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       In Rightward Shift, New Zealand Reconsiders Pro-Maori Policies

       The nation has long been lauded for trying to do right by its Indigenous people, but a new government may force a reckoning of Māori affairs.

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       The Māori Party organized protests across New Zealand, including in the capital, Wellington, in early December to protest proposals to roll back policies that benefit the country’s Indigenous people. Credit...Lucy Craymer/Reuters

       By Natasha Frost

       Dec. 16, 2023

       It is a rarity among nations that were once colonized: a country that widely uses its Indigenous language, where a treaty with its first peoples is mostly honored and where Indigenous people have permanent representation in the halls of power.

       But a decades-long push to support Māori, New Zealand’s Indigenous people — who lag far behind the wider population in terms of health and wealth and have higher incarceration rates — is now in peril.

       Disenchanted with progressive politics, New Zealanders in October elected the country’s most conservative government in a generation, one that says it wants “equal rights” for every citizen. In practice, this means scrapping a Māori health agency, abandoning other policies that benefit the community and ordering public agencies to stop using the Maori language.

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       Natasha Frost The Times’s weekday newsletter, The Europe Morning Briefing, and reports on Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific. She is based in Melbourne, Australia. More about Natasha Frost

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