Post by @isaacfreeman@cloudisland.nz

2026-09-26 21:34 UTC

@jeremy_pm@mastodon.nz @mattmarcha@mamot.fr Adding some more… The Treaty of Waitangi was (surprise) not honoured by the settler government, and the vast majority of Māori land was stolen. In the mid-nineteenth century they brought the British Army in to invade the central North Island and crush organisations like the Kīngitanga (Māori King movement) that aimed to strengthen Māori sovereignty. But a century later there was a Māori Renaissance. Protest movements occupied stolen lands, demonstrating that sovereignty wasn't a resolved issue. The settler government had grown more independent, and Pākehā (New Zealanders of European descent) increasingly recognised the 1840 Treaty as a founding document. 1/2

Replies (1)

@isaacfreeman@cloudisland.nz 2026-09-26 21:34

@jeremy_pm@mastodon.nz @mattmarcha@mamot.fr In 1975, the Waitangi Tribunal was set up to report on breaches of the treaty. Iwi authorities (tribal governing bodies) grew in prestige as partners to central government. By the early nineties, large settlements were being made even by conservative governments. Iwi are now major landholders and economic players. New Zealand First is a paleoconservative reactionary party that split off from one of those conservative parties, and aims to take us back to a fictional version of the 1950s when nobody talked about Māori sovereignty. Ironically, it's led by a Māori man who's old enough to have participated in the Māori Renaissance but seems to have missed it entirely. 2/2

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