Winter Lecture 3 - Never the twain shall meet? Bridging the Indigenous-Immigration research divide Event as iCalendar

Speaker: Professor Tahu Kukutai, National Institute of Demographic and Economic Analysis, University of Waikato

Kotahi te kohao o te ngira e kuhuna ai te miro ma, te miro pango, te miro whero
There is but one eye of the needle through which the white, red and black threads must pass

Nā Kīngi Potatau Te Wherowhero

With a high foreign-born population share (one in four), large diaspora, recent and rapid experience of ethnic diversification, and Indigenous ‘majority minority’, Aotearoa New Zealand is a fascinating context within which to study migration and mobilities.

However in Aotearoa, as in the other colonial settler states, there is a yawning black hole in the intellectual and political discourses that frame immigration research, debates, and policies - that is the virtual absence of Indigenous peoples and perspectives. In so far as immigration and Māori research and policy are treated as two separate spheres of inquiry, it is a case of ‘never the twain shall meet’. This is both curious and counter-productive given the long (and often fraught) historical experience of Māori with migration and migrants, and the contemporary politics of biculturalism and multiculturalism.

In this lecture I focus on the immigration-indigenous divide and reflect on how Māori-migrant relationships might be fruitfully envisioned through a Treaty-based approach which recognises the unique status of Māori as tangata whenua. I interrogate popular concepts in the migration literature such as ‘host’ society, integration and diversity, and suggest alternative ways of thinking about migration through an indigenous lens that acknowledges, rather than obscures, the ongoing significance of settler colonialism.

The Winter Lecture series:

This lecture is the third in a series of six lectures on consecutive Wednesdays - Nation Transformed: the place of migration in 21st century Aotearoa-New Zealand

Contact: Dr Francis Collins or Dr Ward Friesen