The dominant form of racism that surrounds the world is structured white supremacy. It’s the racism rooted in the fictional right claimed by Europeans to dispossess and enslave non-Europeans.
That specific structure of racism, which was exported and entrenched around the world, arrived on these shores when white men landed here on their boats, armed with a sense of racialised entitlement and the weaponry might to enforce it.
By that time, in 1769, this sense of racialised entitlement had been entrenched in European society, particularly but not exclusively among the monarchy and the upper class.
The European idea of the universe and everything’s place in it had also been framed, for centuries at this point, by the Great Chain of Being which started at the top with the white God in the clouds, followed by archangels, angels, God’s representative on Earth, the Pope, followed by the monarchs, the aristocracy, commoners, and then all of the beings of nature: two-legged animals, four-legged animals, mammals, fish and birds, shellfish, reptiles, plants, minerals, elements, and then demons.
Indigenous people were featured as beings of nature, and sometimes in the realms of demons, as enemies of Christ.
It was generally accepted, as well as explicitly and formally stated in their legal system, that as not-humans, Indigenous peoples had no territorial right that was not extinguished in the presence of Europeans, whose superior rights derived from a belief in their superior intellect and superior way of being.
So, yes, the monarchs carried an idea of innate supremacy that came with entitlements to claim our land. But European commoners also believed in this supremacy, relative to Indigenous peoples. So even where they were oppressed on their homeland, that didn’t stop them from coming here, armed with their own entitlement, based on their relative right to oppress others.
This was not unique — it’s a leaf from the colonial playbook. In the so-called Americas, conquistadors who were poor and landless in their own countries were granted land as a reward for their service. They were the very first settlers, armed with wealth, land, Indigenous and African slaves, and a steadfast determination to hold on to all of that. And it was this particularly cruel and determined class that became the first members of what the Spanish called the encomienda, a system that rewarded conquerors with the labour of conquered non-Christians. Simply translated as “those in charge”, they very literally formed the early colonial localgovernments.
At this point, the imperial project was spreading to the farthest points that it had ever reached. It could no longer do the smash-and-grab expeditions, so it developed its method of establishing colonies to stay on these new lands and continue extraction. This is the story of colonialism everywhere it went. Largely established under naval might, usually involving the colonial underclass being gifted wealth and privilege, and that same new wealth then establishing the means to retain that wealth and privilege through wielding power in ways that empowered settlers and restricted natives.
Here, too, has our nation been shaped by the underclass of Britain and Europe, escaping their oppressive system and replicating it here, with themselves in an elevated position.
This myopic vision of Indigenous lands (or the so-called “New World”) as the site of opportunity, hope and freedom for the European underclass — at the invisibilised expense of Indigenous rights, Indigenous lands, and Indigenous bodies — is what underpins colonial rhetoric that I’m sure you’ve all heard before. Ideas that frame colonised nations as lands of milk and honey (or in our case beef and lamb) where “everyone can find their dream” if they just work hard enough.
What is erased is that this dream is constructed on Indigenous dispossession and oppression.
This is important for us to note because it’s particularly prevalent in David Seymour’s talking points. If you pay attention to them, they all leverage off the idea of a “fair shot” at everything, which is another iteration of this idea of “the land of opportunity”.
Māori have for a long time shouldered the burden of highlighting colonial and racial privilege in this country and every win has been hard-fought for.
We sent a generation of men to die for England in pursuit of the idea of Māori having a “fair shot”, and it made no difference. Those who survived came back to a society that was just as racist — and we, their mokopuna, have had to fight just as hard as if they’d never died in the first place, for our “fair shot”. Their deaths never made it any easier for us to achieve racial justice in this land. We’ve still had to fight tooth and nail for every single win.
And everything we’ve won is now being framed as “unfair” by this government, because they want to erase the colonial injustice that created the context for our struggle. And they are using the colonial fiction of the land of opportunity, and the colonial fiction of “equal rights”, to frame their grievance.
There are two important features of that fiction.
- Colonial racism is economically underpinned.
It’s no mistake that the most colonially racist governments have neoliberal capitalist agendas. The policy agendas of the far right all rely on removing racial justice initiatives, at the same time as removing constraints on corporations and prioritising profit. This is because racism and capitalism are born of the same historical circumstances, which is why theorists such as Karl Marx, Du Bois, Martin Luther King Jr, and more recently Ibram X Kendi, have seen racism and capitalism as “conjoined twins”, mutually dependent on one another.
Have you noticed how people are much more ready to denounce the colonial racism happening in Australia to Aborigines, or the colonial racism exhibited towards First Nations in the so-called USA and Canada, or indeed the colonial racism happening against Palestinians at the hands of Israel, than the colonial racism happening on their own lands?
In every one of these nations, the colonisers frame themselves as benevolent and kind. The US and Canada also say that their Indigenous nations should be thankful they weren’t colonised by the Dutch, South Africans are told they should be thankful they weren’t colonised by the Spanish, and our whānau in Rapa Nui are in turn told to be thankful they weren’t colonised by the French.
This is what we call colonial exceptionalism: Colonialism is happening and is bad everywhere else but the lands you’re standing on. And while exceptionalism is rooted in a very human instinct to evade guilt, it’s also, in the case of colonial racism, economically underpinned.
Colonial, anti-Indigenous racism is particularly difficult to point the finger at and unpick because there are forces that actively resist that in the interests of protecting a racist economy.
They are driven by the fear that Indigenous justice must come at the price of economic instability, non-Indigenous dispossession, and the potential loss of the racialised wealth and privilege that is the economic basis of our nation.
That is a very important feature of our racial landscape here in Aotearoa. Colonial exceptionalism is compounded by the British aspects of our social psyche which is to deny and ignore the aspects of ourselves that are unsavoury to address (the British don’t have skidmarks, darling). All of this creates a context where our nation finds it difficult to confront our own colonial skidmarks.
- Stories are important.
Many of us have heard the famous quote from Dr Isaac Featherston: “The Maori race is dying and our duty as good, compassionate colonists is to smooth the pillow of the dying race.” But what is often left out of that quote is the following line: “. . . and thereby history will have nothing to reproach us with.”
Colonisers have always known the importance of looking like they’re doing the right thing. They’ve always understood the importance of controlling the narrative, because the narrative frames who is right, who is wrong, and what is just.
The colonial fiction of New Zealand as a kind coloniser has been very effective in maintaining colonialism. The colonial fiction of the land of milk and honey, particularly as a “South Seas” escape, and the “New World” of opportunity, have all been extremely effective, because stories shape the minds of the people and it’s in the minds of the people that true power rests.
Imperial power would love nothing better than for you to believe that nothing can defeat it, but if there is one thing that imperialism fears, it’s the power of the people. Looking back at history, every time an empire has fallen, it has been at the will of the people — and the will of the people is shaped by stories.
That is why the empire invests so heavily in media. It’s why David Seymour and everyone like him use the language of fairness, and why it’s so important for them to erase the context of colonial injustice. Because it’s only in the absence of colonial injustice that they can construct their fictional facade of being fair and just to everyone.
The suppression of the story of the Doctrine of Discovery has been deliberate precisely because it exposes the injustice of our global and national political economy. And if it’s possible for that mass injustice to be held in place by a fiction, then it’s also true that the truth can set us free.
This requires an understanding of the history of the Doctrine of Discovery, and how it relates to the land that you are standing on and the privilege and power that it has accorded you. It means not allowing for personal exceptionalism or national exceptionalism, but understanding that this is the reality of what we all have to unpick.
This is the starting point for racial justice in Aotearoa.
This is an edited version of a talk given by Tina at an event called “Activating Tangata Tiriti” and is also published on Tina’s blog.
Connect with Tina Ngata and dozens of other Indigenous speakers at the 7-Day The Eternal Song Gathering hosted live by SAND, June 3-9, 2025.
