Abstract
In 2010, in what has been described as "one of the most complex and far-reaching claims ever to come before the New Zealand Waitangi Tribunal”, a report concerning the theft of cultural and intellectual property rights relating to tangata whenua Māori (indigenous peoples of the land) by the Crown was released.
ʻKo Aotearoa Tēneiʼ: (This is Aotearoa or This is New Zealand) or Wai262 as it is known, arose from findings of claims lodged in 1991 by claimants representative of six different iwi. Claimants sought to address the ʻownership and control of Māori culture and identity; the relationships that culture and identity derive from; and the role of the Crown in exercising ownership and control ".
Examining the work and policy areas of more than twenty Government departments and State-Owned Enterprises as agents of the Crown, Wai262 provides an unsurpassed document to gain insight into how institutionalised State power establishes itself in order to retain authority, identity and control. Moreover, how that power is then enacted as a structure, as a language, and is therefore identifiable within narratives and text as a system of strategic, racialised domination and oppression synonymous with critiques of Critical Whiteness Theory.
This Masters Research study examines how theoretical frameworks of Whiteness studies underpinned by Content Analysis methodology, can enable critical interpretations of Wai262 to further question the systematisation of politicized ʻpartnershipʼ, ownership and control; the relationship between Settler Colonial power and State domination in the role of the loss of mātauranga Māori; and counter oppressive colonial narratives that are embedded throughout the report.
Keywords: Settler Colonialism, Colonial Violence, Whiteness, Colonial Enunciation, Historic Intergenerational Trauma, Counter Narrative, Content Analysis