Indigenizing military citizenship: remaking state responsibility and care towards Māori veterans’ health through the Treaty of Waitangi

Abstract

How does militarism reshape indigenous peoples’ relationships with settler states? In this article, we explore how military service both opens up and forecloses avenues for indigenous groups to claim new modes of responsibility, care and relationality from the state. Through a discussion of New Zealand Māori nuclear test veterans’ recent legal claims through the Waitangi Tribunal, we detail the range of ways that Māori veterans utilize and rework ethnic identity categories to encompass wider notions of citizenship, care and responsibility, and challenge neoliberal models of reparations. Claimants argue that their ongoing wellbeing sits at the centre of their partnership with the state, revealing how uneasily the Māori military body fits within mainstream logics of Treaty claim-making. Seeking healthcare and wellbeing here does not demand greater autonomy or independence, but requires ongoing interdependence, practices of care and attention to ongoing intergenerational obligations that, like radiation harm, have no clear endpoints.