‘Our Pacific Through Native Eyes’: Māori Activism in the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific Movement, 1980–5

Abstract

ABSTRACT The Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific movement (NFIP) developed a grassroots regionalism in opposition to nuclear colonialism in the Pacific. This article concerns Māori interactions with other Indigenous Pacific peoples within the NFIP movement from 1980–5, and what this meant for the Pacific as a conceptual and political region. Voyaging back across the Pacific, Māori drew on whakapapa, identified cultural commonalities, and parallel colonial legacies between themselves and other Pacific peoples. They saw a shared Pacific struggle: that between Indigenous and colonizer. While this was contentious to some, this article argues that it allowed Pacific peoples to draw upon an alternative network of political action outside formal politics or peace and humanitarian discourses.