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Maori and the State: Crown-Māori relations in New Zealand/Aotearoa, 1950-2000

Education and Autonomy

Education and Autonomy

While various findings of the review of the New Zealand Maori Council system struck some chord with most interested parties, the key issues concerning an appropriate institutional relationship at national level between Maori and the Crown remained unaddressed. Questions about ways of securing Maori autonomy continued, however, and they were posed at an increasing number and range of sites of encounter. One key site was education, given its profound significance in reproducing cultural thinking and behaviour. There had, of course, been successful autonomist initiatives in the 1980s, but the momentum had slowed, and Crown assessments tended to be made in an atmosphere of pakeha concern about the ramifications of ‘separatism’.

In the early 1990s, to take one example, proponents of whare wananga, or places of higher indigenous learning, had been expressing frustration at the dilemma they faced. In a reprise of many past situations in Crown–Maori relations, whare wananga needed to access state funding, at least for seeding purposes, given the marginalised socio-economic position of many of their potential constituents. Their promoters knew, however, that government funding meant in practice that their ‘relative autonomy [would be] severely curbed’. Whare wananga might even, as a result of accountability agreements, find themselves in danger of serving ‘as agents of the Crown [and] assist[ing] in the maintenance and enhancement of the Crown’s domination’. For as ‘the eels within the hinaki [trap] remind us, the hand that feeds is the hand that rules’. Remnants (or, in some arguments, the dominance) of an ‘underlying agenda of assimilation’ within the state complicated matters further. The challenge was to find ways of gaining assistance that would undermine the Crown’s ability to control or appropriate sites of potential or actual autonomy.

A measure of the intensity of such struggles in education at large can be gauged by the Maori Education Commission’s call in 1999 for autonomy for Maori in the education system. The commission had resulted from the National–New Zealand First Coalition Agreement in 1996, which included establishing a body ‘topage 271 monitor progress in Maori education and design initiatives to graft on to mainstream departments’. Instead, the commission ended up not only suggesting ‘more Māori control and authority’, but that ‘the time for a national, autonomous, separately funded Māori education entity/ies had arrived’.

It was aware that the odds were against such a development, partly because of government disinclination but also because of entrenched reluctance on the part of the bureaucrats who advised it to relinquish existing controls over the nation’s educational establishments. The ‘image that the Ministry of Education presents’, the authors of the commission’s fourth report stated, ‘places itself at the centre of policy development, funding allocation and decision making while Māori educators, students and whānau remain at the periphery. Such a view is at odds with the results of our consultations and review of the literature on the topic in which Māori have expressed a strong desire for more Māori autonomy, authority and control at all levels of the education process including policy development and funding’. As a beginning, the commission recommended, the government should support autonomous Maori control of kura kaupapa Maori. It also explored proposals for an independent national Maori Education Authority, which many Maori supported, though it noted a clear preference of various groups in tribal areas for ‘local autonomy rather than an overarching structure’. But both the concept of a national authority, and autonomist policy suggestions in other areas of Maori educational concern, continued to meet resistance from the Crown.23

Quite apart from the state’s lack of interest in franchising or funding any body which might actually or potentially rival its monopoly of control in areas traditionally subjected to ‘public good’ imperatives, Crown-funded organisations which questioned state policies or directives could well find their funding drying up. When organisers of a proposed official tertiary-level whare wananga announced that they would be operating autonomously from control by the Crown, the government reacted swiftly to point out their mistake. The Waitangi Tribunal itself faced not-so-veiled threats of curtailment of its powers (or even its existence) if it made mandatory orders for the return of land which potentially violated the broad relativities consequent upon the ‘Treaty settlement envelope’. There were many reminders that Crown sovereignty was supreme and indivisible – although under post-MMP coalition governments, MPs from minority parties played a greater role in official decision-making and this held out some hope of future concessions to rangatiratanga.

23 McCarthy, ‘He Hinaki’, pp 86–7, p 92 (for ‘underlying agenda’ quote), pp 92–3 (for ‘agents of the Crown’ quote), p 93 (for ‘relative autonomy’ and ‘the eels within’ quote); New Zealand First and the New Zealand National Party, ‘The Coalition Agreement. Policy Area: Education’, 10 Dec 1996, http://executive.govt.nz/96-99/coalition/educ.htm [accessed June 2008] (for ‘to monitor progress’ quote); Maori Education Commission, Report Four: To the Minister of Māori Affairs, Wellington, 1999, p 14 (for ‘more Māori control’, ‘the time for’ and ‘local autonomy’ quotes), p 17 (for ‘image that the Ministry’ quote); Rivers, Janet, ‘Autonomy will make kura a viable option’, New Zealand Education Review, 18 June 1999.