Identity has always been a contentious issue. People constantly seek to affirm their identity within various peer, social, and cultural groups. Likewise, larger social and ethnic groups often have to reaffirm their identity and sovereignty within state, national, and international structures. One group of people that often find themselves on the defensive in terms of reaffirming their identity, and the inherent rights associated with that identity, are indigenous peoples.
In a recent example from New Zealand involving the Maori indigenous peoples, researcher Ilana Gershon documents how identity and its definition can be manipulated, deconstructed, and reconstructed again. This example provides an excellent window onto one of the continuing struggles of indigenous peoples, and it highlights a struggle that is not unique to New Zealand/Aotearoa.
From 2003 to 2006, the New Zealand parliament explored the hazards of making Maori indigenous identity an explicit basis for legislation in debates between the ruling Labour Party and its allies and the opposing National Party and its allies. As Gershon discusses in
Being Explicit About Culture: Maori, Neoliberalism, and the New Zealand Parliament, bringing cultural identity into the legislative process can have negative repercussions.
Abstract In this article, I explore how people use the culture concept in legislatures to understand the minorities they legislate for and about. I focus on recent debates in the New Zealand parliament over whether the indigenous M?ori are a cultural group or a racial group. A Westminster parliament system encourages these debates, in which political parties argue that M?ori are either cultural or racial but not both. For the ruling Labour Party and its allies, M?ori are cultural; for their opposition, the National Party and its allies, M?ori are a racial group. This division is possible only because of the legislators' neoliberal assumptions about identity categories. To complicate these political divisions, M?ori MPs currently belong to political parties from all parts of the political spectrum, and their effectiveness as culture bearers in a parliamentary context can disrupt the terms of this debate.
The key points to emerge from this research are: 1) Parliaments (and other legislative or governing bodies) are, in part, arenas for contesting definitions. Legislators or politicians determine how to carve up the world through laws that result from debate and political compromise.
2) When a political party frames the need to redress a social inequity (as a result of past colonial events or current global forces, for example), the grounds for how best to understand this social inequity are immediately opened for debate, including the definition of the social or cultural group.
3) In discussing Maori or other indigenous peoples as a legislative object, historical or current injustice competes with racial privilege as potential frames for understanding the context. Precisely because legislative structures promote contestation, when legislators introduce definitions of difference, the definition itself frequently becomes a topic of debate.
4) Once the law has passed, this contestation often recedes into the background. However, it never becomes completely fixed nor does it go away. In North America, for example, the definition of “indigenous” in terms of both people and culture is continually up for debate, as demonstrated in such cases as
Bonnichsen vs. United States (aka, Kennewick Man case) and the definition of “Native American” under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act [NAGPRA]).
5) In New Zealand/Aotearoa, being explicit about culture has affected how parliamentarians address the culture bearers in their midst. This is also true for other legislative or governing bodies where indigenous peoples have gained a presence.
As the case of Maori indigenous peoples in New Zealand/Aoteaora discussed by Ilana Gershon demonstrates, bringing identity into the legislative process can cause the definition of that identity to be called into question. When such a process takes place, the indigenous peoples – whose very identity is being defined – often have little or no say in the construction of that definition. When they do, their voice is often placed within the categories of injustice or racial privilege. This leads to the larger question of whether indigenous people’s identity should be defined, and by whom. Obviously the question will remain the topic of heated debate for many years to come. However, what this article does point out is that defining identity should be approached cautiously, and from the bottom-up. If approached from the top-down, one is likely to lump the definition into pre-existing categories that often continue the colonial process. Approached from the bottom-up, however, indigenous peoples are allowed to define their own identity, preventing it from becoming simply a legislative or colonial object.
References and Further Reading Chadwick, Allen; and Pease, Donald, eds. 2002.
Blood Narrative: Indigenous Identity in American Indian and Maori Literary and Activist Texts.
Duke University Press.
Gershon, Ilana. 2008.
Being Explicit About Culture: Maori, Neoliberalism, and the New Zealand Parliament. American Anthropologist, 110(4):422-431.
Himpele, Jeff. 2008.
Circuits of Culture: Media, Politics, and Indigenous Identity in the Andes. University of Minnesota Press.
Novo, Carmen. 2005
Who Defines Indigenous?: Identities, Development, Intellectuals, And the State in Northern Mexico.
Rutgers University Press.
