| Publication |
2008.
|
| Summary/Abstract |
Multiculturalism has been offered as an answer to the civil
rights claims of a wide variety of ethnic and national minorities
within liberal democratic settler-states. This article adds to
the critiques of the appropriateness of multiculturalism in
answering the self-determination claims of indigenous populations
by investigating biculturalism in Aotearoa/New Zealand.
Indigenous groups continue to demand greater recognition
not only of sui generis claims to land and resources but
also to the acceptance of indigenous philosophies and perspectives
in the management of land and resources. As indigenous
populations have been forced toward the edge of the
state, they have been forced to reassert their cultural values in
order to fundamentally reinvent the relationship between colonizer
and colonized. This "reinvention" of society, coming
from the edges, propelled by indigeneity, is beginning to challenge
the construction of the white settler-state. These challenges
occur in places, not within arbitrary, theoretical space.
They also vary in scale, from the single individual acting on
behalf of her community to vast land claims by indigenous
peoples. This article discusses how the exercise of indigenous
self-determination, observed in specific places, is beginning to
transform Aotearoa/New Zealand society into a bicultural and
binational partnership, altering the meaning of citizenship for
both Ma¯ori and whites.
|