Brian Easton says gangs were one of the responses to the difficulties urbanising Māori faced

This is a re-post of an article originally published on pundit.co.nz. It is here with permission.

Systematic analysis of Māori is difficult, not least because it is overwhelmed by the popularity of jumping to conclusions based on casual prejudice. Nor is it helped by the complexity of defining Māori identity.

The Population Census uses two definitions. One question asks the respondent whether they are of Māori descent. (This objective question is required for electoral purposes.) In the 2023 Census, almost a million New Zealanders said they were of Māori descent. That was nearly 20% of the population. (Among those born in New Zealand, this increased to 27.5%, with even higher proportions among the younger population.)

A second census question asks for the respondent’s ethnicity. No guidance is given as to what ‘ethnicity’ means – a formal definition is ‘a shared cultural, traditional, historical, and ancestral background that unites a group of people’. Many people confuse the notion with race/descent.

Ultimately, one’s ethnicity is subjective. Whatever one says on census night, in other situations they state a different ethnicity. Social statisticians are cautious when they are melding different databases

The two definitions mean that someone may be of Māori descent but say they are not of Māori ethnicity. There are people who have a great-great-great grandmother who was Māori. In some cases, they celebrate this fact and have a commitment to Māoritanga and supporting Māori aspirations. In others, it is a fact of no great significance in their life. (That far back, I have an ancestor transported to Australia as a teenager for a minor crime. His contribution to one-thirty-second of my genes has had no evident influence on me, except I bear his Y chromosome.)

In fact, almost 90% of those of Māori descent told the census they were of Māori ethnicity. But 59% of those reporting Māori ethnicity also identified with other ethnicities, the most common being Pākehā at 53%.

What exactly all this means is unclear. I could spend the rest of the column illustrating the ambiguity, but one illustration will have to do. International definitions of ethnicity often include language. In the 2023 Census, just under a fifth of those who identified with Māori ethnicity said they could hold a conversation in te reo Māori.* (More have some ability to speak beyond just a few words or phrases, and even more say they are able to understand the language.)

This greatly complicates the standing of those who claim to speak on behalf of all Māori. Typically they are fluent in te reo Māori, so they are in a minority. Or consider that, in the 2023 election, less than 15% of adults of Māori descent list-voted for Te Pati Māori. (Such are the particularities of the database; I can derive this statistic only for TPM voters, and not for other parties. Only about half of those of Māori descent entitled to vote are enrolled in Māori seats.)

This lengthy introduction is to underline the necessity of caution when making generalities about Māori. It suggests we best celebrate considerable diversity among Māori, as we should among the Aotearoa-New Zealand population as a whole.

The focus of this column is Māori gangs, but in a different way from today’s popular rhetoric. That requires a historical background.** For the first two centuries following European contact, Māori were mainly rural people. Some lived near towns because it was a part of their rohe. Few lived in the larger cities. 

However, opportunities on the land were limited and unable to sustain the growing Māori population, so after the Second World War they began trickling into cities. By the 1970s, the trickle had become a flood. Māori changed from being primarily a rural-based group to an urban one.

They were not well prepared for their second great migration. There had long been concern about the quality of education in rural Māori schools. It may have been adequate for their rural lifestyles and certainly the men had occupational skills well adapted for the farming, fishing, hunting and road building that they were mainly occupied with. 

But they were not skills or education that were of great use in the cities except at the lowest (precariat) levels, which meant poor pay and more frequent unemployment. They lacked wealth, even compared to the average New Zealander, which forced them into rental accommodation rather than home ownership. (The women may have been better prepared, but their story is more difficult to trace; forgive me for skipping it.)

Moreover, they came into cities which were poorly prepared for their arrival. All around the world, cities provide hostile environments to newcomers. That was not a problem for Māori in their First Great Migration, for there was nobody before them when they arrived in New Zealand.

While urban women also experienced a kind of migration at the same time from motherhood and housework into the paid labour force, their outcome was happier. They were better educated and had relevant work skills, especially for the burgeoning service economy. They already lived in the cities.

Another great migration about this time was people from the Pacific Islands. That tended to be more in family clusters than the Māori – in waves joining up with ‘aiga’ (extended families) who were already here. Crucially, their lives in the islands had been built around the church and soon their New Zealand social lives centred on their church here. The evidence is that on most socioeconomic indicators, Pasifika are much the same as – sometimes slightly worse than – Māori. But they do not seem to have had the same social difficulties, because they had their church communities for social support and integration.

In contrast, Māori rural life was built around the marae, but at first there were no marae in the cities for those who were not tangata whenua. So Māori arrived in the big cities without the social institutions that were integral to them. They were more isolated with much less social support, resulting in much social delinquency. During the period of their Second Great Migration, Māori male imprisonment rates were high, so we ended up with a high proportion of prison inmates who were Māori. (Pasifika incarceration rates are much lower than Māori ones.)

But Māori proved adaptable, creating their urban social institutions such as urban marae, Māori radio stations, Te Kōhanga Reo and Urban Māori Authorities. Moreover, the next generation were getting a better education, better prepared for living in the cities. The cheering news is that many of the indicators of delinquency are falling. 

Today, fewer Māori under the age of 25 are entering prison compared to their fathers and grandfathers. Their incarceration rates are falling faster than for non-Māori. The success is partly hidden in the statistics because old lags from earlier cohorts are still inside. (See Len Cook: Insights from Statistical Trends and Patterns relating to Youth Justice: 1911-2021.)

Gangs evolved as social institutions for the dispossessed urban Māori. (Not all gangs are Māori.) They are one of the informal responses to drifting, alienated Māori youth. The community that gang membership provided gave the individual Māori a sense of belonging, support, social meaning and purpose.

Unfortunately, the gangs got involved in criminal activities, drugs, guns, inter-gang warfare, and violence (including towards their women). Many gang members would point out that today such activities are marginal or non-existent in their communities. Indeed, like Māori generally, their gangs have evolved and adapted. 

Many are not all like the gangs that the public thinks of. Today, traditional Māori gangs are often communities, not even living at the same site, providing the sort of social context which may be compared with the rural Māori hapu. The criminals are in offshore cartels.

So the majority of the public view of Māori gangs is outdated and, as suggested in the opening paragraphs, provides a diversity of behaviour. Observe how rarely the constructive side of gang life is mentioned. Conveniently, it overlooks that the gangs were a response to the nation’s failure to provide a supportive urban environment to the many Māori who migrated into the cities. That some gang members act outside the law makes them easy targets, even for those who deny they are racist.

It suits society to have outsiders they can berate and isolate. It’s the brutality of majoritarianism that targets a minority to reinforce its power. Sadly, we are seeing that attitude displayed by various political parties during this election campaign; they should know better.

Does it make sense to treat such organically evolved institutions so crudely? That is not to condone gangs’ illegal activities. Consider the parallel of an adolescent delinquent. Sure, we can punish them, thereby reinforcing their behaviour, which leads to further delinquency, drug dependency, criminality, incarceration and (in many sad cases) early death.

Or we can take a firm line against their unacceptable behaviour while rewarding them for behaviour that is not unacceptable. This provides pressure to move them towards a constructive path. It is not an easy strategy, especially if one lacks patience. But very often it works.

Should we not be doing the same thing for gangs, rather than punishing them by taking away all contracts, such as those they currently hold for drug rehabilitation? Instead, the contracts should be provided so that they can be withdrawn if the individual gang does not reduce its criminal activities. 

That was the approach of the Key-English (National) Government with its mix of law enforcement, asset seizures, and targeted social/rehabilitation contracts. Both of our main political parties appear to support only the repressive part of the approach.

Sticks and carrots create a dynamic within each gang which strengthens the internal forces that lead to better behaviour. Those forces exist. We need to reinforce them. Otherwise, the ugly element of gang membership will persist and grow.

* 4.3% of the total New Zealand population, including those of Māori descent, say they can hold a conversation in te reo.

** For more detail, see my Heke Tangata and Not in Narrow Seas. See Notes on Tāone Hapū–Māori Gangs for further elaboration of this column.

*Brian Easton, an independent scholar, is an economist, social statistician, public policy analyst and historian. He was the Listener economic columnist from 1978 to 2014. This is a re-post of an article originally published on pundit.co.nz. It is here with permission.