The Critical Juncture in Aotearoa New Zealand and The Collective Future: Policy Issues in Settler/Invader Colonial Zombiism Found in “Biculturalism”

Abstract

This theoretical Kaupapa Māori writing inquiry study seeks to explore the settler colonial nature of Aotearoa New Zealand. The research finds that biculturalism, as a neo-liberal and settler-colonial construct does not provide for either tino rangatiratanga or mana motuhake. Indeed, biculturalism fails to provide for indigenous inclusion and actively suppresses the recognition of mana motuhake. Biculturalism is found to fit Beck’s definition of Zombie Concepts. These are social concepts that are dead and yet kept alive in their use by scholars and society to describe the growing fiction of traditional social institutions and in being kept alive maintain, in this case, settler colonial and colonial power structures. The main argument is that Biculturalism is neoliberal and settler colonial public discourse, that needs to be unpacked and then discarded because it does not provide for tino rangatiranga or mana motuhake.