"MĀORILAND" AND MĀORIDOM

The term "Māoriland" is commonly used in reference to the final decades of the nineteenth century and the first two of the twentieth, approximately 1880 to 1910. The term was commonly used to describe New Zealand by Pākehā who saw the potential in what was native to New Zealand, whether the indigenous people, plants or animals. “Māoirland” is writing which captures the essence of New Zealand, and explores the elements that are unique to New Zealand as a country and Māori as a people. Jane Stafford writes that “Māoriland” is “a descriptor enthusiastically taken up locally as a way of distinguishing what made New Zealand unique and consequently marketable among other settler societies within the British Empire” ¹⁰. Writers commonly used indigenous elements as a way of articulating the specifics of life in New Zealand. Stafford and Williams note that “Māoriland” is:

An archaic word with colonial associations, politically suspect…. [which] suggests…a world in which Māori warriors in heroic attitudes and Māori maidens in seductive ones adorned romantic portraits and tourist postcards.¹¹

As the term suggests, the central feature of “Māoriland” writing is the use of Māori sources to provide a sense of authenticity for a New Zealand experience. J.O.C Phillips traces the evolution of the term in the nineteenth century, with specific note to its use in Australia, observing:

[s]ome in New Zealand, especially in the South Island, took offence at this term; but in fact 'Māoriland' had long been in use within New Zealand itself. The word had, however, changed its meaning. When, for example, Judge Maning used it in Old New Zealand [1863], he thought of 'Māoriland' as literally the land of the Māori, i.e. the territory and cutlure [sic] of the Māori. By the end of the century Maning's 'Pākehā-Māori', that intermediary figure whose curious mixture of prestige and dependency reflected the dominion of Māori in the land to which he had come, had passed into history and the land of the Māori had become Māoriland.¹²

The central feature of “Māoriland” as its own discourse of colonial writing was that it sought to make use of Māori history, culture, people and landscapes to present a detailed history and understanding of New Zealand. “While drawing on the conventions of romanticism, this material is also filtered through colonial ethnology to give it an air of authenticity and of ownership” ¹³. “Māoriland” literature sought to present an authentic New Zealand with its own distinct literary canon that was unique to the country.