Maori Identity Signatures: A Latent Profile Analysis of the Types of Maori Identity

Abstract

Māori are the indigenous, and thus marginalised, peoples of New Zealand. In the past, the term ‘Māori’ has been narrowly defined, but in the modern day it can refer to a wide range of people of varying ethnic compositions and levels of engagement in cultural identity. Based on the rich, theoretical foundations of researchers Durie (1994), Williams (2000), and Houkamau (2006, 2010), I aimed to uncover if there are subtypes of Māori Identity, how many subtypes there are and the nature of these, and what the members of these subtypes look like demographically. Here, I present a Latent Profile Model identifying 6 distinct types or ‘Māori Identity Signatures’ and estimate their proportion in the Māori population. The model was tested using responses to a Māori-specific measure of Ethnic Identity (the Multidimensional Model of Māori Identity and Cultural Engagement) in a national probability sample of 697 Māori drawn from the New Zealand Attitudes and Values Study. The model identified six distinct signatures: Traditional Essentialists (22.6%), Traditional Inclusives (16%), High Moderates (31.7%), Low Moderates (18.9%), Spiritually Orientated (4.2%), and Disassociated (6.7%). These distinct Identity Signatures predicted variation in deprivation, age, mixed-Ethnic Affiliation, and religion. This research presents the first formal statistical model assessing how people’s identity as Māori is psychologically structured, documents the relative proportion of these different patterns of structures, and shows that these patterns reliably predict differences in core outcomes. I then discuss the limitations of this analysis, the future research directions for applications of the model, and of the quantitative study of Māori Identity, into an extended range of outcomes. This thesis identifies a more diverse range of patterns of Māori Identity than has been previously proposed based on qualitative data, but these findings are positive in that they also show that the majority of Māori fit at least a moderately enculturated identity pattern.