Politicizing the Past: Indigenous Scholarship and Crown—Maori Reparations Processes in New Zealand

Abstract

The historical injustices inflicted upon Maori by colonization are being addressed by the New Zealand state through reparations processes conducted under the Treaty of Waitangi of 1840. In this antipodean version of transitional justice, indigenous and western worldviews confront each other in fundamental ways. Methodologically, for example, `western' legal and historical scholars are faced with the challenge of an oral-based indigeneity whose goals transcend those of the reparations system. The resulting complex series of interactions are transacted differentially between disciplines. With the legal profession focusing on text, western historians on context and indigenous scholars on orality, problems abound. These are further complicated by the essentially political nature of `Treaty settlement' negotiations. But legal and historical disciplines are showing signs of flexible and innovative approaches to indigenous perspectives (and vice versa). And on a practical level, settlements are being signed. The ultimate test of `healing the past' in an increasingly bicultural country will be, however, whether the experiences of the Treaty reparations processes assist the parties to reach arrangements that meet the indigenous aspiration which dominates the history of Crown—Maori relations in New Zealand: the attainment of the rangatiratanga/autonomy promised in the Maori version of the second article of the Treaty.