Abstract:
This study investigates the nature of the relationship that the state in New Zealand, the
Crown, has established with Māori as a tribally-based people.
Despite the efforts of recent New Zealand Governments to address the history of Crown
injustice to Māori, the relationship of the Crown with Iwi Māori continues to be fraught
with contradictions and tension. It is the argument of the thesis that the tension exists
because the Crown has imposed a social, political, and economic order that is inherently
contradictory to the social, political, and economic order of the Māori tribal world.
Overriding an order where relationships are negotiated and alliances built between
autonomous groups, the Crown constituted itself as a government with single, undivided
sovereignty, used its unilateral power to introduce policy and legislation that facilitated
the dispossession of whānau and hapū of their resources and their authority in the land,
and enshrined its own authority and capitalist social relations instead.
The thesis is built round a critical reading of five Waitangi Tribunal reports, namely the
Muriwhenua Fishing Report, Mangonui Sewerage Report, The Te Roroa Report,
Muriwhenua Land Report, and Te Whanau o Waipareira Report.
