Last week, a video went viral of Maori politicians in the New Zealand Parliament performing a silly piece of political theatre. In protest against a proposed bill that would revise the terms of the 184-year-old Treaty of Waitangi, which makes unique allowances for Maori people in exchange for British rule, MPs tore up copies of the bill and did a traditional haka dance in defiance. The politician who proposed the bill, David Seymour of the libertarian ACT party, argued it went against the principle of equality in favour of special group rights. This week, more than 40,000 protestors demonstrated in Wellington against the bill.
The premise of the treaty presumes that New Zealand is a binational state composed of a white Anglo-settler community — which, due to recent waves of mass immigration, has become much more multi-ethnic — and an indigenous Maori community. The Maori are a confederation of various tribes who have to share sovereignty with each other, especially over land rights and political representation.
Some on the very online Right have mocked Maori protests as an odd show of ethnonationalism. There is clearly some truth to this claim. A lot of indigenous rights activism is premised on romantic notions that people like the Maori are noble savages who have a “unique” way of life and relationship with “the land” by dint of their ancestry that ought to be recognised and preserved by the state. As Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, the MP who led the protests, stated in a recent rally: “We are the kingmakers and the sovereign people of this land”. But those on the Right aren’t objecting out of any honest liberal principle. Their opposition is pure hypocrisy: it is simply because it is against their ethno-national group (white Anglos).