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PoliticsApril 19, 2017

The phrase ‘Māori tribal elite’ really tells you something – about the person using it

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The debate around concessions negotiated by the Māori Party in the resource management bill has seen the ‘Māori tribal elite’ slur rears its head again. It is all part of a long history, writes Carrie Stoddart-Smith, of attempts to colonise tangata whenua.

Kōtahi te kākaho ka whati, ina kapuia, e kore e whati.

A lone reed will waver and break, if combined with others, will never break.

Alone we can be broken. Standing together, we are invincible.

The story of the “Māori tribal elite” is a fiction generated by those allied – consciously or unconsciously – to an enduring colonial project that insists on subverting the place of Māori in our ancestral lands of Aotearoa.

The Māori tribal elite. Ruminate on that phrase for a moment. A combination of words expunged of context. It erases the lived experiences of Māori in a colonised society, as if our cultural, political and economic renaissance in a system that was militantly thrust upon our tīpuna was delivered to us without struggle through the goodwill of our bleeding heart colonisers. Where iwi rangatira are excluded as products of colonisation because they have come to occupy roles that give them access to influence and power.

Consider the pugnacious narrative around the Resource Legislation Amendment Bill following the agreement reached between National and the Māori Party. Opposition by political interests on both the left and right framed the reforms to stengthen iwi participation as racially divisive, corrupt and, of course, pandering to the Māori tribal elite.

While it may be unsurprising that the sneers of elitism discharge at force from traditionally hostile groups embedded in the far right, it is vexing that a related viewpoint also festers among the left.

From the belligerent right, the disdain emerges from an ingrained belief that a good Māori is one who assimilates without protest and who forgets the past to appease Pākehā guilt. From the hostile left, it emerges from a deficit belief that Māori are inherently poor and any prosperity or power re-gained renders them inauthentic dissidents in the struggle against oppression. We must be cautious of allowing non-Māori to dictate the authenticity of Māori identities and their place in the resistance. As Ani Mikaere writes, selective amnesia, denial and distortion of truth are too often presented to recast the beneficiary descendents of colonisation as the victims in the story and Māori as the ungrateful aggressors with unearned privilege to excessive influence.

Māori Party co-leader Marama Fox on Three’s The Hui, discussing the Resource Legislation Amendment Bill

Buying into the narrative of Māori tribal elitism has a paradoxical effect, in the sense it supports rather than negates white supremacy by questioning the legitimacy of rangatira Māori through a western lens. Māori tribal leaders – whether tribal members agree with them or not, or elected them or not – were elevated to those positions within their tribes at the behest of their tribal elders. Yet, Māori and non-Māori alike impose on them standards of accountability, transparency and representative mandate as defined by a western system of democracy.

I’m not suggesting that as Māori we don’t have a right to question tribal structures or to demand that the voices of tribal members are represented in the forums to which iwi rangatira are increasingly gaining access. Rather, I am championing that view but questioning the approach of excluding them as rightful participants in the struggle based on a western concept of elitism. For clarity: I’m not asserting that corporate elitism is immune from critique, I am arguing that corporatocracy and tribal governance should be not be assessed as if they are one and the same.

Accepting the rhetoric of those who propagate a class analysis as the applicable metric for critiquing Te Iwi Māori distorts how Māori view who they are and their place as Māori in this country. It displaces whakapapa by demanding that they see their iwi rangatira in terms of “them” versus “us”. These divisive tools are not new. Finding reason in arguments that erase Māori history or tolerating assimilationist policy to gain approval of the silent majority is neither socially progressive,  nor particularly liberal. It simply demonstrates an enduring commitment to the colonisation project.

Māori have endured as tangata whenua retaining their cultural integrity and we are now witnessing the benefits of an adaptable leadership with stronger capacity for legacy planning that is capable of seamlessly walking both Te Ao Māori and Te Ao Pākehā. This is not elitism; it is the path to the reclamation of mana Māori motuhake.


These views are the author’s own, and are not a representation of the views of her employer.


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PoliticsApril 19, 2017

Britain braces for a May election, in June, and the prediction industry roars back to life

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Theresa ‘I’m not going to be calling a snap election’ May has called a snap election. And Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn must be crapping himself, writes Jonathan Hutchison from London. 

If there’s one thing journalists and commentators ought to have learnt from the past year in politics, it is this: never ever ever predict anything at all ever again ever. The ancient art of political augury received such a solid slap from Brexit and Trump that you’d think it would at least go underground for a while.

But when UK prime minister Theresa May gave just over an hour’s notice that she would be making a surprise statement outside Number 10 Downing Street, nobody could resist. Twitter was jammed with so many theories that it seemed like there was a quota that had to be met. Television news channel chatter intensified. Newsroom clocks ticked slower than usual.

We’ve attacked Syria. No, wait: North Korea. Brexit is being cancelled. Theresa May is standing down.

Britain’s two biggest selling newspapers

The tension must have been unbearable for Theresa May, too – she strode out of Number 10 several minutes earlier than scheduled, and got straight to the point.

“I have just chaired a meeting of the Cabinet,” she began from behind her lonely lectern, which stood without the government’s insignia (a detail that was not missed by the aforementioned political sleuths). “We agreed that the government should call a general election to be held on the eighth of June.”

Ah, the distant eighth of June. One whole month and 21 whole days away. Lucky there’s nothing else happening at the moment – just another push for Scottish independence, a huge French election across the Channel and the beginning of the (very brief) negotiation period before the United Kingdom leaves the European Union. Oh, and some of us want to take some annual leave, thanks.

There were many people who did guess correctly what Theresa May’s announcement would be. But in fairness to those who guessed wrongly, there certainly were reasons to think she would not be calling a snap election. Primarily those reasons were based on her own words, including clear, declarative sentences such as: “There should be no general election until 2020”, and: “I’m not going to be calling a snap election.”

But, hey, saying one thing and then doing the complete opposite is totally in for world leaders right now.

The about-face on holding an election came as a surprise, but it’s easy to see why May feels confident in picking this fight, even as the two-year Brexit clock is ticking. The Conservatives are sitting at 44 per cent support to Labour’s 23 per cent, according to the latest YouGov poll. Half of the country thinks Theresa May is the best person to be prime minister, versus Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s 14 per cent. I know, I know, these are just numbers from the most notorious of forecasting methods: a poll. But even the opposition doesn’t seem convinced it can win. Shortly after the snap election was announced, three Labour MPs said they wouldn’t stand – including Tom Blenkinsop, who specifically cited “irreconcilable differences” with Jeremy Corbyn as the reason for his decision. On Twitter, Labour voters quickly turned on their true enemies: other Labour voters.

Labour’s leader Jeremy Corbyn reacted to the election announcement by saying: “I welcome the prime minister’s decision”. I can only imagine that he welcomes it in the way that I felt a strange sense of peace and inevitability right after I accidentally snowboarded off a cliff at Mount Ruapehu.

Meanwhile, Theresa May sounded supremely confident. “Every vote for the Conservatives will make me stronger” is a real thing that she actually said on live television and not in a political cartoon. Her aides insisted she wouldn’t take part in any television debates, because the choice is “already clear” and, besides, she is on TV all the time.

Back in March, the general secretary of Unite, Britain’s biggest union and the Labour Party’s biggest backer, said of Corbyn: “Hopefully we’ll see if he can break through and the opinion polls begin to change. I would suggest that the next 15 months or so will give us the answer to that.” He had previously given Corbyn until 2019 to prove that he has what it takes to become prime minister. Now Corbyn has just 51 days.

I am not, dear reader, in the habit of making bold and public political predictions. Instead, I will point you to my previous comments:

But if the circumstances change, I reserve the right to completely reverse my position.


See also: Corbyn Blimey – Jim Anderton, Judith Collins, Helen Kelly and more on Jeremy Corbyn’s remarkable rise to the Labour leadership


This content is brought to you by LifeDirect by Trade Me, where you’ll find all the top NZ insurers so you can compare deals and buy insurance then and there. You’ll also get 20% cashback when you take a life insurance policy out, so you can spend more time enjoying life and less time worrying about the things that can get in the way.

This election year, support The Spinoff Politics by using LifeDirect for your insurance. See lifedirect.co.nz/life-insurance