Ontological Quarrels: Indigeneity, Exclusion and Citizenship in a Relational World

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Article

Ontological quarrels:Indigeneity, exclusion andcitizenship in a relationalworld

Anne SalmondUniversity of Auckland, New Zealand

Abstract

In settler societies such as New Zealand, the relationships between indigenous groups

and settlers whose ancestors arrived from Europe involve clashes and exchanges

between those who hold different sets of presuppositions about how the world

works. In early New Zealand, M�aori and Europeans often found themselves at

ontological cross-purposes, and such contestations are still common. In this paper, I

explore fundamental divergences and resonances between ancestral M�aori and

modernist ontological styles, and how over the past two hundred years these have

emerged in debates over the Treaty of Waitangi, signed between M�aori rangatira (chiefs)

and the British Crown in 1840; and over tapu (the sacred, or state of ancestral

presence), land, citizenship and mana or power.

Keywords

cosmology, M�aori, modernity, ontology, relational thinking, Treaty of Waitangi

In 2010 I was asked to prepare a report for the Waitangi Tribunal in New Zealandon how the rangatira (M�aori chiefs) who signed the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840might have understood their agreements with the British Crown (Salmond 2010).This was intended to update an earlier submission, made to the Tribunal during theMuriwhenua Land Claim in 1992, almost 20 years earlier (Salmond 1992). At thattime I worked with two colleagues in M�aori Studies, Merimeri Penfold and DrCleve Barlow, both native speakers of M�aori, drawing on early M�aori texts,Barlow’s concordance of the M�aori Bible and other translations, and their deepknowledge of the language to interpret the text of Te Tiriti, the M�aori Treaty of

Corresponding author:

Anne Salmond, Department of M�aori Studies, University of Auckland, 16 Wynyard Street, Auckland,

New Zealand.

Email: [email protected]



Waitangi. For that report, Te Tiriti was also placed in historical context by exam-ining an array of contemporary accounts of the Treaty transactions in English,written by European officials or observers, including descriptions of the speechesmade by the various rangatira in 1840.

Our 1992 submission noted that in Te Tiriti, translated from the final Englishdraft of the Treaty into M�aori by the missionary Henry Williams, the term tuku –to release or give – was used throughout, as indeed it was in early land transactionsin Northland. This was the term used in gift exchange when a treasured object(taonga) was handed over, or a child in adoption, or a man or woman in marriage,or land to requite an insult or seal an alliance, or the spirit of a dead person to theancestors; exchanges that were tapu (i.e. involve ancestral presence). The text of TeTiriti is thus phrased as a series of gift exchanges between the rangatira or chiefs,and the Queen.

The status of the document seems unambiguous, since this is the text that wasdebated and signed by the various parties at Waitangi and elsewhere around thecountry. As soon as the Treaty was signed at Waitangi, however, and LieutenantGovernor Hobson sent a transcript of Te Tiriti and a transcript of the English draftto Governor Gipps in New South Wales, the English text was certified by HenryWilliams as a faithful translation of Te Tiriti – when, in fact, Te Tiriti was atranslation of the original draft in English. From that time onward, the Englishdraft was regarded by British and colonial authorities alike as the ‘official’ text ofwhat the rangatira had agreed with the Crown – when in fact Te Tiriti (the docu-ment signed by the chiefs) was the authoritative version.

As has often been pointed out, however, the two texts of the Treaty arevery different. In Article One of the English draft, for example, the chiefs cedeto Queen Victoria ‘absolutely and without reservation all the rights and powersof Sovereignty’, while in Te Tiriti they give to her k �awanatanga [lit. ‘gover-norship’], translated in our report as the right to appoint a Governor. InArticle Two in English, Queen Victoria guarantees to the chiefs ‘the full exclu-sive and undisturbed possession of their Lands and Estates Forests Fisheriesand other properties’, whereas in Te Tiriti she agrees to support their tinorangatiratanga or absolute powers as chiefs over their lands, dwelling placesand all of their taonga (ancestral treasures). In return, in the English draft theygive the Queen the ‘exclusive right of pre-emption’ in land sales, rather thanthe right to control the hoko (‘barter’) of land, as in Te Tiriti. Finally, inArticle Three in English, Queen Victoria promises to extend to the ‘Natives ofNew Zealand’ her royal protection and ‘all the rights and duties of Britishsubjects’, which is reasonably close to the M�aori treaty, in which she promisesto care for them (tiaki) and give them tikanga (right modes of conduct) exactlythe same as her people of England.

From this analysis and supporting evidence in the European accounts of theTreaty transactions, it seemed clear that in signing Te Tiriti the chiefs did not cedesovereignty to the British Crown. Rather, they gave Queen Victoria the right toappoint a Governor, and through a series of gift exchanges forged a lasting

116 Anthropological Theory 12(2)



relationship between themselves and their lineages, and the Queen and her des-cendants. This explains why, over years of unjust treatment by settler governments,a succession of rangatira travelled to London to meet with British monarchs,asking them to uphold their ancestors’ promises and seeking their personalintercession.

From the British vantage point in 1840, on the other hand, by signing the Treatyof Waitangi the ‘Natives’ of New Zealand acknowledged Queen Victoria as theirsovereign, gaining the Queen’s protection and guarantee of the undisturbed pos-session of their lands, forests and fisheries and other properties, and all the rightsand privileges of British subjects. By means of the Treaty, M�aori kin networks(which, as we will see, include lands, forests and fisheries as well as people) werebrought under the control of the United Kingdom, with M�aori people as theQueen’s ‘subjects’, while lands, forests and (eventually) fisheries became propertythat could be bought, owned and sold in the market. It was, however, Te Tiriti thatthe rangatira signed.1

As it turned out, when our report was presented to the Tribunal in 1992, it wasevidently not timely to question whether, in signing the Treaty of Waitangi, therangatira had in fact ceded sovereignty to the British Crown. The process of inves-tigating claims against the Crown for breaches of the Treaty had just begun, and atthat time the Treaty was often described as ‘the founding document of the nation’,legitimating the arrival of British settlers (and by implication, the continuing pres-ence of their descendants), the rule of law and the authority of the Crown in NewZealand. If these were to be respected by M�aori, it was argued, it was vital thatrestitution should be made for breaches of the Crown’s Treaty promises. By impli-cation, if the cession of sovereignty was questioned, the settlement process might beundermined. Although the Tribunal had commissioned our report, its key findingswere quietly sidelined, and in the report on the Muriwhenua Land Claim, referenceto them was diplomatically oblique.

By 2010, however, when the Tribunal asked me to revisit that earlier report, thecontext had radically shifted. The claims process was now well under way, withmany major claims against the Crown already settled, although recent debates overtitle to the foreshore and seabed had strained relationships between many M�aoriand the Government. More importantly, the Ng�apuhi claim to the WaitangiTribunal had tackled the issue of sovereignty head on, asking the Tribunal todetermine the status and significance of He Whakap �utanga (the 1835Declaration of Independence by the Northern chiefs) and the Treaty of Waitangi(signed in their territories in 1840).

Before the hearings began, Ng�apuhi held a series of meetings to decide onstrategies, expert witnesses and spokespeople. In May 2010 when the Tribunalmembers arrived at Waitangi for the first hearing, they were met with a fierychallenge. Members of Ng�apuhi held up flags and portraits of chiefs who hadsigned Te Tiriti, brandishing ancestral weapons including muskets, taiaha (fightingstaffs) and long-handled tomahawks. In their opening speeches, Ng�apuhi leadersvehemently contended that they had never ceded sovereignty to the British Crown.

Salmond 117



Rather, their ancestors had forged a relationship with Queen Victoria. As ErimaHenare declared:

Ng�apuhi do not and have never seen Te Tiriti as a cession of sovereignty. By Te Tiriti

our t �upuna [ancestors] bound themselves to the Queen, and agreed to the Queen’s

Governor remaining here to look after her subjects. In p �akeha [European] legal terms,

this seems to present something of a paradox. Sovereignty is seen as all or nothing.

For Ng�apuhi Te Tiriti was a solemn commitment, a kawenata [covenant] to a rela-

tionship with the Queen. (Henare, Waitangi Tribunal 2010: 35)

When Rima Edwards, an elder from Hokianga trained in one of the ancestralschools of learning, spoke, he recited a chant that recounted the origins of thecosmos, tracing his own line of descent from the beginnings of the world. In thisway and by speaking in M�aori, holding up ancestral portraits and brandishingancient weapons, he and other elders were trying to bring the Tribunal within TeAo M�aori, the M�aori ‘world’ (or ‘way of being’2) where dominant understandingsbased on the English draft of the Treaty could be challenged, although some weredoubtful that their efforts would succeed. As another elder, Kingi Taurua,remarked:

[The Tribunal] looks at both Treaties, the P�akeha [English version] and the M�aori,

which is totally wrong. We did not sign the P�akeha. We signed the M�aori version. We

are here to talk about the Treaty that we in Ng�apuhi did not sign, and they are here to

judge in English what our t �upuna [ancestors] signed in M�aori. (Taurua, Waitangi

Tribunal 2010: 15)

Taurua’s comments proved to be prescient. Several months later when Ipresented a brief summary of my report to the Tribunal, based on the 1992 findingsand strengthened by new documentary evidence, the session was conducted like acourt, with the members of the Tribunal (chaired by a M�aori judge of the M�aoriLand Court) sitting at a table as a long line-up of lawyers (many of them alsoM�aori) conducted cross-examinations of a series of ‘expert witnesses’. AlthoughNg�apuhi elders had begun the hearings by presenting their own accounts of theTreaty transactions and challenging the sovereignty of the Crown, this was beingreasserted by the use of legal protocols, just as the Crown’s understandings of theTreaty were reinforced by frequent references to the English draft, often by non-M�aori speaking historians and lawyers. As the lawyers and expert witnesses battledit out, the elders and other tribal members sat as spectators, although sometimesthey interjected, crying out ‘Kia ora!’ (thank you, be well) in support, or ‘Teka!’(lies!) if an ‘expert’ seemed to be wilfully mistaken. As much as a debate about whathad happened in the past, this was a struggle of ontological proportions. Different‘worlds’ were at stake, along with cash settlements and political influence, and thesewere mutually implicated.3




The experience of participating in the Ng�apuhi hearings made me reflect aboutthe ways in which power and presuppositions clash and engage and are negotiated.Assumptions about how the world works may be so entrenched in everyday prac-tice that they rarely surface for inspection, except where people who handle differ-ence differently have to deal with one another. Even so, the participants mayoperate at cross-purposes, not realizing why or even that their interpretations donot converge. When such presuppositions are embodied in familiar artefacts, set-tings and routines, they are difficult to discern, let alone to challenge.

By 2010 when the Ng�apuhi hearings began, M�aori had become a minority groupin New Zealand. In 1840 when Te Tiriti was drafted, debated and signed atWaitangi, however, they were dominant, if struggling to cope with a growinginflux of settlers from Europe. At first, European visitors and settlers had beenforced to accommodate themselves to M�aori ways, although often they sought toassert their own ideas, customs and technologies, some of which some M�aori will-ingly adopted. By 1840 in Northland, where the greatest number of Europeansettlers were concentrated, the introduction of new diseases, muskets, alcohol,prostitution, Christianity, land sales and the lack of effective controls over thenew settlers led to widespread consternation and confusion. A world that hadformerly made sense was shifting on its foundations.

The assumptions that shaped Te Tiriti are vividly expressed in narratives andchants taught at that time in the whare w �ananga (‘schools of ancestral knowledge’).As Viveiros de Castro has argued for Yanomami cosmological narratives, suchaccounts do not reflect a ‘Yanomami (or M�aori) world view’ but, rather, expressthe Yanomami (or M�aori) world objectively from inside it (Viveiros de Castro 2007:153). In other words, these are different ‘worlds’, not one world viewed differently.According to one of the M�aori cosmological chants, when life began, a burst ofenergy generated thought, memory, the mind-heart and desire. Desire made know-ledge fruitful, and from knowledge came Te P �o, the dark realm of ancestors. FromTe P �o came Te Kore, a realm of potentiality, the ‘seedbed of the cosmos’; and fromTe Kore came the winds of growth and life (hau tupu, hau ora); and from thesecame Rangi and Papa, the earth and sky, and Te Ao M�arama, the everyday ‘world’of light that we all inhabit:

N �a te kune te pupuke From the first surge of energy the rising

N �a te pupuke te hihiri From rising the thought

N �a te hihiri te mahara From rising thought the memory

N �a te mahara te hinengaro From memory the mind-heart

N �a te hinengaro te manako From the mind-heart, desire

Ka hua te w �ananga Knowledge became conscious

Ka noho i a rikoriko It dwelt in dim light

Ka puta ki waho ko te p �o And P �o (darkness) emerged . . .

Ko hau tupu, ko hau ora The hau of growth, the hau of life

Ka noho i te atea Stayed in clear space

Ka puta ki waho ko te rangi e t�u nei And the sky emerged that stands here

Salmond 119



Te ata rapa, te ata ka mahina The early dawn, the early day, the mid-day

Ka mahina te ata i hikurangi! The blaze of day from the sky!

. . . and then the land emerged, then the gods, then people. (Taylor 1855: 14–16)

In this chant, thought, memory, the mind-heart and desire generate Te P �o, theancestral realm, and the wind of life, which creates the elements of Te Ao M�arama,the everyday world of light. Here, there is no radical disjuncture between mind andmatter, thought and emotion, subject and object, the ideal and the real. Becauseeverything is animated by hau tupu and hau ora, the winds of growth and life,including objects and people (ahau means ‘I’ in M�aori), animate and inanimatephenomena are not distinguished. As the tohunga (knowledgeable expert)Te Matorohanga explains, ‘All things unfold their nature (tupu), live (ora) haveform ( �ahua), whether trees, rocks, birds, reptiles, fish, animals or human beings’(Smith 1915: 13). At the time of Te Tiriti, when rangatira or chiefs spoke of anancestor in the first person as ‘ahau’, or ‘I’, it was because they were the ‘living face’of that ancestor, and when they spoke of their kin groups in the first person, it wasbecause they shared ancestral hau together.

The presence of their ancestors in ariki (high chiefs) and rangatira (chiefs) madethem tapu, imbued with ancestral presence, and gave them mana, ability to actpowerfully in the world. Gifts or insults to any part of the kin group, but especiallyto its leaders, affected the vitality (hau ora) of the entire kin network (whakapapa),and had to be reciprocated. As Marshall Sahlins has remarked, this cosmo-networkincludes plants and animals as well as people: ‘The [M�aori] universe is a gigantickin, a genealogy. Natural means of human existence are forms or descendants ofthe god’ (Sahlins 1985b: 195). He adds:

Descent in Polynesian thought is a logic of formal classes: the ancestor is to his

descendants as a general class is to its particular instances. The offspring are tokens

of the parent type. The system, then, is a veritable ontology, having to do with

commonalities and differentiations of substance. Relations logically constructed

from it – e.g., heavens are to earth as chiefs to people – are expressions of the essence

of things. (Sahlins 1985a: 14)

Indeed, such networks of relations are often spoken of as plants (the gourd plantfor instance), animated by the winds of growth and life, branching and sprawlingacross the land. Some branches flourish, while others wither and die (an imagerepeated in the curvilinear patterns painted on the blades of paddles and the raftersof meeting-houses).4 A kin group was understood to spring from a take or ‘rootancestor’, planted in the earth, so that the people of a locality were referred to ast �angata whenua, literally ‘land people’. People cared for the hau of the kin networksand the land and sea on which they grew, giving them offerings (known as wh �angaihau or ‘feeding the hau’), and particular animals or powerful beings acted as kaitiaki, or guardians, protecting them against enemy incursions – the same term tiakithat was used in relation to Queen Victoria in the final clause of Te Tiriti.




In this ancestral ‘world’ (or ‘state of being,’ referred to today as ‘Te Ao M�aori’),phenomena and relations emerge through a process of reciprocal exchange (utu).Unlike the ‘arrow of time’, this unfolding is not unidirectional but recursive,returning to the source, so that in M�aori carving the rhythms of the cosmos areinvoked by the double spiral (Jones 1959: 232). Beginning with a burst of energyand thought, the exchanges that generate cosmic elements – winds, planets, theocean, animals, plants and people – alternate between gift giving, amity and union,and quarrelling, enmity and exclusion, working towards equilibrium (although thisis always temporary and contingent).

This is a cosmos founded on the generation of complementary dualisms – Te Aoand Te P �o (the everyday realm and the dark realm of ancestors); Rangi and Papa(male sky and female earth); t �ane and w �ahine (male and female); tapu and noa(ancestral presence and absence); ora and mate (good fortune and well being,and illness, misfortune or death), t �angata whenua and manuhiri (local people andvisitors). The pae, that perilous border zone, the place of encounter, lies at the heartof these pairings, transforming relations.5 By the exchange of gifts, an enemy canbecome a friend, just as a friend can become an enemy through the exchange ofinsults. Thus, in M�aori, hoa is the term for ‘friend’ or ‘companion’ and hoa ran-gatira (literally, ‘chiefly friend’) refers to a wife or husband, while hoa riri (‘angryfriend’) is the term for an enemy. It is the relation (captured by the term hoa) that isontologically prior.6

In Te Ao M�aori, then, the negotiations that forge and shape relations are thestuff of life. Gifts, as part of the donor’s hau, create an obligation for reciprocalgifting, and this applies to ancestors, objects, plants and animals, as well as livingpeople. As Tamati Ranapiri (as cited by Marcel Mauss in The Gift) explained to theethnologist Elsdon Best at the turn of the 20th century:

I will speak to you about the hau . . .This is not the hau (wind) that blows – not at all.

Let me explain this to you carefully. Now, you have a valuable item (taonga) and you

give it to me. We do not arrange a price (utu) or strike a bargain about it. Now, I hand

over this article to a third person who, perhaps after a long while, thinks that since he

has this taonga, he should give me a return gift (utu), and does so . . .

Now, this gift that he gives to me is the hau of your taonga. No matter how good or

poor it might be, I must give it to you. It would not be right (tika) for me to keep it for

myself, because this gift is the hau of the taonga you gave me. . . . If I keep this gift for

myself, I will suffer and perhaps even die. This is the nature of the hau, the hau of the

gift, the hau of the forest. K �ati ena (That’s enough of that). (Best 1909: 435, my

translation)

As Ranapiri explains it, hau is the breath of life, the force in people and thingsthat impels utu or reciprocal exchanges. Every gift or loss must be requited. It isprecisely this kind of logic that applied to Te Tiriti, which agreed the terms forfuture relations between the rangatira and the Crown, helping to shape how these

Salmond 121



were argued about and negotiated.7 It also helps to explain the early confidenceamong M�aori (which is still evident, despite much contrary experience) that thegifts they offered to Europeans – including Queen Victoria and her descendants –would be returned in good measure.

As Mauss argued in The Gift, notions of reciprocity and the gift are not uniqueto ‘exotic’ societies, but are also part of European ways of living (Mauss 1990: 4,65–78).8 In addition, in the M�aori world some exchanges (referred to as hoko,roughly ‘barter’), which were relatively direct and pragmatic, were devoid of ances-tral implications,9 and by 1840 some land transactions had been placed in thatcategory. Nor did reciprocity just apply to gift exchange. By exactly the same logic,attacks upon mana required restitution. As Captain Cook observed in 1769: ‘I haveallways found them of a Brave, Noble, Open and benevolent disposition, but theyare a people that will never put up with an insult if they have an oppertunity toresent it’ (in Beaglehole 1969: 653). If a gift was not requited, this was hau whitia, or‘hau turned aside’, and serious breaches of mana (termed hauhau aitu) could alsothreaten the life force of the group, demanding restitution.10

While the exchange of gifts creates bonds between people and with other forms oflife (including ancestors), tying them together, quarrelling and conflict creates sep-aration. When the a priori ontological condition is sameness, difference has to begenerated.11 In M�aori cosmological accounts, at the beginning of the world earthand sky exist as a single ancestor, locked in embrace, their children squashed betweenthem. When T �u, the ancestor of war, frustrated by his confinement, suggests to hisbrothers that they should kill their parents, they argue bitterly until T�ane, the ances-tor of the forests and people, lies on his back and pushes earth and sky apart, lettinglight into the world.12 In a fury, his brother T�awhiri-matea (who had not agreed tothe separation) flies up to the sky, where he creates the winds, gales and hurricanes toattack T�ane’s progeny (the trees), making them snap and splinter, and the ocean,Tangaroa’s domain, troubling his offspring (the fish) and making the sea turbulentwith storms. Rongo’s children (the fern-root and sweet potato) flee into the shelter oftheir grandmother’s body. Only T �u, the youngest brother, stood firm beforeT�awhiri’s onslaught. All the rest of his brothers were conquered, and T �u’s childrenconsumed his brothers’ offspring as food (see Schrempp 1985).

Later T �u’s descendants – people – also quarrelled and went their own ways,migrating to new places and forging new kin groups. Many of the stories aboutexploring Polynesia, including New Zealand, tell of disputes followed by journeysto distant places. This is a viral kinship system, readily replicated and transported,allowing the rapid exploration and settlement of new places. Kin networks areopen-ended and flexible, with people activating different links in different circum-stances (so that M�aori kin groups are more contextual than corporate; and ahau,the self, is at once constituted by and inclusive of its networks of relations). Theyare also constantly changing, with some relationships being forged by insult andfighting, others by adoption, friendship and marriage, accompanied by giftexchange, while others, of limited value, are forgotten.13




Within these relational dynamics, then, Te Tiriti made perfect sense. Here, giftexchange was used to forge a lasting relation between various rangatira and theirlineages and Queen Victoria and her heirs. The problem arose when the workingassumptions that underpinned te ao m �aori (which at that time simply meant ‘theordinary, normal, everyday way of being’ rather than, as it later became, Te AoM�aori, ‘the world of M�aori people’) were juxtaposed with the very differentpresuppositions that shaped the English draft of the Treaty, with its notions of‘Rights’, ‘Property’, ‘Subjects’ and ‘Sovereignty’ and their instantiations (a uni-formed Lieutenant-Governor, armed soldiers and the presence of an Englishwarship off Waitangi, for example). During the 2010 hearing, too, it was fascinat-ing to see how present-day power relations were projected back into the past, andhow ‘evidence’ about what had happened in 1840 was constructed, authorized,presented and contested. These processes had the effect of marginalizingNg�apuhi and their oral knowledge about Te Tiriti (the validity of which wasovertly as well as implicitly challenged in the hearings), rendering Te Tiriti itselfproblematic and obscure.

In a recent paper, T.M.S. Evens has addressed ontological struggles of this kind.Noting how the Nuer claim that twins are birds, famed in the anthropologicalliterature, has been considered metaphorical or absurd, he begins by asking inwhat kind of world such a claim would make sense. Among the Nuer, he argues,reality is an unbounded whole, where

boundaries [are] conceived of as thresholds rather than impervious dividers: [and] the

whole denotes a global connectivity, thus rendering all things relative, and intimating

infinity in both space and time. . . . If the whole is what is basically real, then the ultim-

ate identity of everything that is anything rests in its connection to the whole. . . . It is

the medial or third term [in other words, the relation] and not the things linked by it

that enjoys ontological primacy. (Evens n.d.: 10, 15)14

Among the Nuer, twins may be birds because both enjoy a particular kind ofrelation with Spirit, being ‘people of the above’. Evens’s argument offers a usefulparallel through which to approach M�aori presuppositions at the time of theTreaty.15

In trying to translate this kind of reality, however, one’s own taken-for grantedassumptions may prove a formidable barrier. By way of contrast with Nuer pre-suppositions, Evens posits a ‘commonsense’ ontological style, often associated withEuro-American modernity but also found in other times and places, in which theground of reality is the bounded entity or ‘basic particular’, grounded on theclassical Law of Identity:

[When A is A], ‘identity’ denotes essential oneness. Clearly, since by definition the

basic particular is a unity, an individual, it makes identity. Accordingly, in a reality

keyed to the basic particular, everything that is anything must be an individual.

Salmond 123



In determining identity, the basic particular projects the possibility of a pure bound-

ary, a boundary that separates but does not connect. . . . In other words, in this ontol-

ogy, mutual exclusion or absolute dualism is given in the nature of the case. (Evens

n.d.: 9–10)16

One can see how within such an ontological style, reality itself might be appre-hended as ‘a basic particular writ large’ – the cosmos / universe / globe (thuscosmology, universalism, globalization).17 Here, the world is conceived of as asingular entity, composed of arrays of bounded entities in different realms andon different scales – in contrast with te ao m�aori, for example, where reality isgenerated as arrays of open-ended, continuously reproducing networks ofrelations.18

In a ‘modernist’ cosmos, then, ‘the world’ may be divided into nation-states,with boundaries marked out by immigration laws, customs and passport controls,inhabited by citizens, autonomous individuals who possess rights, votes andproperty, pay taxes and receive benefits. Since ‘mutual exclusion or absolutedualism is given in the nature of the case’, such assumptions shape ideas ofcitizenship from first principles. One will either be a citizen, with rights and avote of one’s own, or not (and in the early colonial period, M�aori as well aswomen were not considered individuals with property in their own right, and socould not vote). One is either a New Zealander, or one is not, and according tothe law of identity, all New Zealanders must share a common essence – thus theappeal of the slogan ‘We are all New Zealanders’, used in recent political debates(indeed, the very idea of ‘identity’ is based on the self as an essential oneness).Since all New Zealanders are basically the same, M�aori cannot enjoy rights asmembers of iwi (roughly, tribes) that are different from those they enjoy as citi-zens – hence the ‘Iwi-Kiwi’ billboards used during the 2008 election. Becausesovereignty in a democracy can only be based on autonomous individuality, itcannot be shared with M�aori kin groups, despite the alliance forged betweenQueen Victoria and the hap �u (roughly, sub-tribes) in Te Tiriti o Waitangi.Thus, for example, a recent furore over the voting rights given to the (unelected)representatives of local kin groups on various committees of the Auckland CityCouncil.

In such an ontological style, ‘humanity’ may also be taken as a ‘basicparticular writ large’. At that level, all people share a common essence(so ‘the anthropos’, ‘human rights’, ‘human nature’ and various kinds of ‘univer-sals’). At the next taxonomic level, ‘humanity’ may be divided into ‘societies’,‘cultures’, ‘ethnicities’ or ‘races’, each a basic particular, often in binary oppos-ition with an Other (where A 6¼B). In these dualisms, however, one element istypically dominant (‘Human’ 6¼ ‘Animal’; ‘Culture’ 6¼ ‘Nature’; ‘modern’ 6¼ ‘primi-tive’; ‘The West’ 6¼ ‘The Rest’; ‘[modernist] Self’ 6¼ ‘[exotic] Other’; ‘P�akeha[European] 6¼ ‘M�aori’), so that unequal power relations are presupposed andtaken for granted.




In New Zealand, the law of identity (which, since A¼A, drives towards pureessences) generates endless debates about who is and is not M�aori, the ‘authen-ticity’ of M�aori culture, ‘the invention of tradition’, and so on. For a long time, itwas so difficult to think that a person might be at once M�aori and not-M�aorithat these individuals were divided into fractions – half-castes, quarter-castes andso on; and this still poses a logical problem for many New Zealanders. Whencombined with the idea of the nation-state, the notion of pure essences can leadto the argument that each ‘culture’ or ‘ethnicity’ or ‘people’ must have its ownbounded territory, and in order to protect its internal coherence, that non-mem-bers should be segregated, assimilated, relocated or even exterminated – the kindof logic that has led elsewhere to tribal reservations or ‘ethnic cleansing’. At thesame time, the law of non-identity (e.g. ‘P�akeha [non-M�aori] 6¼ ‘M�aori’) buildsinequality into the very structures of reality, making imbalances in power rela-tions difficult to contest. The absolute dualism, exclusions and asymmetries thatcharacterize this style of reasoning have many practical consequences.19

Likewise, in a modernist cosmos where the world is taken to be a basic particu-lar, it is easy to assume that ‘an ontology’ must be a bounded object, similar to orperhaps isomorphic with a ‘culture’ or ‘ethnicity’, exclusively aligned with a par-ticular bounded group, each with its own fixed, characteristic essence (which iswhy, instead, I speak of ‘ontological styles’). ‘M�aori’ and ‘modernist’ ontologies,or ‘relational’ and ‘objective’ styles are likely to be treated as mutually exclusiveand in opposition to each other.20 As Mauss indicated, however, ontologies basedon reciprocity are not the exclusive preserve of particular groups of people, and‘Westerners’ also operate relationally, at least some of the time. Similarly, many‘M�aori’ proceed on the basis of modernist assumptions, although not necessarily allof the time.

Indeed, in a ‘relational’ ontology there is no requirement that a person is con-sistent in their assumptions, even though these may be incommensurable, for theself itself is contextually defined.21 In M�aori, for instance, one can talk about ‘takutaha M �aori’ and ‘taku taha P �akeha’ (my M�aori and my European ‘sides’), the tahaor ‘sides’ instantiating one’s various kin networks, each ‘side’ believing and behav-ing in its own way.22 This can present challenges in situations where conflictingassumptions collide (for example, for some of the M�aori lawyers in the Waitangihearings), although even in these and other situations, the tolerance for ontologicalinconsistency is high. At tangi or funerals, for instance, one often hears M�aoriministers farewelling the dead to Christ in heaven at one moment, and at thenext to the ancestors in Te P �o (the dark, invisible realm), without any evidentsense of contradiction.

In modernist terms, on the other hand, where the world is conceived as a basicparticular, standards for truth judgements are set in advance, and knowledge andtruth are monolithic. Reliable accounts mirror ‘reality’, while competing under-standings are dismissed as ‘myths’, ‘superstitions’ or simply wrong.23 Just as theNuer statement that ‘twins are birds’ has been regarded as a primitive absurdity,for example, many early European visitors and settlers in New Zealand saw M�aori

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conceptions as foolish and deluded. As J.L. Nicholas, who accompanied the mis-sionary Samuel Marsden to New Zealand in 1814, declared:

Though the savage does possess all the passions of Nature, pure and unadulterated,

and though he may in many instances feel stronger and more acutely than the man of

civilized habits; still is he inferior to him in every respect: the former is a slave to the

impulse of his will, the latter has learned to restrain his desires; the former stands

enveloped in the dark clouds of ignorance, the latter goes forth in the bright sunshine

of knowledge; the former views the works of his Creator through the medium of a

blind superstition, the latter through the light of reason and of truth; the one beholds

Nature and is bewildered, the other clearly ‘Looks through Nature up to Nature’s

God’. (Nicholas 1817: I: 86–7)

After being forbidden to eat in a chief’s house (which was tapu because rangatiraare imbued with the spirit of their ancestors), Nicholas had a vehement debateabout tapu with Tui, a local rangatira who had travelled with them from NewSouth Wales:

As Tui had previously shewed a predilection for European customs, I told him in the

language of vulgar ridicule, that the taboo taboo was all gammon. But I soon found

that opinions imbibed in infancy, and cherished to the period of manhood, were as

difficult to be eradicated from the minds of the New Zealanders, as from those of

Europeans; for turning sharply round to me, he replied, that ‘it was no gammon at all;

New Zealand man,’ said he, ‘say that Mr. Marsden’s crackee crackee (preaching) of a

Sunday, is all gammon.’ ‘No, no,’ I rejoined, ‘that is not gammon, that is miti’ (good).

‘Well then,’ retorted the tenacious reasoner, ‘if your crackee crackee is no gammon,

our taboo taboo is no gammon;’ and thus he brought the matter to a conclusion;

allowing us to prize our own system, and himself and his countrymen to venerate

theirs. But, I must indulge the hope, that a short time may convince them of their

error. (Nicholas 1817: I: 274–5)

While Nicholas dismissed M�aori tapu as gammon, Tui retorted that many M�aoritook the same view of Marsden’s preaching. If preaching was good for Europeans,Tui argued, tapu was good for M�aori, and he ended the discussion, refusing toentertain Nicholas’s assertion of cosmological superiority.

Rather than arguing against tapu, other Europeans like John Bidwill, whotravelled around New Zealand in the 1830s, defied it, straining their relationshipswith their M�aori companions:

I was much annoyed, and at the same time amused, at this place by the superstitions of

the natives. [When] it began to rain again, and I took up a log and threw it under a

projecting rock, where I saw an old mat and some sticks and rubbish; immediately

they set up a terrible outcry that the place was taboo because somebody had died

there. I said I did not care; but they gave me to understand that if I persisted, they




should all die. I assured them that if they did not make the fire, nor come near it,

certainly nothing could harm them, and as for myself I was very willing to run the risk.

At last they gave in, seeing I was determined to have my own way. (Bidwill 1841: 60)

While some Europeans joined M�aori communities, taking partners and havingchildren and being incorporated in particular kin groups as friends and allies, theywere often disciplined by their peers for ‘going native’. Thomas Kendall, for exam-ple, a missionary who made a close study of the M�aori language, forged a closerelation with a tohunga or priestly expert and had an affair with his daughter, sent aseries of letters to the Church Missionary Society trying to explain the profundityof M�aori cosmological ideas, accompanied by carvings illustrating his arguments.In his Grammar he recorded a plaintive exchange – Teacher: ‘Ka maoritia tepakeha? (Can a European become M�aori?)’ – Student: ‘Ko wai hoki au ka kite?’(Who am I to say?) (Kendall and Lee 1820: 102). Appalled by Kendall’s hereticalviews, Samuel Marsden, the leader of the New Zealand mission, wrote to theSociety: ‘His mind has been greatly polluted by studying the abominations of theHeathens, and his ideas are very heathenish’ (Binney 1968: 127). Soon afterwards,Kendall was expelled from the mission.

During this period there were many clashes over land, with most earlyEuropeans assuming that this was property to be bought and sold, while M�aori,certainly for a time, took it for granted that gifts or tuku of land created an alliancewith the recipient, binding them and their descendants to occupy the place andmaintain an active relationship with the original occupants, or lose their use rights.Even after some M�aori began to exchange some land in hoko (‘barter’) transac-tions, tuku exchanges continued. As Hone Heke, one of the signatories of Te Tiriti,wrote in 1844 to Gilbert Mair, who had sold land that Heke had given him toanother European:

Friend, your action is wrong [he], and I urge you to correct [tika] it. We gave [tuku]

you the land, but now you have called a strange European to occupy it, this is not

right. (Heke 1844)

The idea that land is an ancestral taonga (treasure) has proved resilient, persistinginto the present. InM�aori,whenuameans both land and placenta, and after birth, theplacenta was (and still may be) buried in the child’s birthplace. The link betweenpeople and their ancestral land is expressed in the phrase ‘t �angata whenua’ – at once‘land people’ and ‘birth people’ (an indigenous conception of indigeneity24).

Such was the strength of this connection that a rangatira might describe the landas his or her own body. In 1850, for instance, a number of Taranaki rangatirawrote to Sir Donald McLean, protesting at the Government’s attempt to claimlands that had been released (tuku) to European settlers:

This land was given to you for cultivation, and you should assent to that agreement,

and not listen to what another says. I myself have the say for my land, and it is right to

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say that my land is my own. It is not as if you can divide up my stomach, that is, the

middle of the land.25

When Governor Gore Brown, determined to uphold the sovereignty of theCrown and British conceptions of land tenure, ignored similar protests from aleading rangatira, Wiremu Kingi, and purchased the district of Waitara inTaranaki from a dissident chief, and the Executive Council resolved that the mili-tary forces ‘shall . . . keep possession, by force if necessary, of the said land, so as toprevent the occupation of, or any act of trespass upon it by any natives’ (Wells1878: 187), this provocative gesture sparked off the Land Wars.

Shortly afterwards the Governor, concerned about the fighting in Taranaki andthe growing influence of the M�aori King, convened the Kohimarama Conference inAuckland to try and persuade as many rangatira as possible to remain loyal toQueen Victoria. In his opening speech, he congratulated the rangatira on havinggiven up many of their ancestral practices to adopt enlightened ways of being (ng �atikanga o te m �aramatanga, literally, ‘the ways of light’):

Cannibalism has been exchanged for Christianity; Slavery has been abolished; War

has become more rare; Prisoners taken in war are not slain; European habits are

gradually replacing those of your ancestors of which all Christians are necessarily

ashamed.

The old have reason to be thankful that their sunset is brighter than their dawn, and

the young may be grateful that their life did not begin until the darkness of the

heathen night had been dispelled by that light which is the glory of all civilized

Nations. (Gore-Brown, original translation, Kohimarama Conference 1860: 13)

Gore-Brown also argued that since the differences between the M�aori andEnglish languages were a major source of difficulty, leading to strife and confusion,the chiefs should ensure that their children learned English. Paora Tuhaere, aleading local rangatira, disagreed, proposing instead that the Governor shouldallow (tuku) the chiefs to join his Council, so that matters such as murder orland disputes could be handled by joint discussion and decision:

The Governor says that there is a difference of language. In my opinion this does not

matter, inasmuch as there are plenty of European friends who would make matters

clear to us, as they know our language. I am desirous that the minds [whakaaro] of the

Europeans and the Maories should be brought into unison with each other. Then if a

Maori killed another Maori his crime would be tried and adjudicated on by the

understandings of both Pakeha and Maori.

And if one man should interfere with the land of another, then let the same council try

him. When a woman has been violated, let the same course obtain. Murders and

‘Makutu’ (sorcery) would come before the same tribunal, because there would then




be but one law for both Pakehas and Maories, and the understandings of both people

would be exercised in the council. (Kohimarama Conference 1860: 42)

Similarly, during the same debate Makarini Te Uhiniko contested aGovernment policy of denying land rights to ‘half-castes’ (using a transliteration– ‘h �awhe-k �ahe’ – for the term, because there was no parallel in M�aori), offering arelational solution. Since in relation to their M�aori kinfolk they were M�aori, heargued, these people should enjoy the same rights to land as others through theirM�aori taha or ‘side’ (for in te ao m �aori, children inherited use rights from bothparents):

Now about the ‘half-castes,’ they are in the middle between Maori and Pakeha. They

are like a bird on a sand-bank: the tide flows over it and he [or she, since gender is not

marked in Maori pronouns] is obliged to take wing. Let us put this matter right,

because they have a side [taha] that links to us, the Maori; let us show our regard

for the side that turns towards us. Let us show him (or her) a piece of land from their

mother’s ancestors, lest someone else take it and their descendants are left wandering

aimlessly. (Kohimarama Conference 1860: 9–10)

Once again, the rangatira at Kohimarama were eager to try to handle differentunderstandings by co-existence. The Governor had already told them, however,that they must be ‘faithful children’ (tamariki piri pono) to the Queen, and thatthere could be only one head for her people in New Zealand (under the law ofidentity, one monarch, one nation). While some rangatira assented to this propos-ition, most did not, upholding their own mana (ancestral authority and power).Renata Tamakihikurangi, for instance, a rangatira from Hawke’s Bay, wrote abrilliant series of letters in M�aori to the local Superintendent, defending WiremuKingi, the ‘rebel’ leader in Taranaki:

You say, ‘That man must let down his bristles, and pay obeisance to his Sovereign the

Queen.’ Sir, what then is the Maori doing? For years he has been listening to that

teaching of the Queen’s. But the Governor has made it all go wrong. Perhaps you

think that he is not a man, that you say he should not raise his bristles when his land is

taken from him? If your land were taken by a Maori, would your bristles not rise?

Give him back his land, and then we will see if his bristles are still sticking up.

[And when you speak of the King], Sir, cease to cite this as a cause of quarrelling. For

behold, the Treaty of Waitangi has been broken. It was said that the Treaty was to

protect the Maoris from foreign invasion. But those bad nations never came to attack

us; the blow fell from you, the nation who made that same Treaty. Sir, it is you alone

who have broken your numerous promises. (Caselberg 1975: 91–4)

During the Land Wars, the fighting was characterized by shifting networks ofenmity and alliance. Some Europeans (usually those who spoke M�aori and had

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close relations with M�aori people) argued in support of M�aori grievances, althoughthey were always in a minority.26 Some M�aori kin groups held fast to theircovenant with the Queen, fighting with the Crown against former enemies;others fought against the Crown; while still others split, with some members fight-ing with and others against the European forces at different times.

As Jamie Belich (1986) has argued, rather than military conquest, the conflictended in a stalemate. After some years, unable to maintain a full-time militarypresence to combat the imperial and colonial troops (who greatly outnumberedthem), those M�aori who had resisted the Crown withdrew, and more than threemillion acres of land were confiscated by the settler government, from ‘friendly’ aswell as ‘hostile’ kin groups. Prior to the confiscation of the Tainui territories, theM�aori King T�awhiao composed a chant of longing for his ancestral land:

I look down on the valley of Waikato

As though to hold it in the hollow of my hand . . .

See how it burst through

The full bosoms of Maungatautari and Mangakawa,

Hills of my inheritance:

The river of life, each curve

More beautiful than the last,

Across the smooth belly of Kirikiriroa,

Its gardens bursting with the fullness of good things,

Towards the meeting place at Ngaruawahia

There on the fertile mound I would rest my head

And look through the thighs of Taupiri.

There at the place of all creation

Let the King come forth. (Muru-Lanning 2010: 45)

Afterwards, when the Native Land Court was established and survey teams andbuyers were sent out across the country, the loss of land through sale becamealmost irresistible, as innumerable reports to the Waitangi Tribunal have attested.The land was divided into blocks with boundaries and lists of owners, survey costswere awarded against them, the shares of individuals were sold, and millions moreacres passed out of M�aori hands.

A very long tale could also be told about the way that, over time, the kinshipnetworks were cut up into bounded units, their members treated as autonomousindividuals voting for management boards, registering their interests in landblocks, and often living at a distance from their ancestral territories. The relationalexpectation that in order to retain use rights active occupation must be upheld wasannulled by legislation and, as a result, land claims became so fragmented thatthey were almost impossible to manage for practical purposes, and much of theland lay idle.

As the links between people and land became attenuated, ancestral land wasincreasingly treated as private property and sold, or aggregated under the control




of influential individuals and families. This still happens on a daily basis, althoughthe idea of land as an ancestral gift is also powerfully asserted, leading to bitter riftswithin wh �anau (extended families) and hap �u (roughly, sub-tribes). Most recently,iwi (roughly, tribes) have been treated as corporate units for the purposes of Treatysettlements, in accord with the protocols of global capitalism. In the process, therelational checks and balances and values that encourage kin group leaders todistribute and share wealth rather than to accumulate it are sometimes eroded,leading to inequities and bitter internal divisions as cash and property are handedover to settle Treaty grievances (Cheater and Hopa 1997; Poata-Smith 2004; Muru-Lanning 2010). Some M�aori kin groups handle these tensions more creatively thanothers, but in every case, the clashes between kin-based expectations and thosecharacteristic of capitalism and democracy are ongoing and profound.

It is not just legal protocols, then, that assert the sovereignty of the Crown inNew Zealand, even when this is being most vehemently challenged. It is expressedin the way that ‘M�aori’ are legislatively defined and counted; ‘M�aori land’ is par-titioned out into blocks and shares held by individuals; previously dynamic kingroups are transformed into bounded entities with lists of members, enumerated incensuses; grievances are calculated in terms of cash and property; and argumentsfor a greater say in the way the country is run are deflected. While ideas of racialand cultural superiority have been strongly contested in New Zealand and hier-archical relationships between M�aori and European ‘cultures’ have been re-ima-gined as an equality (for example, in the idea of a ‘bi-cultural’ nation), this is stillwithin a singular sovereignty – two cultures, one law, one power in Parliament.Given the inequality built into such dualisms, it is not surprising that the claim that‘we are all New Zealanders’ stands alongside arrays of statistics showing starkinequalities in health, wealth, life expectancy and educational outcomes betweenM�aori and other citizens, and the criminalization and incarceration of many M�aori(especially young M�aori men), with extremely high rates of apprehension, charging,sentencing and imprisonment.

Nor is it just a matter of raw assertions of power by a non-M�aori majority inNew Zealand, however. The flexibility and open-endedness of relational onto-logical assumptions have also fostered experimentation and rapid adaptation(the very antithesis of fossilized ‘tradition’) since first European arrival, posingquestions about whether and how to hold onto and adapt tikanga M �aori (‘right’ways of being M�aori), while exploring the wider world and forging relations withthose who live differently. Many M�aori now live in other countries, and relativelyfew now speak te reo, the M�aori language; they play rugby and netball, have PlayStations and cellphones, practise various professions, run successful businesses,write novels and make films enjoyed around the world, and sing opera on theworld stage. Some have abandoned tikanga or never knew these ways of being,while others adopt some tikanga later in life. In many present-day situations, forinstance on marae, ancestral conceptions continue to shape behaviour, while con-tinuously adapting to other styles of living. Even when Te Tiriti was signed, the factthat some land transactions were described as hoko, exchanges outside the ancestral

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realm, shows that deep ideas were already changing. And this process of onto-logical reflexivity and transformation continues. During recent Treaty negotiationswith the Crown, for example, the Waikato River, formerly described as tupuna awa(‘river ancestor’) by Tainui elders, was spoken of as awa tupuna (‘ancestral river’)by tribal leaders, thus changing its relation with Tainui people (Muru-Lanning2010). This, one might think, is the predicament of Te Ao M�aori – that in theceaseless negotiation and questing of those tracing from the founding ancestors,ancestral conceptions – tapu, mana, utu, hau and the like – might be lost, or betransformed into entitative parodies of themselves, frozen into dogma.

These risks are real, which is no doubt why, inspired by similar or more radicalrisks in Amazonia, Viveiros de Castro has called for the ‘ontological self-determi-nation of the world’s peoples’ (2003). In Te Ao M�aori, however, if time is a spiral,spinning in and out from the source, this is not a case of the ‘eternal return’, asMircea Eliade would have it, in which the past is endlessly recapitulated (seeSahlins 1983: 528). A relational mode of being remains generative and dynamic,if marginalized in New Zealand, and effective relationships continue to be forged,mind-hearts changed, mana upheld and domination disrupted. For many M�aori,unequal power relations with the Crown remain an affront, as illustrated by chal-lenges such as the 1975 Land March, the 1978 occupation of Bastion Point, the2004 Hikoi in protest against the Foreshore and Seabed Bill, and the 2005 T �uhoewelcome to the Waitangi Tribunal, when naked warriors on horseback confrontedTribunal members, shots were fired and a New Zealand flag burned on the speak-ing ground.

Yet, as noted earlier, relational assumptions are not alien to Western traditions,and perceived resonances between justice and tika, honour and mana, truth andpono (all relational concepts) have allowed influential alliances to be forgedbetween leading lawyers, politicians and scholars, and M�aori elders and activists,for example. At the same time, in everyday life, the resilience and distinctiveness ofM�aori conceptions is often asserted. Ancestral mana may be marked by wearingmoko or tattoo, the performance of haka or chants of challenge (and teaching theAll Blacks, the national rugby team, to perform them properly), the kapa haka orperforming arts festivals with their thousands of spectators, speaking M�aori orcherishing a taonga (ancestral treasure), such that these are everyday aspects oflife in contemporary New Zealand. P �owhiri (rituals of welcome) are held for dis-tinguished visitors; and the Treaty settlements are transferring significant capital,property and land to M�aori kin groups.

Marae (ceremonial centres) are built and refurbished, and urban marae estab-lished in which the idiom of whakapapa (which has never been limited by ‘blood’but is extendable by adoption, bond friendship and alliance) is applied to thosewho run the marae and join together as t �angata whenua (Rosenblatt 2011).Cosmological chants and tribal stories are passed on in w �ananga (‘schools of learn-ing’) or in the carved houses on many marae, which embody ancestors, although inways that are continually changing. At the University of Auckland marae,for example, built in 1987, the carvings and painted rafters in the meeting-house




re-enact the creation of the cosmos, featuring Rangi and Papa (the sky and earth)and their offspring, Tu, T�awhiri, Rongo and the others. The chant quoted at thebeginning of this paper was included in the waiata (song) performed by M�aoristudents at its opening, and still often chanted today.

As a result of the claim to the Waitangi Tribunal for a share of national broad-casting networks, too, M�aori radio stations and a M�aori TV channel(often described as providing the best public television in New Zealand) havebeen established. Kohanga reo or ‘language nests’ bring pre-school children andtheir parents together with native speakers of M�aori so that they can learn the lan-guage, and these are being emulated by other indigenous groups around the world.The M�aori Party, formed in an effort to advance M�aori interests while promotingthe M�aori language and values, holds the balance of power with other minorityparties in a coalition government. Programmes such as ‘Wh�anau Ora’ (Wellbeingfor Families), promoted by the M�aori Party and supported by the Government,seek to overcome the fragmentation of government agencies by introducing rela-tional strategies into the state’s own operations while revitalizing kin networks.Ancestral M�aori presuppositions and the practices they generate continue to shapelife in New Zealand and elsewhere in a myriad of ways, some more visible thanothers.

To some extent, this resilience is supported by alliances with other indigenousgroups around the world, and shifts in wider ways of being. In New Zealand aselsewhere, life itself is moving in patterns that challenge an atomistic ontology andits illusions – that nation-states are bounded, that corporations are impersonal,that the world is a resource, that markets operate apart from people. Global flowsof students, workers and capital engender trans-national and trans-cultural ways ofliving. Virtual networks of communication (the internet, digital TV, Skype andsites like Facebook with their photographs and messages) sprawl across theworld, crossing national borders, blurring time-space distinctions. Debates aboutclimate change and the loss of biodiversity draw attention to the interconnection ofall forms of life, including people, plants and animals and the planet, while fluc-tuations in the global financial system erode confidence in the invisible hand of themarket and the virtuosity of cost-calculating, autonomous individuals. Nation-states seem poorly organized to take effective action in these spheres, and thedisciplines (knowledge split into basic particulars – subjects, departments, institutesand faculties)27 struggle to comprehend the complex dynamics of relationalexchanges. As we have seen, fundamental presuppositions tend to be enduring,partly because they are often taken for granted, becoming entrenched in ways ofthinking, institutions, speech and modes of behaviour. It may be, however, that theworlds we inhabit are increasingly relational in character, and that modernist stylesand the types of understanding they engender are not adaptive for many purposes.

As a number of theorists have pointed out, during encounters between peoplewho live differently, taken-for-granted assumptions may come to light and bequestioned.28 Different kinds of encounters become possible, and new kinds ofquestions, in a spiral of critical, searching exchanges. In the Waitangi Tribunal

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and the claims settlement process, for instance, the attempt to restore some balanceto relationships between M�aori and other New Zealanders repeatedly generatescontrasts between different ontological modes. As soon as fish are turned intoquota, for instance, to be bought and sold on the market, or broadcasting frequen-cies are auctioned, or knowledge becomes intellectual property and waterways aremetered for hydro-electric power, irrigation and water supplies for towns and cities,these transformations are contested by M�aori kin groups before the Tribunal, andother ways of negotiating these relationships are proposed.

At the same time, there are contrary trends. The Crown’s dominance is beingconsolidated, with M�aori playing prominent roles as ministers of the Crown, lead-ing bureaucrats and consultants to Government. Neo-liberal doctrines are resur-gent, provoking sharp debates within M�aori kin groups about the distribution ofthe resources released in Treaty settlements, with the corporate models adopted bysome iwi (tribal) authorities generating a bitter sense of dispossession amongimpoverished kinfolk. High rates of incarceration among M�aori (especiallyyoung M�aori) provide a satirical counterpoint to rhetoric based on the pursuitof personal freedom. In New Zealand as elsewhere, shifts towards an atomisticway of being are associated with fragmentation in social networks, soaring inequal-ities between rich and poor, market fluctuations caused by greed and lack of integ-rity, and the degradation of rivers, lakes, land and associated ecosystems – all signsof mate, dysfunction and disorder.

Who knows how these struggles will play out? It is possible, however, thatcutting-edge science, technologies and ideas (many of which are also relational incharacter) might articulate with innovative modes of exchange between people andthe wider world in a quest for improved sustainability, productivity and ora (pros-perity and well-being). Collaborative styles of practice and genuinely shared pro-jects are perhaps most likely to open up innovative forms of thought andexperience. As Henare et al. suggest, ‘[we] might seize on these engagements asopportunities from which novel theoretical understandings can emerge’ (Henareet al. 2007: 1) – and perhaps, new ways of living. In this way, Mohi Tawhai’sprescient warning during the 1840 debates on the Treaty of Waitangi may finallybe disproven:

Let the tongue of every one be free to speak; but what of it? what will be the end? our

sayings will sink to the bottom like a stone, but your sayings will float light, like the

wood of the whau-tree, and always remain to be seen; am I telling lies? (Shortland

1845: 10)

Acknowledgements

This paper arises out of a research project, ‘Te Ao Tawhito’, funded by the Marsden Fund ofthe Royal Society of New Zealand, with colleagues in the Department of M�aori Studies at

the University of Auckland. I’d like to express my gratitude to my daughter Amiria Salmondfor theoretical inspiration and insightful comments; Hone Sadler for his insights into M�aori




philosophical matters; Jane McRae, Joe Te Rito, Robert Pouwhare and Jeny Curnow for

their work on early M�aori manuscripts; my teachers and mentors Amiria and ErueraStirling, Merimeri Penfold, Patu Hohepa, Hirini Mead, Hugh Kawharu and others; andMelani Anae for stimulating discussions about relational philosophies in Oceania.

Notes

1. Although by referring to some land transactions as hoko (‘barter’), which referred toexchanges without ancestral involvement, Te Tiriti shows that the process of removingtapu (or ancestral presence) from land was already under way.

2. The concept of ‘ao’ in M�aori refers to a dimension of reality, often translated as ‘world’but without the implication of a bounded whole that underpins that term in English. Incontemporary M�aori, Te Ao M�aori is paired with Te Ao P�akeha (roughly, a modernist or

Western way of being); and Te Ao Hou (the new world, contemporary life) with Te AoTawhito (the ancient world, ancestral ways). In early M�aori texts as well as contemporarydiscourse, te ao m�arama (the everyday ‘world of light’) stands in relation to te p �o (the

dark, invisible ancestral realm) as paired dimensions of reality, with ritual mediating therelations between them – see also note 15.

3. For an insightful reflection on similar kinds of entanglements between native Americans

and government agencies, see Noble (2007).4. As Marilyn Strathern notes, a similar image is also used by cognitive scientists to refer to

thought processes (Strathern 1995: 21).5. The pae in M�aori is not a spatial location but exists in relational space-time

and is inherently dynamic and processual. The concept of the pae points to the possibil-ity of conceptualizing thresholds in relational networks that are not bound to spacevs. time or subject vs. object dichotomies, and deal with becoming and emergence with-

out relying on concepts such as ‘event’ (which, as Amiria Salmond notes, was astutelycritiqued in Strathern 1990). For a recent discussion of the ‘border-space’ see Radu(2010).

6. Pyyhtinen and Tamminen’s reading of Foucault and Latour articulates something notunlike M�aori cosmo-networks. According to these authors, both theorists ‘view humansas compounds of relations’ (Pyyhtinen and Tamminen 2011: 137). They argue that forFoucault, every form is a nexus of relations among forces; while for Latour, entities

emerge only when forces come together, and are transformed as they enter new relations.In addition: ‘Latour suggests that the actions of humans depend on . . . humans’ ‘‘allies’’,so to speak: humans owe their agentic efficacy and capabilities to the larger assemblage of

elements that they are part of’ (2011: 140). This sounds very like M�aori cosmo-networks.7. See ‘The Treaty and the Gift’ (Henare 2005: 201–6).8. See also Hart (2007), where he adds: ‘The system of prestations survives in our societies –

in weddings and at Christmas, in friendly societies and more bureaucratic forms of insur-ance, even in wage contracts and the welfare state’.

9. By contrast with tuku transactions, which were tapu because they dealt with the exchange

of ancestral taonga [treasures] such as land, heirlooms and people (e.g. offspring ‘gifted’ inadoption or exchanged in marriage), hoko exchanges were noa, or devoid of ancestralpresence. The use of the term hoko in Te Tiriti to refer to some land transactions is alreadya sign of deep change in attitudes to land by 1840. (For a discussion of the distinctions

between tuku and hoko, see Anne Salmond, submission to Waitangi on tuku whenua,Margaret Mutu, submission on tuku whenua, Muriwhenua Land Claim 1992).

Salmond 135



10. The kai hau kai ceremony of ancestral times – literally ‘eating the hau as food’ – restored

the hau ora of those who had been insulted or attacked by consuming the hau of anenemy leader. M�aori ‘cannibalism’ can only be understood in this context; and discus-sions of M�aori anthropophagy that fail to use M�aori sources (for instance, Obeyesekere

2005) are fatally flawed.11. Thanks to Amiria Salmond for this insight.12. Here, I am not speaking of these beings as ‘gods’. Tu, T�ane, Rongo and so on are better

described as ancestral forces that generate and animate particular realms of reality.

Much time has been wasted (for instance, in the debate between Sahlins andObeyesekere over the death of Captain Cook) because the Polynesian term atua (orakua in Hawai’i) has been translated as ‘god’ (by myself, included).

Speaking of these beings as ‘gods’ shifts M�aori or Hawai’ian cosmology into the realmof the fabulous – myth, legend or religion. Before the arrival of Europeans, however, theexistence of such beings was taken for granted and people’s relations with them were

pragmatic, and based on reciprocal exchange. Their place in Polynesian ontologies isunlike that of ‘God’ or ‘gods’ in modernist conceptions, and perhaps closer to thesources of life in contemporary science.

13. As Marilyn Strathern (2011: 94) has argued of Hagen in the New Guinea Highlands and

elsewhere, ‘A person is held by the relation (and it is always a specific relation) of themoment: parties to a relation exist in that relationship to each other’ (although in theM�aori context, one would not readily speak of a ‘partible’ self, since a named person is

forged, rather than fractured, by their descent lines, enmities and alliances).14. Strathern makes a similar point when she observes: ‘it is over and again the terms, not

the relation that are regarded as prior, which means that Euro-Americans and all they

recruit to this stance continue to live in [a] world of things with preexisting attributes’(Strathern 2011: 100).

15. For accounts of similar ontological styles, see for instance a number of papers in

Clammer et al. (2004) and Anae’s account of ‘teu le va’ (taking care of the relation)and the relational self in Samoa (Anae 2010: 12–14).

16. See also Quine: ‘We talk so inveterately of objects that to say we do seems almost to saynothing at all, for how else is there to talk? . . . It is hard to say how else there is to talk,

not because our objectifying pattern is an invariable trait of human nature, but becausewe are bound to adapt any alien pattern to our own in the very process of understandingor translating the alien sentences’ (Quine 1969: 1).

17. Termed by Ingold a ‘mono-ontology’ (Ingold in Clammer et al. 2004: 35–6).18. Viveiros de Castro draws a similar contrast between an ‘objectivist folk epistemology’

and Amazonian assumptions, although he speaks of ‘substances’ rather than ‘entities’:

‘The traditional problem in the West is how to connect and universalise: individualsubstances are given, while relations have to be made. The Amerindian problem ishow to separate and particularise: relations are given, while substances must be

defined’ (Viveiros de Castro 2004: 476). When these two very different types of‘mono-ontology’ are confused with each other, a fundamental interpretive problemarises. Structuralist analyses of Polynesian ontologies, for example, often give a mis-leading impression of stasis, essentialism and mythic ‘replication’, precisely because a

relational cosmos, with its open-ended networks and continuous generation of new lifeforms, is being analysed in ‘entitative’ style. As Schrempp points out, however, Levi-Strauss noticed the ‘evolutionary’ quality of M�aori cosmogony (Schrempp 1992: 49),




while still privileging stasis as a precondition for intelligibility in ordering the world

(1992: 35).19. While both entitative and relational ontological styles have binary expressions, these are

fundamentally different in kind. In an entitative style, binaries are characterized by

mutual exclusion and sharp boundaries (i.e. binary oppositions), whereas in the rela-tional style, the pairs split out from an original whole are still fundamentally linked inrelations across a liminal zone – Rangi and Papa; sky father and earth mother; Te Aoand Te P �o; male and female; light and dark; tapu and noa, and so on (i.e. complemen-

tary dualisms). In Te Ao M�aori, the structure of the cosmos itself reflects this pattern,with Te Ao and Te Po mediated by Te Kore, the ‘seedbed of the cosmos’ which containsthe potentiality for all forms of life, from which new life forms are continuously gener-

ated. As Evens notes, in the relational style, thresholds and the exchanges across themare vital.

20. Here it is worth remembering a caution from the historian Jon Wallach Scott, who

points out that the notion of tradition may serve as a ‘fantasy echo’, where ‘theadvent of modernity brings the ‘‘loss’’ of traditional society. In fact, the qualities saidto belong to traditional society only come into existence with the emergence of mod-ernity; they are its constitutive underside’ (Scott 2001: 289). While this is an astute

critique of many imaginary Western accounts of indigenous lives, however – Tahiti asan ‘island of love’, or Polynesian chiefdoms ruled by ‘divine kings’, or indigenouspeoples as mystical lovers of nature – it would be yet another self-serving Western

myth to conclude that these people had no independent, distinctive ways of being(in the past and now) worthy of serious scholarly inquiry.

21. See Mol (2011: 114) for insights into how different modes may ‘non-coherently

co-exist . . .They do not need a shared conceptual apparatus in order to be combined.’Different ontological styles can be brought into engagement in practice; much as PaoraTuhaere suggested to Governor Gore Brown that M�aori and European understandings

could combine in a shared Council, without merging.22. As Strathern remarks: ‘Such a relationship [creates] a universe of relations that turn on

its enactment. In occupying different positions, then, a person switches not individualviewpoints but relationships’ (Strathern 2011: 94). This also applied in early contact

times, when the experts in the whare w �ananga of different kin groups taught varyingaccounts (transformations of the relational schema) of the origins of the cosmos, andpeople were urged to follow the teachings of the group to which they were primarily

affiliated.23. Henare et al. describe this as ‘an ontology of one ontology’ (2007: 10).24. As Merimeri Penfold recently vigorously argued at a M�aori Writers’ workshop, con-

tending that the term ‘M�aori’ was meaningless, since it just meant ‘ordinary’. As a nativespeaker of M�aori, she was correct; although it has to be said that many of the youngerwriters present were puzzled by her passionate defence of the term ‘t �angata whenua’.

25. Te Haeana 1863, Rakorako, Ngamiro, Tikiku, Pakihautai and Arama Karaka inWhareroa to Sir Donald McLean, 6 November 1850, MS-Papers-0032-0674F-03.

26. For instance, William Martin, the first Chief Justice of New Zealand, who wrote severalpamphlets arguing the injustice of the Land Wars.

27. For comparative reflections upon European and M�aori ways of talking about know-ledge, see Salmond (1983, 1985).

28. For example, a series of papers in recent issues of Anthropological Theory.

Salmond 137



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Anne Salmond is a Distinguished Professor in M�aori Studies and Anthropology atthe University of Auckland, and the author of award-winning books and manyarticles on M�aori life and early contacts between Europeans and islanders inPolynesia. She is a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy; ForeignAssociate of the National Academy of Sciences; Fellow of the Royal Society ofNew Zealand; Fellow of the NZ Academy of the Humanities; a Dame Commanderof the British Empire; and was recently honoured with a Prime Minister’s Awardfor Literary Achievement. She has recently published a book on William Bligh inthe South Pacific.

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Ontological Quarrels: Indigeneity, Exclusion and Citizenship in a Relational World

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