American Indian Culture and Research Journal

In 1993 my dissertation fieldwork took me to the North Island of New Zealand where I collected the life history of an elder Maori woman. While there I also began comparing the national indigenous policies of New Zealand to those of the United States. It was interesting to discover that the historical relationships between Native Americans and Maoris and their respective colonizing governments bear striking similarities in terms of treaty relationships, cyclical policy waves, and sovereignty disputes. Colonized according to a similar value arrangement inherent in the European colonial pattern, American Indians and Maori have inherited a fairly common set of socio political circumstances. Wherever Europeans went, also went the European colonial pattern whose legacies, such as fourth world status and factionalism, are a continual reminder of past injustices.