Anti-Indigenous racism is different: Darell Howard, Adele N. Norris, Juan M. Tauri, ‘Rewriting a violent settler-colonial history: why anti-Māori racism must be distinguished from other forms of racism in Aotearoa New Zealand’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2025 | settler colonial studies blog

Anti-Indigenous racism is different: Darell Howard, Adele N. Norris, Juan M. Tauri, ‘Rewriting a violent settler-colonial history: why anti-Māori racism must be distinguished from other forms of racism in Aotearoa New Zealand’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2025

21Jul25

Abstract: Driven by a United Nations 2017 recommendation to assess New Zealand’s progress to eliminate racial discrimination and the 2019 terrorist attack on Christchurch mosques, the Ministry of Justice along with National Iwi (Indigenous) Chairs forum (NICF) launched the National Action Plan Against Racism (NAPAR) Joint Steering Committee in April 2022. In April 2024, the NICF walked away from NAPAR. Their departure occurred after the newly entered right-wing government advised the official document to limit its focus on colonial racism, institutional racism and specific references to anti-Māori/Indigenous racism. This paper interrogates the embedded egalitarian myth and extensive legislation imposed overtime to distinguish racism, as a broad category, from strategic assaults on Māori/Indigenous sovereignty. We conclude by contextualizing current attempts to diminish focus on the historical specificity of anti-Māori racial oppression demonstrate deliberate state efforts to target Māori upon which Pākehā/white sovereignty is asserted and maintained.

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