Paper short abstract:

In 1945 the New Zealand Crown responded to pressure by Maori to address their socio-economic needs through state institutions which appropriated their organsational forms and energies; Maori utilised these for such purposes but also subverted them in their pursuit of rangatiratanga/autonomy.

Paper long abstract:

From 1945, Maori voices for legal and socio-economic equality with whites/pakeha grew louder. The state was prepared to address this, but for it the corollary for such affirmative action needed to be assimilation. But Maori continued to maintain their own cultural and organisational traditions, worldviews and aspirations - despite the three decades after the War being a time of massive urban migration nad supposed 'detribalisation'. Most troubling to the state (and pakeha) was the Maori quest for the rangatiratanga (roughly, autonomy) promised them by the Crown in Article Two of the founding document of the nation, the Treaty of Waitangi of 1840. The state had always declared that Crown sovereignty was 'indivisible', but had been forced from time to time to make 'concessions'. More of these were instituted at the end of the War, with the Crown providing state institutions (committees of the Maori Welfare Organisation) by which Maori could pursue Maori causes. This appropriating of Maori organisational energies was designed to both divert Maori from autonomist pursuits (recognising that indigeneity remained a force, but doing so in a way which attempted to control and steer it) and to assist assimilation. In turn, Maori sought to make use of these organisations to pursue equality, but also - and more significantly - to reappropriate them and turn their energies into agencies of rangatiratanga. When the Maori Renaissance occurred from the late 1960s onwards, the groundwork had partly been laid by the Maori committee system established by the state and complemented and reappropriated by Maori.