - of their chiefly authority, particularly over land. And much of our history has been a history of how this treaty was broken, reinterpreted, and certainly broken. And over the last 35, 40 years, or now nearly 50 years, we've had something called the Yang Tribunal. And we've had processes of, of kind of investigation of, of New Zealand's colonial past since 1985. And more recently we've had treaty settlements. So the general process over the last 30
00:01:09 - and its impact on New Zealand and to also reestablish Maori as a living central part of New Zealand life. And you use Thero to describe New Zealand was given a name by the Dutch for heaven's sake. And more recently people have started to use the term rro, which has become politically controversial, both alongside Aro New Zealand. I've got a book coming out where I will use the term, it's a relatively recent term for the country.
00:01:37 - but doing so is recognized something we call Biculturalism, which is the increasing importance of New Zealand, of Maori and New Zealand life. So things like language, art, music, a revival of Maori language, which has been given a priority by Maori since the 1980s, means that Maori are much more central to New Zealand's life. Treaty settlements have given Maori a much stronger place in the economy with very large organizations in some parts
00:02:07 - player in their regions. However, over the last three or four years we've had in the general post covid angst that most countries have suffered. We've had the beginnings of a backlash. And we've seen in the last election, a coalition government emerge in a, we have a mixed member proportional representation system, MMP, and to get elected, the center right National Party has had to do deals with two more on the edge minority parties, both
00:02:39 - which its opponents say is an anti anti Maori, but certainly to put the brakes on some of that direction. So things like government departments had Maori names first and then English names. So then under the new thing, the English names are gonna go back again because everyone understand the English names like MOT the acronyms are supposedly meaningful in English and not Maori. So subtle changes, changes in interpreting the Treaty of Wang have been suggested by one in one extreme position.

Revising New Zealand's Colonial History Curriculum

00:03:08 - Yeah, that's where we are, like everywhere else in the world. It's getting really confused. This is, it's important to locate just when and how this came about. Obviously with this, we've had this, you know, reconsideration of colonization and there's been a move over a long period of time in 30 or 40 years to include much more New Zealand history and particularly history about colonization in New Zealand in the school curriculum. But we've had a curriculum since the 1990s where schools really determine what teachers
00:03:41 - And there's been a major concern that key parts of New Zealand's history, like the New Zealand wars that were fought in the 1860s are not being taught. And the ministry of Ed did not want to bring in this form of curriculum because it, it ran against how the curriculum worked. But the Prime Minister in 2019, Jacinda Dern really initiated, she said, we're gonna have a new curriculum. We're gonna put New Zealand history at the center of it.
00:04:13 - But at the beginning of last year, we had the introduction of the new curriculum, and that curriculum was established. And it is a post-colonial curriculum. I mean, it does take, make Maori history, the center of New Zealand's history, and it does deal head on with colonization, which doesn't mean that some Maori haven't criticized it for not focusing even more strongly on, on, on Maori centered history.
00:04:43 - debates over in Australia and North America, or in Britain about history, the curriculum emerged in a very apolitical fashion. there were criticisms from political parties about it being a little bit too post-colonial, a little bit too wokes or, or leftish, which is even very hard to see. There's very little labor history in here at all. But it went through. But point thing to make here is that went through at a time when Jacinda 's star had risen
00:05:13 - And New Zealand had gone through the first wave of covid very, very successfully, had managed to eliminate the first round of the virus. We were still cocooned, and the economy had survived and done reasonably well. So in a sense, I think one of the reasons why that curriculum was so relatively apolitical and yet relatively post-colonial, was because of when it happened. If that curriculum was being produced today,
00:05:45 - of being recognized as the curriculum. And in fact, one of the political parties has called for one of the minor political parties, has called for a revision of the curriculum to make it more balanced. but I would say even in the, you know, there are people on the edges of this debate, who, but the attack on, on New Zealand, on on an understanding of New Zealand's history is nowhere near as, as adamant or as virulent as we have overseas. So even the Act party, which is promoted, this revision

Revisiting New Zealand's Colonial Education History

00:06:19 - to reconcile the problems of our past. It's not saying that the things that happened in the past shouldn't be confronted and they shouldn't be treaty settlements. So in a sense, it's one of those things where we have a revisionist debate, but it's still much more accepting of New Zealand's colonial past and perhaps would be the case in Australia. though things have changed there and changing there as well to some of that, you have to look at the process that was put in place to create this curriculum. And some of this is just a very technical
00:06:49 - how government the New Zealand deals with curriculum. As I said earlier, the curriculum that was model for curriculum that was established in the nineties came out of a very neoliberal idea about decentralizing education, giving a great more authority to schools and communities to determine their own curriculum. Now, or even though that might be regarded as sort of a neoliberal position, it was a view that was strongly appreciated by Maori
00:07:22 - are local, that iwi and hapu are the terms for tribal communities. At a local level, these communities can be in competition with each other. They have their own histories, their own identity, and they see a national history as often something that is not in their interests. So the idea of local control over curriculum sits well, both with, you know, sort of right wing ideas of how education should work, but also with how Maori understood how those ideas should.
00:07:52 - there's been a real concern about the lack of engagement at in schools with some of the more, what we call difficult histories. Those things about the colonial past that involve violence, particularly the wars of the 1860s. So in New Zealand, despite the Treaty of Wa Tangi, we had between 1869, 18 59, 60 and 1872, a period of warfare and quite substantial warfare taking place in the central north island.
00:08:25 - for the land insistence that Maori conformed to the sovereignty of the British crown. And I would put a very big impact of fact that in the 1850s, the settlers got their own parliament and that parliament excluded Maori, it had electoral laws, which basically said only those people with individualized property could vote. And that excluded Maori who had collective
00:08:53 - that time recognized title. So that shift in power has a major contribution to what happens in the war. And in the war. There are events that are controversial, obviously, and we talk these about these as difficult histories. We did some work with schools while the curriculum was being reconsidered, and we need to be really careful about what we mean by difficult histories because it appears that our young students, don't find anything difficult no matter how violent it is.

Challenges in Teaching New Zealand History

00:09:26 - because again, this is competition, history's not compulsory beyond social studies, earlier studies, and it tends to get lost in other aspects of social studies. And then once you get into the last three years of school, history is just an option. So his history, teachers have to get bums on seats, as we say. and to do that, of course, they end to cover things that students want cover. So we have the Holocaust, world War I, world War ii,
00:09:58 - So conflict is sort of the basis of what is taught because these teachers can choose things and they choose things that are gonna bring students in. the only sort of topic that isn't particularly conflict related is suffrage. 'cause New Zealand became the first country in 1893 to to have women voters. And in contrast to say Britain, it happened with very little conflict and no violence. So it was just a, you know, one of those things that happened in 1893. so that's the one sort of what we saw, tame, topic.
00:10:34 - we mean conflict that resonates in the present. So conflict where contested histories understood at the present may make it very difficult for students to deal with each other or for teachers to deal with conflict about the present. This is the Black Lives Matter type issue or privilege. These sort of the other debates, they're not really about the past, they're about the pa how you pass, use the past ancestry in the present.
00:11:07 - who lived very, very close to battle sites in 18 63, 64, went and visited those sites and were told stories about them that they had not heard at all at school, were completely unaware of these sites. So there was a push by those students, a petition. And that kind of initiates the debate. It's always been there, but brings it to the attention of government and leads step by step
00:11:36 - When they took their Petition to Parliament, the Ministry of Education said, no, we don't really need to do this. We'll just provide some more resources. Not because they were opposed to this form of history, but because to actually prescribe what students need to know, ran against the whole tenor of how the curriculum was, was being rolled out. So we had a, a series of committees that were set up. And I think it's really important to understand that, you know, back in the 1980s
00:12:07 - of putting New Zealand history into the curriculum, you know, the history academics and the history teachers got together and designed this comprehensive long curriculum. But in this case, the academics were very much, they were there, but very much on the sideline. There were a few academics in the process of, I I was one. In the process of the larger process of discussion, there were writing groups that were more teacher led and community led than academics,

New Zealand's Evolving Bicultural Education Curriculum

00:12:37 - But they tended to be history teacher academics rather than historians as such. And the ministry dealt with the academic side of it by getting the Royal Society and New Zealand to create a committee, a joint committee. And I co I co-chaired it to comment on the curriculum. So they, they kept that academic advice at a distance. When they released the draft, all hell broke loose because while the draft had a very strong bicultural
00:13:11 - So all of the other migrant groups and New Zealand is a country of migrants. we have one of the highest percentage of migrants in our population than anywhere else. Auckland, our major city has around 40% of its population born outside of New Zealand. That's colossal transformation since the 1980s. And one of the main reasons that the spared down curriculum was presented is that the ministry just wanted to keep it as brief as possible, but in the consultation process, it had
00:13:42 - and include much more of the group, you know, so that groups could see themselves in the curriculum who weren't necessarily Maori and weren't necessarily of European heritage, which were described to New Zealand as Pakeha. so we ended up with a curriculum that was, pretty, pretty extensive. And I find that as one of the best things about it because if any student gets to understand about 20% of that in the 10 years of understanding it, they're gonna have a good grasp of New Zealand's history
00:14:14 - because one of the big criticisms of if we focus just on New Zealand, how do we put New Zealand in the context of what's happening elsewhere? So all of those things for historians living in interesting times. Certainly the question that I've always asked, and always kind of been apprehensive about in New Zealand, it's gone a long way in the last 40 years, in recognizing Maori difference in just integrating Maori ways of doing things into the way
00:14:46 - and the way that schools operate. Things like or formal welcomes. saying a prayer at the beginning of things, have just become taken not just from the Maori world, but they've been really incorporated. The amount of Maori words that have been integrated into our everyday language is, you know, hasn't occurred since the middle of the 19th century. This reintroduction of Maori words. the treaty settlement process,
00:15:18 - because not enough money went to some groups, but those groups who got reasonably substantial amount of money have been able to use that, that core settlement to become major financial players and cultural players in their regions. I suppose that for me, I've been waiting for the backlash, you know, to occur and certainly in the last six months that backlash has certainly occurred and had political teeth, but it's still far too early

Navigating New Zealand's Political Landscape on Māori Issues

00:15:48 - my feeling is that, I hate doing predictions. Historians shouldn't be prophets. my feeling is that the more extreme parts of this anti Maori agenda, because there is an anti Maori agenda out there, are going to be worked back by the National party who's the, you know, we have two main parties in New Zealand national and Labor. They are both considerably to the left of the Republicans
00:16:19 - probably much more like the British labor and, and, and conservative parties. But in fact, they have a consensus that we need a welfare state for instance. There's no, no question about that, that we should have a public health service that we've had since 1938. But there's also been a really strong consensus among those parties about recognition of New Zealand's colonial past, investigations of the Waitangi Tribunal into those histories.
00:16:51 - signing treaty treaty settlements with Maori groups than has, you know, the supposedly more left wing, labor party that gets far more Maori votes than does national. So I think that the best aspect, one of the best aspects of New Zealand's treatment of this has been the consensus among the main parties that this is important, that Maori are important, that Maori need to be included in the mainstream life of the country. I don't think the current conflict over all of these things
00:17:23 - Some things have been turned back, but I think quietly we'll see alternatives. So for instance, there was a Maori health authority established, which was accused, you know, we have a ministry of health and we have, and we had this Maori health authority both established and the Maori Health Authority was to give a major responsibility and a degree of autonomy in dealing with Maori health issues. 'cause as in most colonial post-colonial societies, Maori life expectancy and morbidity rates are far worse than the rest
00:18:16 - as separatism accused of being apartheid. and as part of the coalition agreement, that has been taken away, but I would expect that the current government will still continue to fund Maori health providers will continue to, you know, along the general path, just not with this particular authority. But again, as a historian, we should be really wary about.

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