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...creating secure place for post-settler identities, however, post-settler nations have done little or nothing to acknowledge urban or 'relocated' indigenous identities. On the contrary, post-settler belonging absolutely requires the perpetuation of an indigeneity through which new relationships to the land may be negotiated. Central to the project of post-settler belonging in New Zealand is the idea of the treaty nation. Within this imagined political community settlers belong by virtue of a relationship between the Crown, which represents them, and Maori tribal leaders who represent tangata whenua (people of the land).
By 'relocated indigenous identities' I mean, in the New Zealand context, Maori who choose to be non-tribal, who typically live in urban areas and who may or may not speak Maori. Some actively reject an identity that links them to particular ancestral lands and tribal traditions. I am thinking, for example, of people like John Tamihere, a Labour MP and former head of a large urban Maori authority providing welfare and other services to Maori in Auckland. As a Catholic he says he does not feel the need to go to Rome, nor, as a member of the Ngati Porou tribe does he feel the need to return to his tribal land on the rural east coast of the North Island. The future of Maori society lies, he claims, in new urban groupings that can take advantage of new opportunities offered by the global economy. Maaka agrees, arguing that the idea of the 'tribe-cum-nation' is an aspect of elite ideology that is not meaningful to most Maori. He insists that nothing less than a radical redefinition of 'tribe' is required (Maaka 1994:329).
In his maiden speech to Parliament, Tamihere threw down a challenge:
We cannot move forward unless our own backyard has been cleared and the impostors who continue to chant and make much ado over the whanau, hapu and iwi mantra as a song in itself so that few can feast in the name of the many, they also will be exposed. Let's get real. 44% of Maori households are solo-parent driven. There is no exclusive Maori way forward. Te Whanau o Waipereira and Manukau Urban Maori Authority are as legitimate in the hearts minds and souls of young urban Maori as any iwi (Tamihere 2000).
Tamihere and the urban Maori he represents are currently engaged in a struggle on two fronts: on the one hand, with other Maori who maintain that Maori society is essentially tribal and that power and decision-making should remain centred on rural marae (ceremonial meeting places with meeting houses and dining halls); on the other hand, with the imagination of New Zealand as both a bicultural nation, in which Maori belong as cultured individuals, and a treaty nation within which tribes are accorded fundamental importance by the Government and its agencies. This is a struggle against mutually reinforcing definitions of Maori society and the New Zealand nation that have been in the making for more than a century.
A recent manifestation of the struggle was a series of court battles over the allocation of fishing assets to Maori. Leaders of large urban Maori organisations argued that they were contemporary 'tribes' and therefore should be fully included as parties to any settlement. In this article I begin with a brief history of this fisheries dispute. I then attempt to shed some light on its ideological grounding in the simultaneous individualisation and tribalisation of Maori society since the late 19th century. I argue that two contradictory conceptions of the post-settler nation--bicultural nationhood and treaty nationhood--have evolved to address the place of individualised and tribal Maori respectively. However, because both forms of nationhood imagine an essential binary community neither have a secure place for relocated indigeneity. I argue that the failure to reach a just solution to the fisheries dispute is a reflection of the dominance of treaty nationhood and, more generally, of the limits of the binary nation.
FISHY BUSINESS
In 1986, the New Zealand Government passed the Fisheries Amendment Act, creating for itself a property-right in the form of transferable fish quotas. The Act gave the Government the power to set and allocate these quotas in the interests of marine conservation and allowed recipients to sell or lease all or part of their allocation. A Maori legal challenge to the Act the following year asserted that it constituted a significant breach of Maori treaty rights--the Treaty of Waitangi had promised them 'full, exclusive and undisturbed possession' of their fisheries for as long as they wished to retain them. The Act had wrongly assumed the Maori fisheries were of a purely non-commercial, recreational nature and had explicitly excluded these from the quota system (Durie 1998:150).
In upholding the challenge and ordering the Government to negotiate with Maori, the High Court opened the way for a relatively small group of 'tribal' representatives to gain, on behalf of their people, a significant stake in the New Zealand fishing industry--current proposals envisage a Maori-owned company that would account for almost 39% of the 1.5 billion annual earnings of the fishing industry (NBR August 23, 2002, p.6). The High Court decision and subsequent negotiations also set the scene for a significant economic and political empowerment of these tribal leaders at the expense of urban, non-tribal Maori leaders and their constituencies. At each successive stage in the acrimonious litigious and political struggle that ensued the paramount legitimacy of 'traditional' tribes (iwi) and their representatives was affirmed and strengthened.
Only four tribal leaders, representatives of groups that had mounted the initial legal challenge to the Fisheries Amendment Act, undertook the initial negotiations with the Government. Rightly concerned that they would be unable to act on behalf of all Maori, they sought a stronger mandate through a single hui (meeting) of tribal representatives in June 1988. Durie writes that as a result of this hui 'the Maori negotiators were able to return to the bargaining table with a clearer mandate and definite brief [a target of 50% quota for Maori]' (Durie 1998:154). However, it is equally clear that those who attended the hui could by no means claim to represent Maori as a whole. Following these initial negotiations, the Maori Fisheries Act 1989 allocated a small amount of quota to Maori (10%) and established a Maori Fisheries Commission to which, without further consultation, the Government appointed the original four 'tribally-mandated' negotiators (ibid.: 155).
The Government and the Maori Fisheries Commissioners continued negotiations and, in 1992, came up with an additional deal in which the Government...
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