In fisheries management-as in environmental governance more generally-regulatory arrangements that are thought to be helpful in some contexts frequently become panaceas or, in other words, simple formulaic policy prescriptions believed to solve a given problem in a wide range of contexts, regardless of their actual consequences. When this happens, management is likely to fail, and negative side effects are common. We focus on the case of individual transferable quotas to explore the panacea mindset, a set of factors that promote the spread and persistence of panaceas. These include conceptual narratives that make easy answers like panaceas seem plausible, power disconnects that create vested interests in panaceas, and heuristics and biases that prevent people from accurately assessing panaceas. Analysts have suggested many approaches to avoiding panaceas, but most fail to conquer the underlying panacea mindset. Here, we suggest the codevelopment of an institutional diagnostics toolkit to distill the vast amount of information on fisheries governance into an easily accessible, open, on-line database of checklists, case studies, and related resources. Toolkits like this could be used in many governance settings to challenge users' understandings of a policy's impacts and help them develop solutions better tailored to their particular context. They would not replace the more comprehensive approaches found in the literature but would rather be an intermediate step away from the problem of panaceas.

In contemporary Aotearoa/New Zealand, Maori indigenous claims to fisheries have resulted in an uneasy compromise in which private property in fisheries coexists with an important element of common ownership. Individual Transferable Quotas and the bundle of rights encoded in Customary Fisheries Regulations are the expression of this compromise. At the legal level, these reflect the major property paradigms of private and communal. In practice, neither has accommodated Maori concrete relations of owning, and social practices of exchanging, fish.

This article investigates the double-edged potentiality of the Waitangi Tribunal, an indigenous claims forum in New Zealand, and combines an ethnographic background to a recent claim with an anthropological interpretation of the meanings and outcomes of this encounter. I suggest that the legal justice framework of the claims proceedings and the political aspect of settlements are distinct yet contingent phenomena. Both are inherently embedded in the neoliberalization of society. I suggest that marae (meeting-house complexes where tribunal hearings are held)-albeit symbolizing singular Māori spaces and distinctive loci where indigenous identity is reproduced-are equally sites where cultural and economic struggles articulate with neoliberal logics. I draw attention to the persistence of alienation in Māori society irrespective of the comparative generosity of the reparative justice program; I also consider the contradictory spaces opened for indigeneity under neoliberal governance and their unintended consequences, inventions, and creative hybridizations. I argue that a fruitful way to foreground the precarity of this engagement is by paying attention to silences. Such silences are multilevel, prefigure the claims process, are expressed as inequalities in the hearings, conscribe a particular version of a postcolonial economy, and reference a broader pattern of economic deprivation. [indigenous claims tribunals, neoliberalism, silence, Māori, indigeneity] "It's like a circus rolling into town, leaving conflict in its wake." -Expert witness (Te Rohe Pōtae district inquiry, Waitangi Tribunal hearing)In October 2013, a Waitangi Tribunal Inquiry, in the North Island of New Zealand, commences with the gathering of caravans, a St. John ambulance, security personnel, the sporadic appearance of media crew, and the general hustle and bustle of Māori claimant groups and their supporters greeting kin and friends. Children play on the marae atea (courtyard); meanwhile, legal personnel (Crown and claimant lawyers, tribunal judges, and their respective entourages) mingle easily and uneasily outside the wharenui (meeting house), creating an atmosphere of excited yet muted apprehension. A loudspeaker demarcating the timing of events reasserts the priority of legal processes, and shoes are shed as the crowd enters the wharenui. Inside, the tribunal staff has transformed the space in consultation with tangata whenua (people of the land), who have rented plastic chairs, tables, and tablecloths for the manuhiri (guests) from the corporate arm of the region's largest and most powerful iwi (tribe). There are three main sections: the front formal court area in which sit two Crown lawyers, six tribunal clerical staff, five members of the Waitangi Tribunal, and a translator; and a space for claimants and witnesses to provide evidence, alongside a table bearing tribal taonga (treasures). The second and third areas, to the rear, demarcate the Māori audience on the left, with kaumātua (male elders) filling the front rows, and claimants' lawyer...

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Indigeneity is a multi‐faceted phenomenon, and for analytical purposes three different levels of practice may be identified: global, national, and local. This framework is used to illustrate the complex nature of recent negotiations between two Maori tribes and the government in New Zealand concerning the ownership and cultural use of coastal spaces. Indigenous claims‐making is intimately bound up with neoliberal practices which, since the 1970s, have become embedded in many states, including New Zealand. It is argued here that neoliberalism is a qualitatively new form of political economy and tends to essentialize the representation of indigenous peoples while at the same time creating new, if limited, avenues for the pursuance of indigenous claims. This article highlights the contradictions generated in the process of practising indigeneity within the constraints of government policy and legislation, global arrangements, and local social organization. Résumé L'autochtonie est un phénomène à multiples facettes. Aux fins d'analyse, on peut identifier trois niveaux différents de pratique : global, national, local. Ce cadre est utilisé ici pour illustrer la complexité des négociations récentes entre deux tribus maories et le gouvernement de Nouvelle‐Zélande à propos de la propriété et de l'usage culturel de zones côtières. Les revendications indigènes sont intimement liées aux pratiques libérales qui imprègnent de nombreux pays depuis les années 1970, y compris la Nouvelle‐Zélande. L'auteure avance ici que le néolibéralisme est une forme qualitativement nouvelle d'économie politique qui tend à essentialiser la représentation des peuples autochtones tout en créant, même si elles restent limitées, de nouvelles voies pour faire entendre leurs revendications. L'article met en lumière les contradictions qui résultent de l'exercice de l'autochtonie dans le respect des limites des politiques gouvernementales et de la législation, des accords globaux et de l'organisation sociale locale.