Interdependent Kin in Māori Marine Environments

Abstract

This paper explores ascriptions of dependence and independence in Māori marine environments alongside the entrenchment of colonial constructions of hierarchical kinship organisation. The modelling of independence on liberal understandings of individualism is apparent in the development of the Treaty of Waitangi settlement of Māori commercial fisheries, wherein attributes of self‐reliance enabled through accumulation prevail. This articulates with a fisheries management regime whose logic is grounded in neoliberal market environmentalism, exacerbating tensions between iwi and hapū, two different levels of tribal organisation. The contemporary power ascribed to iwi, however, is more tempered than supposed, and the fluidity of hierarchical kin group positionings, noted in historical accounts, is still in existence today. Interdependence is historically continuous. It is expressed in the social relations embedded in cognatic kinship, marine tenures as well as kincentric ecologies and is inclusive of ancestors and fish species. The current claims of Māori to tribal seascapes are interpreted as an expression of interrelationships of stewardship, as a response to environmental demise and as a challenge to emergent social hierarchies.

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