JOHN RAINE: Ancestry-Defined Ethnostate or a Working Democracy

The Treaty of Waitangi should be a unifying document but instead it seems to consign New Zealand society to a future of categorisation and determination of rights by race. Look no further than countries such as Malaysia, India or Iran to see how damaging this is to societal harmony. Can we avoid a further drift towards becoming an ethnostate?

The New Zealand 2023 census reported that our usually resident population count was 4,993,923, of which 19.5% were of Māori descent, people self-identifying as Māori through their whakapapa (ancestry). My understanding is that almost all of these would have a significant mix of other ethnic origins as well as Māori, although legally a person can be defined as Māori through one long-distant ancestor. One example [1] publicised through the DNA Detectives TV programme was that of Māori Labour MP, Willie Jackson, whose ancestry was revealed as Chinese 34%, Ashkenazi Jew 25%, Māori 20%, English 18%, Spanish 2% and African 0.4%.

Many of us have now had our DNA tested through MyHeritage.com or Ancestry.com, and the figures from such DNA testing services simply given an approximate estimate of one’s ancestry. Both my wife and I, as fourth generation New Zealanders, found that we have mostly English/Scottish/Irish/Welsh ancestry, and a little from the Scandinavia-Baltic area. Among the smaller percentages, there was a several percent probability (less than 8%) of each of Ashkenazi Jewish and Iberian Peninsula ancestors. Many of us as New Zealanders value our European heritage, the richness and history of the various European cultures, and the Liberal Enlightenment that blossomed in this region, with its inestimable contributions to philosophy, the arts, music, and modern science. It is difficult to believe that through a critical social justice lens these are seen as tools of colonial oppression.

Wikipedia [2] (but with solid primary references) indicates that the human genetic code is approximately 99.6% – 99.9% identical between individuals and without clear boundaries between groups. Genetic variations increase continuously with distance and do not map onto socially recognised categories of race. It is thus more relevant to think in terms of ancestry rather than DNA, and race is not considered a valid proxy for genetic ancestry.

A university colleague told me of being censured by an administrator for referring to his wife and children as part-Māori, as in Te Ao Māori one was expected to identify only as Māori or non-Māori. This expectation illustrates the view that race is significantly a social construct, and it is unsurprising that, in New Zealand, individuals with, for example, only 1/16 Māori ancestry or less identify as Māori. But, why are there such intense continuing efforts to divide our country between those who identify as Māori and those who don’t? Many Māori would seem to have little more Māori ancestry than the Iberian Peninsula fraction on one side of my family, and most New Zealanders have diverse ancestral origins. Thus, the ancestry-explained but otherwise logic defying division of our people into Māori and the rest, while palpably a consequence of the Treaty of Waitangi, now often appears simply political, with elements of a cultural reshaping agenda thrown in.

The necessary efforts of successive New Zealand governments to achieve full and final Treaty settlements for determined earlier colonial injustices have been an example to less sympathetic jurisdictions internationally, but the increasing culture of separate policy and strategy for Māori across the public sector over the past 40 years has become costly, onerous and divisive.

We now also see widespread imposed requirements for Te Ao Māori training across professional associations, a non-exhaustive list of 23 of which were recently summarised by Hobson’s Pledge. Much of this training is mandatory, with obvious decolonisation rhetoric and a distinct indoctrination tone. These impositions echo content now appearing in university courses such as the compulsory University of Auckland Waipapa Taumata Rau 100 level courses. As much as we want to see easy and effective Māori engagement with and involvement in the professions (likewise for all New Zealanders), this kind of “training” is largely irrelevant to the intended professional engagement, which is mostly colour-blind as to people’s ancestry.

How do we logically justify providing Māori-specific services, or affirmative action in employment, to those identifying as Māori who have only a small fraction of Māori ancestry? Qualifying for such separate treatment must rest on one’s racial self-identification. Socio-economic and health factors, or in employment – merit, are much more obvious drivers that can be clearly evidence-based.

In education, the overarching aims to make the schools’ curriculum highly Te Ao Māori and Treaty focused under the Ardern Labour Government only ever served to create greater division in our society. A curriculum that was displacing hard-earned literacy and numeracy for soft cultural content and traditional knowledge with its strong myth, animism, and legend focus, meant that NZ was fostering a two-tier society where a privileged group, mostly in the private schools and the more academically focused state schools, has had a more solid traditional education strong in English, Maths and the Sciences. To succeed in producing tomorrow’s workforce, strongly grounded in literacy and numeracy, and capable of critical thought, New Zealand education should introduce and celebrate Māori culture and language, but must reject any Treaty-related indoctrination and focus on teaching knowledge to support a high technology, high productivity economy.

We will not produce a happier, democratic and more prosperous society by heading down a path towards becoming a South Pacific ethnostate, where Te Ao Māori is imposed upon the 80% of the country who do not claim Māori descent, on our children in education and more widely across our society. This means rejecting employment preferment strategies such as within Te Rautaki Ao Māori [3], whether in the public service or private sector. It means rejecting the incorporation into the law of tikanga (with its regional variation and imprecise definition), and moves towards undemocratic co-governance, most obvious at present in local government.

It also means ceasing funding that our highly indebted country cannot afford for identity-based objectives or organisations, including those that have been argued for from a Treaty Principles standpoint but are outside the Treaty settlements process. It is clear from critiques of the 2025 Government Budget that, without very strong measures to genuinely reshape the economy, the annual deficit will continue to grow and NZ’s growing international debt will lead us to long-term penury and failure as a nation. The high costs that relate to our history must be addressed and contained as part of a more stringent economic strategy. If the implementation of He Puapua continues this will load further unsustainable costs onto our society.

If we are to succeed as a modern, economically successful democracy, rather than continue down the decolonisation pathway of He Puapua, we must urgently find a way to neutralise the tensions that arise through the continued emphasis on what makes us different from each other rather than on what we have in common. To this end, Te Tiriti o Waitangi references which impose cultural authority should be removed from Government policies, the judiciary, the public service, and the country’s education and research system, and specifically in the Education and Training Act. None of this would stop the celebration of Te Ao Māori, nor the Treaty settlements process moving forward, one would hope towards a conclusion soon. Nor would it prevent other activities that give respect to the culture and language of those who settled the country before European arrivals.

As time goes on and we have a welcome intermingling of the rich mix of ethnicities in New Zealand, it will become increasingly nonsensical to deliver public services on the basis of anything other than need, and for each of us to do other than celebrate, as he or she wishes to, the mix of cultures that are reflected in their own ancestry. In that happy future, services to our communities will be delivered on the basis of socio-economic, educational or health-related need, and will be blind as to any of our many genealogies, except where it may be specifically relevant, such as in ethnicity-related disease susceptibility.

David Seymour’s Treaty Principles Bill may have failed, but far from promoting division, it presented a vision of a country unified under one government with equal rights for all citizens. In the end this must happen without us being divided by race. It is now urgent that we learn to move past the politicisation of preferred attachments to sometimes small fractions of our ancestry, and to think and behave as one people.

This must be facilitated by Government leading an open and constructive constitutional discussion that ensures that New Zealand preserves a stable working democracy.

John Raine is an Emeritus Professor of Engineering and has formerly held positions as Pro Vice Chancellor (Research and Innovation) at AUT, Deputy Vice Chancellor (Albany and International) at Massey University, and Pro Vice Chancellor (Enterprise and International) at University of Canterbury.

References

1. Trevor Ammundsen, “Should We Advertise our Heritage”, The Coromandel Informer, June 3rd, 2025. https://theinformer.co.nz/community/through-the-portal/should-we-advertise-our-entire-heritage/

2. Wikipedia, “Race and Genetics” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_genetics#cite_note-Yudell2016-26

3. New Zealand Parliament, “Te Ao Takitaki/The Stars that Guide Us - Te Rautaki Ao Māori 2022-2025/Te Ao Māori Strategy 2022-2025. 11thJuly 2022 https://www.parliament.nz/en/footer/about-us/parliaments-workplace-culture/he-ao-takitaki-the-stars-that-guide-us/