Abstract:
As our title suggests, the establishment of an indigenous television channel in Aotearoa/New Zealand has only come from what Māori broadcaster Tainui Stephens describes as “three decades of agitation by Māori” (Stephens 2004: 113). Nevertheless, New Zealand’s first indigenous television channel, Māori Television, finally succeeded in going to air on Sunday 8 March 2004. Since its arrival, Māori Television has posed a challenge to established television culture in this contemporary settler nation. Previously dominated by a screen culture that has privileged a mainstream and predominantly Pākehā (New Zealand European) audience, the arrival of Māori Television has signalled a new era in New Zealand broadcast culture. The channel’s programmimg asks New Zealand society to take seriously the viewpoints of nonPākehā. International documentaries and other global programming links Māori issues with global indigenous political concerns and lifestyle shows throw into relief the monocultural offerings of other programming providers. However, indigenous broadcast culture within a contemporary settler nation such as Aotearoa/New Zealand, involves substantial tensions between indigenous aspirations and the larger history of settlement, tensions that condition New Zealand’s contemporary sociopolitical milieu. In this chapter we examine the emergence of Māori Television, we outline the contestations over the role and function of the channel, and we assess the channel’s ability to present a counternarrative of New Zealand national identity that challenges the orthodox representations of this contemporary settler nation.