Who are the Māori “in-between”? Indigenous diversity and inequity across descent, ethnicity and Iwi knowledge

ABSTRACT

Policies increasingly reinforce the self-determination of Indigenous peoples, but issues remain around group definitions. Colonization has led to (de)identification with Māori (New Zealand's Indigenous peoples) identity markers. We explore differences between Māori on combinations of descent, ethnicity and Iwi (extended kinship group) knowledge in the 2013 Census, and self-reported discrimination. There were six groups within the Māori descent population: two did not know their Iwi – some identified solely as Māori ethnicity (2.8 per cent) – or Māori plus another ethnicity(-ies; 6.8 per cent); two did not identify as Māori ethnicity: more named their Iwi (7.2 per cent), than not (6.9 per cent); the largest groups knew their Iwi and identified as Māori ethnicity, either solely (30.8 per cent), or alongside another ethnicity(-ies; 34.3 per cent). We found a pattern of differences across demographics and discrimination, highlighting the complexity of Māori identity and the need to account for differences within Indigenous groups.

KEYWORDS:

• Māori
• identity
• ethnic identity
• indigenous
• discrimination
• whakapapa

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the project advisory rōpū for their guidance, suggestions and advice. We would like to thank Frank Gore for his proofreading and editing work. We would like to thank all of those - whānau, friends and colleagues - whose kōrero has helped to inspire this work, including Wendy Atkinson, Dr Cristina Parra and Dr Jade Le Grice. We would like to acknowledge the Public Policy Institute (PPI) and Te Rourou Tātaritanga for hosting our Māori Data Sovereignty reading group, and thanks to PPI for providing Datalab access. This work was funded by a Health Research Council Emerging Researcher First Grant awarded to Lara Greaves.

Disclaimer

Access to the data used in this study was provided by Stats NZ under conditions designed to give effect to the security and confidentiality provisions of the Statistics Act 1975. The results presented in this study are the work of the author, not Stats NZ or individual data suppliers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Health Research Council of New Zealand [Emerging Researcher First Grant; grant number 20-614].