Paper Short Abstract:

This paper offers a real time, albeit preliminary ethnography of the attempt and resistance to re-ordering a country. The ACT party, part of the current coalition government is proposing to re-interpret the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, thus eliminating decades of moving towards a postcolonial society. This process is viewed as an example of a global tendency to cancel contracts and policies aimed at righting wrongs, past and present.

Paper Abstract:

This project introduces the method of real time ethnographic diary keeping as events of historical significance are unfolding. The example used is set in Aotearoa New Zealand, whose national contract between Māori chiefs and the British Crown was signed in 1840. The focus will be on analysing de-colonising strategies of a political party attempting to re-interpret and thus re-order the country’s political landscape of a bi-partisan decolonial project. The paper will survey and analyse both political movements and their strategies: the attempt to unwrite Māori progress towards co-governance, and the unfolding resistance movement led by Māori. Both movements are using a mixture of (unspoken and historical) rule breaking and more traditional political tactics.