Introduction

Racialized Surveillance in New Zealand: From the Tūhoe Raids to the Extralegal Photographing of Indigenous Youth

“…Ross, 1998 seminal book, Inventing the Savage: The Social Construction of Native American Criminality, traces the construction of so-called native criminality to the various ways Indigenous bodies have been massacred and imprisoned from the first contact (e.g., jails, boarding schools, reservations). Since Ross' book, the imprisonment rate for Indigenous people increased sharply, especially for Indigenous women (George et al, 2014;George et al, 2020;McGuire & Murdoch, 2021;Norris, 2017). Scholars examining this phenomenon have described how the construction of Indigenous criminality is replicated and reinvented.…”

“…Indigenous scholars have examined the violent relationship the State has always had with Indigenous people, especially concerning mass imprisonment (Agozino, 2003;2018;Cunneen & Tauri, 2017;George et al, 2020;Proulx, 2014;Ross, 1998). Indigenous women in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States currently represent the fastest-growing segment of the prison population per capita (George et al, 2020;McGuire & Murdoch, 2021;McIntosh & Curcic, 2020). In New Zealand, Indigenous women's rate of imprisonment per capita surpasses the United States, which has the highest incarceration rate in the world (George et al, 2020;Norris, 2017).…”

“…Indigenous women in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States currently represent the fastest-growing segment of the prison population per capita (George et al, 2020;McGuire & Murdoch, 2021;McIntosh & Curcic, 2020). In New Zealand, Indigenous women's rate of imprisonment per capita surpasses the United States, which has the highest incarceration rate in the world (George et al, 2020;Norris, 2017). Although extensive social control has always been a constant theme in Indigenous people's lives, the sharp rise in the rate of imprisonment of Indigenous people have ignited a renewed interest in examining contemporary mechanisms that continually produce and reproduce racial hierarchies that relegate Indigenous peoples to second-class citizens on their own lands (Barnes et al, 2013).…”

“…The extraordinary violence perpetrated against Indigenous women have alerted academics, activists, and laypeople alike to recognize and reflect on the criminal (in)justice paradigm as an extension of the Indigenous experience. From Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIW) in Canada (Smith, 2020) to Māori women comprising over 60% of the female prison population, a rate almost four times their overall representation (George et al, 2020), Indigenous scholars have put forth concepts to address the significant gap in academic scholarship exploring these phenomena (see, George et al, 2020; Marques & Monchalin, 2020; McGuire & Murdock, 2021).…”

“…For example, in early 2021, police across the country used a mobile app to take extralegal photographs of innocent Māori youth as young as 14 under the pretence of gathering “useful intelligence” (Hurihanganui, 2021). Although legally photographing people in public is allowed, the practice caused significant anxiety amongst the Māori community due to historical disparities in the use of surveillance and police powers as it relates to Māori (George et al, 2020; Hurihanganui, 2021; JustSpeak, 2020). For example, while prevailing narratives of criminality date back to colonizers’ racist “patronizing determination to equate difference with inferiority” (Jackson, 2021, para 7), a 2020 study found that police are nearly twice as likely to take legal action against a Māori person than a white person and seven times more likely to charge a Māori person with a crime than a white person even in instances where neither has a prior police record (Hurihanganui, 2021).…”