Hawhekaihe: Maori Voices on the Position of 'Half-castes' Within Maori Society

Abstract

Racial difference underpinned the existence of the New Zealand colonial state. Frantz Fanon suggests that colonial societies are by nature 'Manichaean', founded on the division of the colonizer and colonized and on 'belonging to or not belonging to a given race, a given species'. Fanon's comment implies that more than just skin colour or cultural difference separates the colonizer and colonized - rather, that the two groups are deemed to be different according to nature. Indeed, assumptions about 'natural' racial divisions were prevalent in the colonial New Zealand press: for example, the British were said to possess an 'innate governing capacity' and 'Imperial genius'. In contrast, newspaper contributors asserted that the inherent character of the Māori lent itself, at times, to violence, mendacity, suspicion, avarice, wastefulness, indolence, barbarism and cunning, although it was possible for the 'innate ferocity of character [of the Māori]...[to] be worn down by contact with our matured civilization'.