May 26, 2014
Southern iwi rooted in Rogernomics
A new university course on Ngai Tahu will look to the 1980s rather than the 1840s to explain how the South Island iwi now operates.
Te Maire Tau from Canterbury University’s Ngai Tahu Research Centre says the aim of the course is to prepare both Maori and Pakeha students to work with and within Maori organisations.
Students will have direct contact to key people who participated in the claim settlement process, and get a unique perspective on indigenous economic development.
Students may be surprised at how modern the current treaty relationship is.
"There’s cultural traits that persist right through the tribe but if you want to know why the tribe became a corporation, you need to understand Rogernomics, where those theories come from, neoliberal economic theory, the good parts and the bad parts for Maori and the tribe and a critical position where to take it, but also is it good enough for the future, and how do you skewer these corporate identities to represent Maori values," he says.
Associate Professor Tau says the current generation of treaty settlements started not because of any sense of justice but because the government was broke and wanted to free up state assets for sale.
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