Maori Identity - Excerpts From Ways of Being Maori by Charles Crothers

A sociographic perspective: “Some Ways of being Māori”

Ka kohi te toi, ka whai te maramatanga.
If knowledge is gathered, enlightenment will follow.

(Cited by T. Moeke-Pickering, 1996.) 

“Far from being members of a homogeneous group, Māori individuals have a variety of cultural characteristics and live in a number of cultural and socioeconomic realities. The relevance of traditional values is not the same for all Māori, nor can it be assumed that all Māori will wish to define their ethnic
identity according to classical constructs. At the same time, they will describe themselves as Māori and will reject any notion that they are ‘less Māori’ than those who conform to a conventional image” 

(Durie, 1995: 465). 

Abstract 

This study attempts to mine relevant material on differences between Māori and nonMāori, and differences within Māori (and to some extent within non-Māori), from “official social book-keeping sources” and surveys. In particular, I endeavour to establish the extent to which non-Māori, sole/mixed Māori and ethnic/descent Māori differ in terms of social background characteristics and their reported behaviour and attitudes.

One part of the study focuses on variability in people’s Māoriness, on identity, and the range of activities and occasions in which people may (or may not) feel Māori. This includes the extent to which (essentially) non-Māori choose to support or even to participate in Māori activities.

Click here for the whole report: 

http://www.auckland.ac.nz/webdav/site/central/shared/about/maori-at-auckland/documents/Wellbeing%20and%20disparity%20Vol%202.pdf

1.1 Objectives 

This study aims to contribute to the understanding of the nature of disparities between Māori and non-Māori, and among Māori in major urban areas specifically within Auckland, and to suggest the formulation of evidence-based policies to assist Māori to overcome those disparities they individually or collectively find undesirable.

In order to study urban Māori disparities, several questions must be separately and jointly addressed:

• What are the historical, demographic and settlement contexts of Māori?
• What are the goals/values/aspirations of Māori?
• What have been Māori achievements/underachievements?
• How do Māori distribute their attention among different domains?
• In each of several life-domains, how well have Māori managed?
• What are the collectivities through which Māori live their lives?
• What government (and other) services/interventions affect Māori, and how are Māori affected?
• What policy implications flow from the needs of Māori and the attempted interventions to meet these needs?

For each of these questions this report is concerned with comparing:
• the differences between Māori and non-Māori;
• the range within Māoridom;
and especially –
• the differences between urban Māori and non-urban Māori;
• the differences between Auckland-domiciled Māori and those in other urban
areas; and
• the differences among Māori domiciled in different areas of Auckland.

Challenges with Maori v Non-Maori analyses

Māori /non-Māori averages have been compared using objective data across a broad array of arenas – and without much attempt at overall summation, except for some particular attention to income and
employment. Differences are interpreted in very broad cultural terms (although the Western value-set is taken as the norm).

Reaction to th[e] “closing the gaps” approach [between Māori /non-Māori]  (e.g. Chapple 2000a; Gould 2000) has extended the approach by suggesting (inter alia) that:

• there are often difficulties with the data (especially that based on official social book-keeping statistics);
• while absolute differences continue in many arenas relative differences are reducing;
• dispersions are as important as averages (and that the very overlap of Māori /nonMāori dampens the differences);
• Māori (and perhaps non-Māori) include a range of ethnic orientations;
• factors other than race (partially) explain Māori /non-Māori differences, e.g. education, social class, cultural/social capital etc (and consequently multivariate data analyses are required to capture these effects);
• there may be pockets where differences are concentrated (e.g. rural locations); and
• “culturally appropriate” programme delivery is seldom appropriate.

In more detail, Chapple asserts that (in quick summary: I have placed the immediate rebuttal of these points in brackets following):

• post 1970 Māori are better off (but a partial recent recovery follows more recently difficult times for many Māori);
• being Māori is a recent (post-1945) invention (but in fact there has been a long history of pan-tribal involvements);
• Māori is a declining construct (but this is based on misleading 1996 Census results);
• through intermarriage, the “Māoriness” of the New Zealand population is declining, although – on the other hand – because of this intermarriage, the possibility for more Māori is increased: intermarriage leads to a more widespread “browning” of the New Zealand population (so the phenomenon is complex);
• since a high proportion of Māori vote on the general roll, there is low participation in Māori politics (but Labour encouraged enrolment on the general roll and the focus of Māori effort has varied over time);
• the more successful Māori tend to choose to emphasise their Pākehā connections (but there is as much evidence to the contrary);
• the Māori ethnic revival is driven by “ethnic entrepreneurs” (who presumably enjoy benefits of this “capture”: but they receive widespread support);
• Māori and Pākehā have different “tastes” (e.g. for leisure and producing nonmarket goods: but evidence for this is not readily available);
• Māori in Australia also do poorly (but Australia is also racist in relation to indigenous groups).

Along somewhat similar lines, Gould argues that:
• different measures of change are required (but, this is a complex methodological concern);
• the concept of Māori ancestry is irrelevant for policy (and also statistical) purposes (but, the evidence is more complex than this);
• socio-economic differences within the Māori population are as great as Mäori/nonMāori differences (nevertheless, Māori have distinctive social features);
• “degree of Mäoriness” (e.g. through intermarriage) determines socio-economic success (but the evidence is more complex than this);
• modernisation is more appropriate than cultural maintenance as a goal for Māori (a value judgment).

However, much of their argumentation in this “revisionist” approach is limited theoretically (especially as it is framed in economic terms and couched at an individual level) and is poorly based on data. As a result there has been considerable contestation of their work (e.g. Alexander 2001; Portal Consulting 2001; Rochford 2001).

A plethora of criticisms has been advanced including points such as:

• Pool’s argument that absolute differences are better measures of change than ratios which may be based on unstable denominators;
• Armstrong’s concern that Chapple’s “forthcoming” papers are still coming, his documentation of data is poor, and he as a civil servant has unfair access to statistics;
• Rochford’s concern that Chapple’s data exclude the low income earners (because unemployed) and also high earners (as a “cut-off”) (Rochford, 2001: 5);
• Rochford’s alternative explanations that any convergences are more a result of increasing employment, and therefore cyclical rather than secular as claimed, and that in fact Chapple’s charts show “recovery” to the smaller gaps of early dates is yet to happen; and that similarly;
• since the education gap has been steady over time it cannot be driving any changes in disparities (Rochford 2001);
• the difficulty in drawing too strong conclusions (in the face of marked colinearity) from use of proportion of variance explained and also the causal ordering revealed by step-wise regression equations (Alexander and Williams 2001).

In sum, the reaction to the Chapple-Gould argumentation has taken one of three forms:
• criticism of particular analyses;
• criticism of the more general framework within which their argument sits;
• attempts to move the debate into wider territory.

......

Social research of a more quantitative type has hardly ignored ethnicities. Indeed, there is a widespread tendency in New Zealand social research for the Māori / non Māori categorisations to be routinely deployed as standard comparisons in data analysis.

As Pool et al. wryly note,

“Finally comparisons between Māori and nonMāori have been made … Indeed, in most social research in New Zealand this is the typical comparison that is made” (1999: 130). 

They go on to suggest wider perspectives can also be adopted:

“Yet in many ways the differences between these two ethnic groups are far less important than those between New Zealand and … other low fertility countries”. 

For example, they suggest that there is a reasonable Māori/North American fit in terms of patterns of contraception and sterilization. However, such a comparative viewpoint is not pursued here.

Moreover, merely reporting ethnic correlations is unduly simplistic, since the comparisons are seldom entirely valid. Multivariate analyses are required to sift out some of the complexity. Another typical move in research has been to oversimplistically publish “league tables” of success (e.g. of schools in achieving good results in school examinations). As Harker and Nash (1998) point out, there is a need
for “value-added analysis” since league tables do not reward the good performance of some schools of turning poorer-quality recruits into better-than-expected outcomes.

A methodological issue which then arises is how the “residual” variance is best explained: this might be understood as “luck” or “differential opportunity” or else assigned to diffuse “structural” or “cultural” factors. Any such approach must be recognised as being arbitrary.

A major issue is how ethnicity should be handled. It is assumed in line with current “best practice” that ethnicity is by self-definition. However, in the course of data collection and analysis self-definitions are often limited through collapsing categories. For example, the terms “Sole Māori” or “Mixed Māori” used throughout this report, are terms imposed by analysts rather than by the participants.

Maori identity

A of Māori research (also going back to the work of the Ritchies) has been on the conceptualization of Māori identity (for a broad review see Kukutai, 2001).

Metge (1995) summarizes some decades of her own work, in some pithy statements:

Taken collectively, te iwi Māori is characterized by a combination of 
characteristics: genealogical descent from the pre-European inhabitants of 
New Zealand, distinctive physical features, distinctive values and ways of 
organising social life, shared history, and consciousness of kind (“a we 
feeling”). Those who identify themselves and are identified by others as Māori 
do not necessarily display all these characteristics in their own person (1995: 
18). 

While demographers, social scientists and the general public continue to 
debate the definition of “a Māori”, the Māori determine the issue in their own 
way. They specify descent from a Māori parent or ancestor as the basic 
requirement, and, provided that is fulfilled, accept as Māori those who identify 
themselves as Māori. Attempts to impose a narrower definition in terms of 
linguistic or cultural competence are generally rejected (1995: 18). 

A far more quantitative approach has been taken by David Thomas (1988) who reports the development and implementation of a 40-item questionnaire that assesses knowledge of Māori language and cultural practice. When administered to samples of school children and university students, the test had satisfactory item-total correlations, internal consistency and also differentiated among ethnic Māori and ethnic Pākehā.

In an earlier study (1986), Thomas found that Māori children with some knowledge of Māori language and culture have higher scores on achievement tests than Māori children who have little or no knowledge of Māori culture.

In a later study (Thomas and Nikora 1996), it was found that Pākehā people see ethnic differences as consisting primarily of differences in physical appearance, whereas Māori students’ conceptions of being Māori emphasized culture and language.

Very recently, Broughton et al. (2000) reviewed the conceptualization of identity and found broad support for the notion that ethnic identification is associated with higher levels of cultural involvement. But, they found little hardcore involvement in Māori culture, perhaps because the age group they studied is seduced by youth culture (2000: 28). They claimed the implications are that:

…because of the high variation in ethnic identification and participation 
among those classified as Māori there is a need for a parallel variability in 
service provision with services for young Māori spanning a range of options 
that include both mainstream and Māori community based services (2000: 29). 

Gibson found that how women saw themselves was rarely congruent with how they were perceived by others (cited by Kukutai, 2001: 60).