Ontological Quarrels: Indigeneity, Exclusion and Citizenship in a Relational World

Abstract

In settler societies such as New Zealand, the relationships between indigenous groups and settlers whose ancestors arrived from Europe involve clashes and exchanges between those who hold different sets of presuppositions about how the world works. In early New Zealand, Māori and Europeans often found themselves at ontological cross-purposes, and such contestations are still common. In this paper, I explore fundamental divergences and resonances between ancestral Māori and modernist ontological styles, and how over the past two hundred years these have emerged in debates over the Treaty of Waitangi, signed between Māori rangatira (chiefs) and the British Crown in 1840; and over tapu (the sacred, or state of ancestral presence), land, citizenship and mana or power.