From Reconciliation to Reversal: Explaining Reconciliatory Backsliding in Settler Societies

Abstract

The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples marked a pivotal moment, signalling an emerging global consensus on the recognition and protection of Indigenous peoples’ inherent rights. In its wake, settler states such as Australia and New Zealand adopted a reconciliatory turn, enacting policies to advance the political, economic and cultural interests of Indigenous communities. However, recent political developments – including Australia’s 2023 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Voice Referendum and New Zealand’s 2023 General Election – have triggered a reconciliatory U-turn, with Australians rejecting pro-Aboriginal constitutional reforms and New Zealand electing a coalition government that has begun to dismantle pro-Māori policies. This article introduces the concept of ‘reconciliatory backsliding’ to theorize such reversals and offers an analytical framework for examining its emergence. Using New Zealand as an illustrative case study, we invite scholars to apply and refine this framework to advance research in this newly emerging and critical area.

In September 2007, the United Nations passed a resolution to adopt the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. While some countries immediately implemented it, others like Australia, Canada and New Zealand required more time, finally implementing it once sufficient momentum emerged around the idea of reconciling with Indigenous communities within their borders. Australia’s federal government, for instance, apologized in 2008 for the removal of Indigenous children from their families and negotiated ‘Closing the Gap’ agreements with Indigenous communities to increase Indigenous influence and improve Indigenous social programmes (Anderson, 2023; Bracka, 2024). In New Zealand, a National-Te Pāti Māori coalition from 2008 to 2017 and a Labour-Green Party Coalition from 2017 to 2023 increased treaty settlements, transferred decision-making authority to Indigenous organizations and improved existing social programmes to address Māori health and economic disparities (Sullivan, 2016).

These reconciliatory efforts took a sudden and unexpected turn when citizens headed to the polls during New Zealand’s 2023 General Election and Australia’s 2023 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Voice referendum. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Voice referendum, aimed at constitutionally recognizing Indigenous Australians and creating an Indigenous advisory board for policymaking, ultimately failed to pass, receiving only 40% of the vote. In New Zealand, Māori reconciliatory policy emerged as a central issue in the 2023 General Election. Right-leaning parties, New Zealand First (NZF) and ACT, capitalized on growing discontent towards Indigenous reconciliation during the campaign and afterwards when they were invited to form a coalition government with the National Party. As part of the coalition agreement, the new government repealed four major reconciliatory policies within eight months and committed to repealing other legislation over the course of its term.

What explains this sudden change in government policy towards Indigenous peoples? To answer this question, we introduce the concept of ‘reconciliatory backsliding’ to describe moments when governments repeal or alter legislation, policies and processes that are designed to protect the collective rights of Indigenous communities. Reconciliatory backsliding emerges out of settler backlash (Spitzer, 2022), which is a general feeling of resentment and hostility among ‘settlers’ towards Indigenous communities. This resentment, if left unchecked, can encourage political actors to overturn pro-Indigenous policies.

Our main goal in this ‘early results’ article is to introduce the concept of reconciliatory backsliding. To do so, we draw upon group conflict, settler colonial and Indigenous resentment theories and pair them with a brief illustrative case study from New Zealand. At present, the scholarly literature lacks a conceptual framework for analysing these kinds of events and we hope to fill this lacuna. To illustrate the potential generalizability of the concept, we end with a brief discussion of British Columbia, Canada where conditions may be ripe for reconciliatory backsliding.

Theoretical Considerations

Settler Backlash

The literature on realistic group conflict theory predicts increased hostility between groups to emerge when one group perceives an outgroup as a source of competition over scarce resources, whether they be material (e.g. economic) or symbolic (e.g. national myths) in nature (Brief et al., 2005). As resources become scarce, competition between groups may lead to the adoption of a zero-sum world view, in which a gain by an outgroup is seen as a net loss for the ingroup (Maxwell-Smith et al, 2016). Social identity theory adds a class dimension to these dynamics, suggesting that all individuals have an innate desire to feel good about their identity and will form social identities based on the ‘elevated groups’ with which they identify, and so conflict can be driven by a desire among elevated groups to maintain their societal advantage against those who seek to enhance their status at the expense of their group (Finley, 2010). Building on this work, integrated threat theorists argue that resource and status threats can manifest themselves through cognitive (e.g. stereotyping), emotional (e.g. anger) and behavioural (e.g. altered intergroup and ingroup relationships) dynamics (Nshom et al, 2020), resulting in group resentment. Group resentment – which is anger about the perception of a symbolic or material transgression against the collective to which they belong (Stockdale, 2013) – is a negative emotional consequence of perceived threat, frequently directed at minorities, immigrants and Indigenous people (Constantin and Cuadrado, 2021). ¹

In the case of settler states, settler backlash (Spitzer, 2022) emerges out of a deeply embedded ‘white possessiveness’ over the nation state (Moreton-Robinson, 2015) which in turn produces ‘settler common sense’ and ‘settler comfort’ rooted in the affective and material benefits that non-Indigenous peoples derive from a settler-colonial state (Midzain-Gobin, 2021; Rifkin, 2014). Settler states are polities where large-scale immigration of predominantly European colonizers displaced and sought to assimilate Indigenous populations with the goal of establishing their own political, legal and cultural institutions atop pre-existing societies. These colonizers are not merely a demographic majority but are the social group positioned at the very top of the racial hierarchy and cohered by an affective sense of possessiveness – the conviction that land, resources and political authority rightfully belong to white settlers as the beneficiaries of colonial conquest (Henderson, 2024; Moreton-Robinson, 2015)—and shared national myths that narrate founding moments as the crucible of national identity (Ladner, 2018).

Settler backlash towards Indigenous peoples emerges in these contexts in response to Indigenous claims rooted in sovereignty, treaty rights and cultural self-preservation, all which challenge and threaten white possessiveness and privilege (Collie and Alcantara, 2024; Coulthard, 2014). While white possessiveness captures the material and emotional claims that settlers make on Indigenous lands and sovereignty, national myths operate at the level of collective memory and discourse, legitimating those claims by embedding them in a heroic origin story. Settler backlash is frequently rooted in national myths (Ladner, 2018). In their analysis of treaty-right claims during the post-civil rights era in the U.S., for instance, Dudas (2005) found that backlash was largely framed as a defence of core American values and ‘the American way of life itself’. Framing policies as an afront to national identity and values gives actors the freedom to capitalize on the contested nature of national identity to characterize threatening institutions and forms of membership as illegitimate (Bonikowski, 2017; Ladner, 2018). Similarly, Spitzer (2022) argues that in contemporary settler-colonial states like Australia, settler or policy backlash is commonly animated by a desire to preserve the classical liberal principles foundational to democratic legal and political norms, including individualism, egalitarianism and universalism, reflecting a fundamental shortfall of classical liberalism rooted in its inability to extend the benefits of autonomous self-government to national minorities (Murphy, 2001). Foxworth and Boulding (2023) argue that settler backlash, or what they call Indigenous resentment, does not necessarily always result in policy reversal or backsliding but instead seeks to at least reduce the entrenchment or prevent the expansion of a policy (Della Porta, 2020; Liaquat et al, 2023; Patashnik, 2019).

Reconciliatory Backsliding and Its Determinants

Settler backlash, at its core, is a general feeling of resentment or hostility among ‘settlers’ towards Indigenous communities. A notable focus of settler backlash is towards policies enacted by governments as part of a reconciliatory process. Some theorists conceive of reconciliation as an evolving and enduring process, others view it as an outcome, and some view it as a hybrid of both (Alcantara et al., 2025; Borrows and Tully, 2018). Others suggest that reconciliation is a multi-dimensional process that occurs at the individual, interpersonal, socio-political and institutional levels (Borer, 2004; Seils, 2017: 4–6). A common feature of reconciliation in settler states is the institutional recognition of Indigenous peoples’ unique individual and collective rights (Wiessner, 2011). For example, Canada adopted UNDRIP in 2021 to recognize the collective economic, social and cultural determination rights of Indigenous peoples, while New Zealand has sought to honour ‘treaty principles’ derived from the Treaty of Waitangi, which include special property and governance rights for Māori communities (Nagy, 2022; Sullivan, 2016). Reconciliation can also take the form of community-centred programming, such as Australia’s Reconciliation Action Plans that provide government agencies, private companies, schools and other organizations with advice on how to combine symbolic and practical actions to improve relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities (Lloyd, 2018: 38), which has been likened by some Australian theorists to corporate social responsibility (Daly and Gebremedhin, 2015; Morgan and Wilk, 2022). Australia’s approach to reconciliation arises partly from the lack of a treaty relationship between Indigenous peoples and the Australian government, which has served as justification for Australian governments to neglect calls for constitutional recognition and greater material opportunities for self-determination (Mellor et al., 2007).

Settler backlash emerges in response to reconciliation policies when feelings of status threat are primed. When settler backlash becomes salient in the political sphere, the result is ‘reconciliatory backsliding’, which occurs when governments respond to settler backlash, regardless of whether that backlash is found among citizens or elites, by repealing or altering legislation, policies or processes which aim to protect or favour the collective rights and interests of Indigenous communities. While theorists have long emphasized the stability of policy, the emergence of a prominent ethno-liberal party (defined as a party devoted to ‘multiculturalism and the protection of minorities’, see Bustikova, 2019: 72) can, among other factors, activate status threat among settler groups and raise the issue of Indigenous or cultural accommodation as a major political issue that other actors, usually right-leaning political parties, can capitalize on during elections.

In Western Europe, ethno-liberal parties typically champion non-Indigenous minorities by demanding cultural recognition, language protection and regional devolution. In settler states, ethno-liberal parties may advocate for non-Indigenous minorities, Indigenous communities or both. Across both contexts, these parties activate status threat among the majority national/ethnic group by elevating perceptions of competition over symbolic and material resources (Nshom et al, 2020). Parties like New Zealand’s Te Pāti Māori and British Columbia’s New Democratic Party (NDP) in Canada focus solely on Indigenous rights or devote a large part of their platform to those ideals while at the same time championing the rights of other minority groups. Their electoral successes and public prominence can generate status threat when their proposed policies directly challenge state institutions in ways that exceed conventional multicultural accommodations (Bauder and Mueller, 2023; Williams and Schertzer, 2019). Such policies might include returning land to Indigenous people or creating co-governance institutions that might be interpreted as giving Indigenous people a veto over public lands and resource management. Ethno-liberal parties that do not support Indigenous rights but instead advocate for status recognition for a different minority group can also generate settler backlash by framing those groups’ gains as zero-sum losses for the settler majority and their non-Indigenous minority group (Sanders, 1995), thus activating perceptions of symbolic and material threat and reinforcing white possessiveness. In this way, even mainstream multicultural appeals – when politicized by an ethno-national logic – prime status anxiety among settlers and furnish far-right actors with a grievance narrative to mobilize against further accommodation and drive policy retrenchment (Bustikova, 2014; Dennison and Geddes, 2018; Off, 2022). Together, whether by centering Indigenous sovereignty or by elevating other minority claims, ethno-liberal parties can heighten the salience of reconciliation and minority recognition, triggering affective and behavioural forms of threat among settlers and increasing the risk of reconciliatory backsliding.

The Case of New Zealand

Following New Zealand’s public recognition of the UNDRIP in 2010, there was considerable bipartisan momentum to reconcile the government’s relationship with Indigenous communities. A National-Te Pāti Māori coalition from 2008 to 2017 and a Labour-Green Party Coalition from 2017 to 2023 increased treaty settlements, transferred decision-making authority to Indigenous organizations and created dedicated social programmes to address health and economic disparities. The advancements made during this era marked a pivotal shift in the Māori struggle, helping transition their communities from a battle for ethnic survival into one for self-determination and sovereignty (Sullivan, 2016). Furthermore, between 2009 and 2018, support for symbolic and resource-specific reconciliatory policies increased (Satherley et al., 2020) while reported experiences of racism against Māori decreased (Harris et al., 2018). This steady progress towards reconciliation took a sudden turn in the Fall of 2023 when citizens took to the polls during New Zealand’s general election. Māori reconciliatory policy emerged as a central issue as conservative and populist leaning parties, NZF and ACT, capitalized on growing discontent towards reconciliation during the campaign and afterwards when they were invited to form a coalition government with the National Party.

The emergence of settler backlash towards reconciliatory policies in New Zealand can be attributed at least in part to the inclusion of ethno-liberal parties in governing coalitions from 2017 to 2023, which increased the salience of Indigeneity in the political sphere. Prior to 2023, NZF and ACT only sparingly invoked liberal principles in opposition to collective rights, and at times, they even supported Māori-specific policies. However, in 2023, following the Labour Party’s inclusion of the Green Party in a coalition that ideologically intensified the government’s approach to reconciliatory policies, anti-reconciliatory policy became increasingly part of NZF and ACT’s electoral platforms. ² Both NZF and ACT found success by capitalizing on the increased salience of Indigeneity in the political realm, increasing their collective vote share from 7.7% in 2017 to 10.2% in 2020 and then 14.72% in 2023 (Electoral Commission, 2017, 2020, 2023). As the push towards Indigenous reconciliation become more well-known across the country, these parties began to argue that Māori-focused policies violated and threatened the liberal democratic principles of individualism, egalitarianism and universalism (Matthews, 2021), all of which remain deeply embedded in New Zealand’s national identity and political culture. The 2023 election gave the National Party a plurality of seats, but not a majority, and so the Party was forced to sign a coalition agreement with the NZF and ACT. ACT and NZF’s reliance on anti-reconciliatory rhetoric was evident in their coalition agreements with the conservative-leaning National Party, which included over twenty directives to remove or limit reconciliatory policies (New Zealand. Parliament, 2023a, 2023b). As part of their agreements, the National Party proceeded to dismantle the Māori Health Authority (Reti, 2024) and stop all work related to the Three Waters Agreement (Brown, 2024), a co-governance approach to water maintenance, within months of being in office. In essence, a combination of increased saliency due to the emergence of an ethno-liberal coalition from 2017 to 2023 allowed far-right parties to stoke fears about an Indigenous threat (Matthews, 2021), resulting in settler backlash and eventually reconciliatory backsliding stemming from an electoral outcome that forced the winning party in 2023 to partner with the two anti-reconciliatory far-right parties to govern New Zealand (Peters, 2024).

Conclusion

In this article, we introduce reconciliatory backsliding – the strategic weakening or reversal of pro-Indigenous legislation under conditions of settler backlash – and develop an analytical framework for exploring its emergence in countries with Indigenous peoples. Building on group conflict and Indigenous resentment theories, our framework traces how ethno-liberal parties amplify the salience of Indigenous claims, creating openings for right-wing actors to mobilize majority-group anxieties and instigate legislative retrenchment. These dynamics are not unique to New Zealand but are transferable to other settler societies such as Australia, Canada and the United States (Alcantara et al., 2025), and to countries where Indigenous political parties are more common and prevalent such as in South America (Cott, 2010). In Canada, for instance, the province of British Columbia has been a leader in pursuing a reconciliatory relationship with Indigenous peoples. Yet in the most recent provincial election in October 2024, evidence of settler backlash emerged from unexpected actors, including the B.C. Wildlife Federation (BCWF, 2024) and the provincial Conservative Party (Rustad, 2024), reflecting growing unease among B.C. residents towards the incumbent and left-leaning NDP government’s proposals to provide Indigenous communities with shared decision-making over public lands (Angus Reid, 2024). Had the Conservative Party won the 2024 provincial election, it is likely that it would have begun the process of reconciliatory backsliding, overturning several government initiatives that sought to give more power to Indigenous communities. Had the result been an NDP minority government, it is likely that it would have tried to negotiate some sort of cooperation or coalition agreement with the Green Party, which had begun to take on the trappings of an ethno-liberal party (Brockman, 2024). In this scenario, the result likely would have been the status quo, with the NDP continuing its pre-election path of reconciliation as a means of appeasing the Green Party in exchange for its support in the legislature. Instead, the citizens of British Columbia elected a majority NDP government, but only by the very slimmest of margins: 47 seats for the NDP, 2 for the Green Party and 44 for the Conservatives. This result will likely temper the NDP’s enthusiasm for Indigenous reconciliation, given that the electorate significantly reduced the size of its majority from 57 to 47 seats to support a united Conservative party that embraced growing settler backlash in the months leading up to election day.