One of the largest rallies in years took place in Wellington, New Zealand’s capital, Nov. 19. It was widely reported in media around the world as a protest for Maori rights.
The rally of up to 40,000 was organized by the Maori Party, a bourgeois opposition party with six seats in the New Zealand Parliament. It was supported by other opposition parties and promoted by the major media. Many participants were Maori, who came to assert pride in their identity and culture and their willingness to defend what has been won over decades of struggle.
The organizers’ goals, however, had nothing to do with advancing the interests of Maori and of working people.
Maori are the indigenous people of New Zealand, who make up 17% of the population. While claiming it speaks as the voice of all Maori, the Maori Party is based on, and seeks to advance, the class interests of a layer of capitalists and middle-class professionals.
The catalyst for the protest was the Treaty Principles Bill recently presented by ACT, a libertarian party that is part of the National Party-led coalition government that replaced Labour in office last year. ACT’s bill seeks to redefine how the Treaty of Waitangi is interpreted in law today. The Maori Party says Parliament has no right to discuss it.
The Treaty of Waitangi was signed between colonial representatives of the British government and a number of Maori chiefs in 1840, as part of London’s conquest and bloody colonization of New Zealand. It gave recognition to Maori, who were the majority at the time. But with the establishment of capitalist rule, Maori land was seized and Maori language and culture suppressed. Courts and governments ruled the treaty had no status in law.
Maori fought to resist this. As they became a large component of the working class following World War II, these struggles gained strength, and became intertwined with union fights. They were reinforced by the Black-led fight that overturned Jim Crow segregation in the U.S. and the revolutionary struggle that brought down the apartheid regime in South Africa.
Over the past six decades, through marches, land occupations, union fights and political campaigns, racist discrimination has been pushed back and Maori won major gains.
Since 1975, the government’s Waitangi Tribunal has heard claims from Maori tribal authorities for land, resources and finance as compensation for what was stolen. Tribal corporations now control assets worth 70 billion New Zealand dollars ($40.8 billion). Maori language and culture is widespread throughout the media, the education system and government administration.
Class differentiation among Maoris
Fifty years ago, more than 95% of Maori were wage workers in factories, services or agriculture. While still facing the legacy of discrimination, Maori are found throughout all classes and occupations today.
A register of this shift is that 27% of the seats in the current Parliament are held by Maori, double the percentage of Maori voters, and 35% of the government’s cabinet are of Maori descent.
Many of the gains won by Maori were incorporated into legislation acknowledging their rights under the Treaty of Waitangi. Today, the treaty is incorporated into more than 50 pieces of legislation, affecting many aspects of life. But what the treaty means is not defined by legislation, but by interpretation by the courts.
The current bill before Parliament seeks to change this, but has no chance of becoming law as all other parties have said they will vote against it.
The previous Labour Party government of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern pursued a course that increased the role of regulators and bureaucrats and imposed race-based and woke policies, often using the Treaty of Waitangi as justification.
Ardern’s government became widely disliked by workers and farmers as economic conditions worsened. It went down to a landslide defeat last year. The parties that make up the new government of Prime Minister Christopher Luxon had pledged to reverse many of the woke policies introduced by Ardern and to cut the civil service.
The Maori Party inaccurately portrays many of the attempts to reverse Ardern’s policies as an assault on Maori rights. It demagogically labels the National Party-led government as “fascist” and its policies as committing “genocide.”
But Maori culture and language are alive throughout New Zealand today. There is broad support for Maori rights, and less racism than ever.
The crisis conditions hitting the working class bear down with even greater weight on Maori, and also on Pacific Islanders who have migrated to New Zealand over the past century from Wellington’s colonies and semi-colonies in the Pacific. While living standards for the majority of these layers in the working class are getting worse, the size and wealth of privileged middle-class and professional layers, including among Maori, has expanded.
These class divisions pose more clearly how the road to end racism and the national oppression of Maori is intertwined with the fight by the working class to replace capitalist rule with a government of our own. Through union and other working-class struggles, including fights for Maori rights, working people will come to see the need for our own party to fight for workers power.
The Maori Party, like the other parties in Parliament in New Zealand today, upholds capitalist rule.