Ma¯ori politician feels ‘like a fraud’
Now, with so many people having different heritage strands, Herbert says the decision on whether someone is Ma¯ori or not is about how they are raised, their cultural practices, language, upbringing, and their access to these things. While ancestry may play a part, it is by no means the deciding factor it once was, Herbert says.
Luxton lives in the small South Island town of Hinds, 40 minutes north of Timaru, and contested the very white, safe National seat of Rangitata at the last election. Her Ma¯ori heritage is not advertised.
Luxton’s experience of not always knowing her full heritage, and not being raised surrounded with Ma¯ori culture and language, means she offers a different voice at the table.
‘‘I can see things from two different perspectives. Coming at it from the Pa¯keha¯ world I grew up in, and then my newfound Ma¯oridom.’’
Right now, New Zealand is asking Ma¯ori to choose where they align themselves electorally – whether they wish to be on the general or Ma¯ori roll. IAIN MCGREGOR/STUFF
‘ I feel I have some understanding of what it is like to be treated as a lesser person.’ MP JO LUXTON, LEFT
The numbers that sign up for either roll between now and August 2 will be combined with the 2018 census results to help determine the number of Ma¯ori and general electorate seats at the next two elections.
Nuk Korako, the National Opposition’s spokesman on the Treaty of Waitangi and Maori Development, has had to walk the line between the Maori and Pa¯keha¯ worlds all his life.
Encouraged by his parents, he grew up proud of his Ma¯ori heritage, spending time at his marae, Ra¯paki, near Lyttelton.
As a child he attended a small Canterbury primary school; as a teenager, he was sent to St Stephen’s in Auckland. There was a group of boys there who had grown up fully immersed in the Ma¯ori world and speaking te reo. High school was their first experience of life in a Pa¯keha¯ world.