Indigenous Identity Appropriation in Aotearoa New Zealand: The White Academics Who Claim to Be Indigenous Māori and the Māori Who Claim to Be Indigenous Whites

Abstract

Unlike in North America, where several “race-shifters”, “Pretendians”, or “self-indigenizers” have been exposed over the last decade, Indigenous identity appropriation has not been publicly exposed or even widely discussed in Aotearoa New Zealand. This study is the first to identify and to describe the methods and motivations of four Pākehā (White) self-indigenizers who are currently working, or were trained, in Aotearoa New Zealand, outlining also the harms they have caused. In addition, this study examines another type of Indigenous identity appropriation taking place in Aotearoa New Zealand, involving a small group of central North Island Māori, whose primary spokesperson is Monica Matāmua. The group claim to be descended from white-skinned Hotu, who they purport had migrated to Aotearoa New Zealand in the 200s B.C., making them the alleged true Indigenous people instead of Māori. Each type of Indigenous identity appropriation provides a range of benefits to those who thereby claim Indigenous status, and this is in part due to the valorization of certain aspects of Indigeneity that occurred from ca. the 1960s to the 1980s. Indigenous identity appropriation has further been encouraged by the backlash against so-called “Māori privilege” that has gathered momentum since ca. the 1980s.

1. Introduction

This study provides an outline and analysis of two types of Indigenous identity claims currently found in Aotearoa New Zealand, each of which involves a false claim to Indigeneity. The first type of fabricated Indigenous identity claim involves individual Pākehā (White) academics, who, although they have no whakapapa Māori (no Māori ancestry), self-identify as Māori based on incorrect and vague ancestry claims. Each of the academics considered in this article have made their self-identification as Māori central to their academic research, careers, and scholarly personae. Unlike in North America, where several well-publicized “race-shifters” or “Pretendians” have been exposed over the last decade (e.g., Jago 2017; Baxter 2023), including several within academia (e.g., Shorter 2018; Andersen 2021; Cyca 2022; Teillet 2022), no such Pākehā academics have been publicly exposed in Aotearoa New Zealand (cf. Stewart and Stewart-Harawira 2020). Neither has the phenomenon of self-indigenizing Pākehā been the focus of any prior academic study. I base my analysis on four Pākehā academics I have identified who have wrongfully appropriated Māori identity. I do not provide any identifying details regarding these individuals but examine their shared characteristics as a group for the purpose of analyzing common motivations and the types of harmful consequences that tend to result from wrongful appropriation of Māori identity.

The second type of claim, which in a sense might be seen as involving the reverse scenario, is made by a small group of Māori from the central North Island, whose most prominent public spokesperson is Monica Matāmua. Members of this group, who claim they number about 2000, deny that they are Māori and instead identify as the surviving remnant of a purported White Indigenous people they call the “Hotu”. They allege—contrary to mainstream academic historical, archeological, and genetic studies (Bunbury et al. 2022; Wilmhurst et al. 2011; Ioannidis et al. 2021; Knapp et al. 2012)—that the Hotu arrived in Aotearoa during the 200s B.C., predating the first Polynesian arrivals by well over 1000 years. The name “Hotu” derives from Ngāti Hotu, who were indeed a historical iwi (people, or “tribe”). Ngāti Hotu were descended from the earliest Polynesian settlers in Aotearoa and are widely identified as Te Tini o Toi (the multitudes descended from [the early explorer(s) named] Toi). They settled in the central North Island but from about the 1600s were decimated in a series of inter-iwi conflicts. He Whiritaunoka: The Whanganui Land Report summarizes that Ngāti Hotu did not survive “as a distinct people with their own pā, kāinga, and later marae, but lived with other iwi or hapū under their mana as a defeated remnant” (Waitangi Tribunal 2015, p. 118 no. 463). Ngāti Hotu suffered “a succession of military disasters”, culminating with the battle of Te Whataraparapa at Kākahi (Waitangi Tribunal 2015, p. 90). As a result, Ngāti Hotu are “usually considered to have been absorbed into the peoples of their successive conquerors” (2015, p. 88). By contrast, Matāmua and fellow group members understand the Hotu and Ngāti Hotu not as Polynesians, nor as absorbed into other Māori iwi, but as a fair-skinned people who originated in the vicinity of Persia and the Mediterranean and who secretly preserved their Hotu lineage after the arrival of Polynesians in Aotearoa, and who have only recently revealed their survival as a people. I distinguish the historical Ngāti Hotu from Matāmua’s claimed White ancestors by referring to the latter simply as “Hotu”.

1.1. Māori Indigenous Identity

In Aotearoa New Zealand, Māori view themselves as tangata whenua (the people of the land) and understand that the earliest human (iwi māori) settlement in Aotearoa was undertaken by their sea-voyaging Polynesian ancestors, approximately 30 generations or 800 years ago (who were preceded by, in some iwi traditions, already-present autochthonous ancestors). Settlement by Pākehā commenced some 500 years later, from the late 1700s, and in 1840 they were given rights of governance by some Māori under Te Tiriti o Waitangi (the Māori-language Treaty of Waitangi)—yet took far more, as is the wont of settler colonials. I employ the term “Indigenous identity appropriation” in this article rather than two other terms in common use, “race-shifting” and “racial shifting”, as the latter terms rely on the essentializing and pseudo-scientific term “race”, a concept that in any case does not properly apply to Indigeneity. I also employ the term “self-indigenization”, widely used in scholarship, which best fits with three of the four Pākehā examined in this study—although its individualistic focus means it does not apply in every case, such as where family rumors of Indigenous ancestry were held by successive generations or for the Hotu group.

Unlike the requirements for Indigenous status in North America and other places such as Australia, Māori self-definition, along with current legal definitions, requires only whakapapa (descent) from another Māori, no matter how remote. There is no requirement, therefore, that Māori, to be Māori, must be involved with their hapū (immediate kinship group) or iwi (people, nation), nor any requirement for cultural knowledge or involvement, including language use. This distinctive aspect may seem to set Aotearoa New Zealand well apart from the North American context, the latter dominating most academic discussions of self-indigenization (Teillet 2022, p. 9; Gaudry 2018, p. 175; NIIF 2022, p. 4; Kolopenuk 2023, pp. 470–71). The difference in part reflects Aotearoa New Zealand’s relatively young colonial history, a consequence of which is that Māori ancestry is usually much less remote, and living Māori relatives are usually far less distant. It should also be emphasized, however, that—although Māori and Native Americans employ distinct measures of assessing Indigeneity—most are in fundamental agreement that membership in Indigenous communities is a matter of self-determination, and that recognition of shared ancestry is not the ultimate end in itself, because its primary importance lies in establishing and fostering present-day family and iwi connections (whanaungatanga).

1.2. Indigenous Identity Appropriation

This is the first study to apply the literature on Indigenous identity appropriation to the Aotearoa New Zealand context.1 Elsewhere, studies have viewed the appropriation of Indigenous identity as a new stage of colonialization, of acquiring—as expressed, for example, in the North American context—“the cultural power of Indianness in the White imagination” (Deloria 1999, p. 168). Kim TallBear (2023, p. 97) highlights a popular meme (“Eight Stages of White Settler-Colonial Denial”) that situates self-indigenization as the latest popular form of a long history of ideological strategies used by settler colonial states to deny Indigenous rights and eliminate Indigenous peoples—so following earlier ideologies such as the doctrine of terra nullius, the doctrine of discovery, and assertions of the European right of conquest.

Not all appropriations of Indigenous identity are intentional, as instances range from deliberate fraud to wishful thinking to honest mistake (Sturm 2011, p. 6), and a self-indigenizer’s intentions may change over time (Kimber 2017; Sturm 2011, p. 33; Teillet 2022, p. 13). “White lies” may later be embellished if self-indigenizers succumb to what Erving Goffman termed “in-deeper-ism”, the tendency “to elaborate a lie further and further to prevent a given disclosure” (Goffman 1963, p. 83). The “simplest reasons” for Indigenous identity appropriation, claims TallBear (2021b), are “greed and ambition”. For example, self-indigenizers often take advantage of affirmative action policies put into place to remedy structural inequalities, to benefit instead their own individual access to education, employment, or research grants (Pewewardy 2004, p. 201; Stewart and Stewart-Harawira 2020, pp. 9–10). While material gain may motivate perhaps the majority of cases, TallBear notes that other reasons sometimes prevail. Circe Sturm’s (2011) study of newly identifying Cherokee—a category including both genuine Cherokee and those appropriating Cherokee identity—found that most “are not able to access any direct financial benefits based on their self-proclaimed Cherokee identity”, due to their failure to meet government requirements for Indigenous status (p. 11). They have other reasons for their new identities, often involving a “romanticize[d] longing for spiritual and cultural regeneration, reconnection, and reinvention” (p. 8). To this end, self-indigenizers often essentialize Indigeneity as “authentic”, “holistic”, “spiritual”, and “open-minded”, thereby redefining Indigeneity through a New Age lens (p. 40). Other self-indigenizers are driven more by opposition to or resentment of Indigenous rights, some even forming large organizations of fellow self-indigenizers to gain access to Indigenous resources such as hunting rights (Leroux 2019, p. 3). Some self-indigenizers receive inspiration from DNA tests that reveal remote Indigenous ancestry (Teillet 2022, p. 13) or from hearing of an old family rumor about “native blood” or the like (Leroux 2019, p. 101) or from taking a course on Indigenous studies at university (Teillet 2022, p. 13). Indigenous identity appropriation may also provide a way to deal with White guilt over colonization by identifying instead with its victims (Tuck and Yang 2012, p. 9).

1.3. Appropriation of White Indigeneity

By contrast, the Hotu group’s claim of White Indigeneity builds on earlier speculative theories about White pre-Polynesian peoples alleged to have settled in Aotearoa before Māori. Such theories achieved a level of broad popular appeal in Aotearoa New Zealand from the 1970s onwards, when they were disseminated by a number of Pākehā dilletantes.2 One of the earliest such attempts at popularizing a White pre-Polynesian theory occurred in the 1973 (inaugural) Hocken Lecture at the University of Otago, delivered by civil servant and diplomat Reuel Lochore (1974), who had earlier been an enthusiastic promoter of the German Third Reich and, in post-War Aotearoa New Zealand, of Whites-only immigration (Boyack 1994; King 2001). In his Hocken Lecture, Lochore set forth an adventurous theory of Caucasian Māori migrating from Uru, a placename mentioned in the Tākitimu tradition (Whatahoro 1913–1915), which Lochore speculatively identified with Uru in northern Mesopotamia near the Caucasus Mountains. Amassing a series of vague and imprecise references to ancient Near Eastern sources and scholarship, Lochore constructed a migration route of his imagined “Uruites” from Mesopotamia to Asia (via India, Burma, Vietnam, and Malaya) and finally to Aotearoa. In 1975, zoologist Barry Fell (1975a, 1975b) promoted similar theories of White settlement in New Zealand, which were published in the popular weekly magazine the New Zealand Listener. Fell posited that legendary Polynesian explorer Maui was born in Libya in 260 B.C. and traveled from there to the Pacific (Goldsmith 2008). Following Fell’s lead, Lochore also promoted his theory of Caucasian settlement in three articles printed in the same magazine (Lochore 1977a, 1977b, 1977c). Matāmua narrates a similar migration of White Hotu to Aotearoa, who depart from “an island near Persia” to reach Aotearoa via Egypt, Carthage, India, and Borneo. Although Matāmua attributes the account to her mother (in Aldworth 2019, pp. 30, 35; Capper et al. 2016, p. 7), similar speculative routes had already been proposed by John Te Herekiekie Grace concerning Matāmua’s own iwi Tūwharetoa (Grace 1959, p. 2) and by Frank O.V. Acheson ([1938] 1974, p. 279) in respect of Ngāti Hotu, each based on the type of Aryan-migration speculations that had clearly also influenced Lochore (1974, p. 15).

Following these initial efforts by Lochore and Fell, New Zealand developed a cottage industry in White pre-Polynesian settlement theories. From the 1980s onwards, a number of (largely self-published) books and websites were produced to promote various theories of pre-Polynesian settlement in Aotearoa New Zealand by White or fair-skinned races—including Celts, ancient Greeks, Phoenicians, Vikings, Carthaginians, and Egyptians (e.g., Aldworth 2019; Bodle 2017; Bolton [1987] 2000; Cook and Brown 1999; Doutré 1999; Hill 2012; Tangatawhenua16 2016; Tasker 1997; Wiseman 1998; and for secondary literature, Howe 2008; Clark 2011; O’Regan 1992).3 Similar alternative histories of original, indigenous White races can be found today in most one-time European settler colonial states, including Australia (Hiscock 1996); the US (Colavito 2020; Watts 2020); Central and South America (Feder et al. 2016); and Southern Africa (Le Quellec 2016).

The central concern of these alternative histories is to deny that Indigenous peoples were the first human inhabitants of their lands and to transfer that honor to mythical White peoples. Jason Colavito wryly observes that the factual attribution of monumental earthen mounds in North America to Native Americans would do “little to support the settlers’ claims to be the legitimate owners of former Native lands” (Colavito 2020, p. 56). The same motivation explains the popularity in Aotearoa New Zealand of the “Moriori myth”, whose proponents invented a darker “Melanesian” people as the first human settlers of Aotearoa, allegedly killed and expelled by the later-invading Polynesians. Moriori trustee Maui Solomon (2020) comments that “the reason [the Moriori Myth] became so powerfully ingrained in the psyche of New Zealanders is because, if Māori could push Moriori out of NZ, then later European migrants could push Māori off their land. It suited the narrative, and it was a justification of European colonisation of Māori land”. The question that remains to be addressed in this study is why a group of Māori, rather than Pākehā, would want to appropriate a fictitious Indigenous identity as an imagined White pre-Polynesian (so pre-Māori) race.

1.4. The Roles of Shifting Social Stigmatization and Backlash

In examining claims by White academics to be Māori alongside claims by Māori to be White, it is clear that both sets of claims were born from a societal shift that took place from about the 1960s to 1980s. Whereas Māori culture had been traditionally viewed as inferior in mainstream Pākehā society, of less value and as more primitive than European culture, international movements such as independence movements that overthrew colonialism, the Civil Rights movement, and cultural rejuvenation movements led to a more positive evaluation of Māori alongside other Indigenous cultures. Conversely, the period saw the earlier celebration of Empire and colonialism come under severe critique and stigmatization (Storrs 1999; Junka-Aikio 2022). The period also saw increased Māori activism in the areas of cultural rejuvenation and land and resourcing rights, attempts to redress past Government wrongs against Māori with the establishment of the Waitangi Tribunal (largely an outcome of Māori activism), Crown settlements with Māori iwi, and the introduction of affirmative action policies. Yet the period also sees the beginnings of a Pākehā backlash against Indigenous assertions of rights and widespread resentment of economic and political gains benefiting Māori.

In much public discourse within Aotearoa New Zealand, comparisons of the relative power of Pākehā and Māori exist in a type of parallax view (Žižek 2006, p. 4). All economic indicators, historical and contemporary, show that the Māori population continues to be worse off than Pākehā; Māori continue to be denied political self-determination (as guaranteed in Te Tiriti o Waitangi and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples); Māori are subject to higher levels of unfair discrimination by police, the courts, and in employment and business; and cultural norms derived from Pākehā culture provide the unmarked default rules of engagement for the majority of public life (Harris et al. 2006; Houkamau et al. 2017; Brittain and Tuffin 2017; Cormack et al. 2019; Mayeda et al. 2022). A significant number of Pākehā, however, are less likely to acknowledge this evident Pākehā privilege than to focus on the targeted attempts at closing the economic, political and cultural gaps, which they then interpret as unfair and even “racist”—thereby framing measures intended to redress structural racism as “Māori privilege”. Māori land claims and monetary settlements for past Government injustices, affirmative action programs in the private and public sectors, and the inclusion of te reo Māori (Māori language) alongside the hegemonic English on public signage have all become purported evidence of this alleged “Māori privilege”. For example, Don Brash—former leader of Aotearoa New Zealand’s major right-of-center political party, the National Party—describes the still minor public inclusions of Māori language alongside English as “thrusting” an unwanted object down Pākehā throats (Brash 2022).

It is no coincidence that the emergence of alternative histories of White pre-Polynesian settlement occurred at the same time as the flourishing of the Māori renaissance in the 1970s and that the specter of Pākehā academics claiming Indigenous identity appears only from the 1980s and 1990s, contemporary with the introduction of affirmative action policies in education, the state sector, and private business. Each of these Indigenous identity appropriations may then be viewed as forms of White backlash, defined by Roger Hewitt (2005, p. 5) as “negative reactions within White communities” to either increased proximity and visibility of non-Whites, the potential acquisition of power or status by non-Whites, affirmative action policies designed to bring about equality, or the enforcement of such policies. Beydoun and Wilson (2017, p. 289) observe “a shift in the valuation scheme within the racial hierarchy caused in part by modern affirmative action jurisprudence” and a growing tendency to perceive racial diversity “as a valuable commodity”. Backlash arises where Whites understand the relative increases in the power and status of non-Whites as a zero-sum game, in which, as expressed in respect of the US context, “decreases in perceived bias against Blacks over the past six decades are associated with increases in perceived bias against Whites” (Norton and Sommers 2011, p. 215). Affirmative action in this mindset is thought to take jobs away from Whites, take jobs from their White sons, and to be unfair because it is imagined Whites have to work harder than non-Whites to be promoted (Pierce 2013). Attempts to deal with the structural legacies of racism are often themselves perceived as racist, framed as “reverse racism”. Charles A. Gallagher’s studies of White US college students in the 1990s found many believed that “the deck was now stacked against them in the labor market” (Gallagher 1997, p. 31). The students considered that affirmative action was unfair because overt racism had been dealt with in their parents’ generation and, turning a blind eye to the ongoing effects of structural racism, they viewed themselves simply as victims. Indeed, the ascendant figure of “the White male as victim” (Savran 1998, p. 4) has fueled resistance to affirmative action, immigration, and social welfare, as a way “to recoup the losses” that White men have allegedly suffered.

Forms of Indigenous identity appropriation—whether carried out by individuals adopting fictitious identities for themselves or by the construction of pre-Polynesian settlement theories that appropriate White Indigenous status for one’s ancestors—should therefore be recognized as strategic responses to the changing valorization of Indigeneity and the concomitant White backlash. For example, Laura Junka-Aikio (2023, p. 292) documents how the increased interest in Indigenous cultures and, conversely, the vastly diminishing appeal of settler cultures has recently caused some northern Finns to identify as Indigenous Sámi. Richard Alba (1990) earlier noted a shift among White Americans to emphasize their minority European (Irish, Scottish, Norwegian, etc.) immigrant culture and de-emphasize their dominant, colonizing Anglo-Saxon culture. Similarly, Ashley Barnwell (2019) examines the increasingly positive status of the convict ancestor in Australia as a repositioning away from the earlier dominant White settler colonial ethnic identity towards identifying themselves as fellow victims of colonialization, thereby shifting focus and resources way from its primary victims, Aboriginal peoples. In Darryl Leroux’s (2019) study of Whites forming new Métis communities, he emphasizes that he is not studying Métis culture per se but the “shifting politics of whiteness” and White privilege, which emerged as a response to the assertion of (genuine) Indigenous rights in Canada. Based on these studies, we should expect that the appropriation of Māori identity is a cause both of shifts in the relative valorization of Indigeneity and whiteness, and also of White ressentiment and backlash in response to those same shifts.

Peter Meihana (2023) argues that an earlier form of the ideology of “Māori privilege” facilitated the dispossession of Māori lands in the nineteenth century—the belief in Pākehā beneficence in sharing the benefits of European civilization. Yet Meihana observes,

in the latter half of the twentieth century and the early decades of the twenty-first century, Māori privilege has again been put to use. Notions of privilege, first used to dispossess Māori, are now being redeployed to consolidate the ill-gotten gains of the previous centuries.

White New Zealanders are relatively open to accepting a range of Māori cultural symbols as part of their national identity (Sibley et al. 2010) or of valorizing a range of Māori spiritual values (Jackson 2007, p. 239) but widely resent political or economic gains for Māori. This public resentment was given influential voice on 27 January 2004 in what has become known as the “Orewa Speech” by National Party leader Don Brash. In the speech, Brash attacked policies “aimed at overcoming perceived socioeconomic disadvantages, and on redressing historical breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi” by painting them as “Māori privilege” (Barber 2008, p. 142). The speech mobilized “angry white men”, causing a “dramatic shift of support to National” and a very large 17.9% polling increase for the Party just one month later, according to the February 2004 National Business Review/UMR Insight poll (Johansson 2004, p. 124). The National Party’s condemnation of “Māori privilege” dovetailed also with its neoliberal ideology, in particular its dogma that people deserve what the market allocates (Barber 2008). This backlash against Māori self-determination was perpetuated by Brash’s formation of the right-wing lobby group Hobson’s Pledge (formed 2016) and by the establishment of anti-Māori book publisher Tross Publishing (Simon 2020). More recently, strategies aimed at eliminating Māori rights and affirmative action policies became one of the major platforms for the right-wing coalition government of National, ACT and New Zealand First, elected in 2023 (Campbell 2024). Thus, the twin dynamics of the shifting status of Indigenous people and of White backlash, also observed globally, are highly salient in Aotearoa New Zealand.

1.5. Method and Sources

This study examines the motivations and methods of individual Pākehā self-indigenizers in the academic sector and Māori identifying as descendants of purported White pre-Polynesian Hotu. In so doing, it assesses the role played by the shift to a relatively (though still circumscribed) more positive evaluation and treatment of Indigenous persons and culture, together with the related role of the consequent White backlash. This study also assesses major harms caused by each of these forms of Indigenous identity appropriation.

Self-indigenizers among academics were initially detected by examining their public self-representations against Teillet’s (2022, pp. 19–34) list of “red flags” for detecting Indigenous identity appropriation, which builds on TallBear’s earlier list (TallBear 2021a), although adapted for the different definition of Māori Indigeneity in Aotearoa New Zealand. The resulting relevant red flags include shifting or inconsistent affiliations to iwi, conflicting facts and stories, vague claims, reliance on alleged family stories or secrets, personalizing Indigenous trauma in often stereotyped ways, grooming Māori leaders or elders to back up one’s claims, adopting Māori names, and evidence of a recent change in identification. As Teillet makes clear, these red flags are “not automatic indicators of Indigenous identity fraud” but provide grounds for further investigation. Many “red flags” might only indicate entirely legitimate attempts to reclaim Māori identity, perhaps lost for some generations due to the assimilationist policies pursued in earlier periods. Therefore, the following steps were required to confirm the identity of a self-indigenizer. I compared Indigenous identity claims with official birth records, resulting in discrepancies for six self-indigenizers who held academic roles, all of whom were Pākehā. The set was reduced by two due to their lack of public discussion of their Māori identities. I then had confidential conversations with kaumātua and other leaders in the purported iwi of the self-indigenizers, in order to confirm my findings. In each case, these kaumātua or leaders were able to confirm that they were already aware of the self-indigenizers’ false claims (and in most cases, that this knowledge had been repeatedly communicated to their respective institutional academic employers but with either delayed, limited, or no results). I then analyzed the publicly available writings of the remaining four appropriators of Indigenous identity, coding their contents according to their evident motivations and methods of self-indigenization.

Information on the self-identifying White Hotu relies on a mixture of already available sources and my own interviews conducted with Monica Matāmua in Taumarunui in late 2022, including a visit to the Matāmua land block where I was shown ancient trails used by Ngāti Hotu. Several publications by pre-Polynesian theorists on the Hotu draw on discussions with Matāmua or include her own writings. Peter Marsh and Gabi Plumm’s 2015 documentary trilogy Skeletons in the Cupboard was also useful for its detailed interview footage of Matāmua and members of her family (Marsh 2015). In addition, this study makes use of Matāmua’s public evidence before the Māori Land Court and Waitangi Tribunal hearings, in which she made available her family’s whakapapa (genealogy). As for the self-indigenizers, I confirmed my findings in a confidential conversation with a Ngāti Tūwharetoa kaumātua who was well informed about Matāmua, her Hotu claims, and about her ancestry.

2. White New Zealand Academics Who Claim to Be Indigenous Māori

I describe here the methods and evident motivations used by Pākeha academics to self-indigenize as Māori, sourced from public statements made by the four self-indigenizers whom I identified. The points made are, of necessity, generalized and summarizing to avoid providing specific details or verbatim quotes that might make known the identity of any of the four self-indigenizers.

Of the four New Zealand Pākehā academics identified as appropriating Indigenous identity, three originally did not grow up considering themselves to be Māori. Their adoption of Māori identity was made in adulthood, and two of the self-indigenizers are recorded making clear statements distinguishing themselves from Māori at an earlier time in their lives. One recorded statement, for example, made just one year before one self-indigenizer identified as Māori, distinguished between “us” (implicitly Pākehā) and “them” (Māori), and between the time that “they” (Māori) “owned” the country and when “we” (Pākehā) did. In all three cases, it was during their time as undergraduate or postgraduate students that they started to identify as Māori. In each case, although to different degrees, their studies included a Māori Studies component. Teillet has noted the same trend among many North American self-indigenizers, who “take an Indigenous Studies course, get intrigued, and over time begin to identify with the subject of their studies” (Teillet 2022, p. 13). Given the precarious nature of the contemporary academic job market, it is safe to assume that they were each aware that identification as Māori also offered them greater employment opportunities. One of the Pākehā self-indigenizers, before they identified as Māori, is recorded as voicing a complaint that they were disadvantaged compared with Māori students, due to their lack of familiarity with the language and culture. They also had demanded higher grades to recognize what they perceived as their disadvantage vis-à-vis Māori. It is difficult not to conclude that their subsequent identification as Māori was seen as a way of dealing with their own resentment, to appropriate what they saw as Māori privilege and advantage.

Having identified as Māori, the self-identifiers often engaged in the construction of backstories to their lives, presenting themselves as having always known that they were Māori. One of the self-indigenizers accounts for their decision to go to university as the need to recover their Māori heritage, which had been “lost” to generations of their family. This is the same self-indigenizer who was recorded as distinguishing “us” (Pākehā) and “them” (Māori) many years after commencing university. Therefore, their self-identification as Māori had been transferred back many years. Self-indigenizers are often involved in a continual re-narration of their lives, perhaps not only to present a coherent story to others but also to convince themselves. In any case, there is a drive among self-indigenizers to retroject their acquired identity onto their pasts. Two of the self-indigenizers mention being misrecognized by Māori as being Māori before their self-indigenization or being asked if they were Māori, and they describe how this bolstered their later self-identifications as Māori. In one case, family banter between a husband and wife, in which the dark-haired spouse was called “Māori”, was recalled by the self-indigenizing child many years later as a serious statement about their parent’s Indigeneity—even though the parent denied being Māori. Sometimes the claim of “always knowing they were Māori” takes a mystic form, drawing on the stereotype of Indigenous people as a more spiritual people. Some reported feeling called or confirmed by their tūpuna/tīpuna (ancestors), of somehow “feeling” Māori, having a “sense” of being Māori, or knowing in their “heart”, which served to confirm their self-indigenization and somehow outweighed the absence of any genealogy to support their mystical intuitions (cf. Joseph Boyden, in Gaudry 2018, p. 162).

One recurrent yet unanticipated element in their processes of self-indigenization was their recourse to photos of alleged Māori ancestors (in the absence of any records that the photographed ancestors were Māori). Two of the four self-indigenizers adduced a family photo as proof of a Māori ancestor. In each case, an old black-and-white photo depicted an ancestor that official records describe as entirely of British origin. The photos chosen by the self-indigenizers showed ancestors with ambiguous features, either a “swarthy” Brit or a trace of possible stereotypical Māori features. I was able to locate a copy of one of these photos, which had bolstered one self-indigenizer’s identification as Māori, and could imagine how a highly biased perspective might lead to the Englishman’s features being misrecognized as Māori. Yet the bare fact that they found solid support for their self-indigenization based on such a photo suggests they were already disposed to convince themselves of their Māori identity, as much as they were motivated to convince others of their Māori self-identification. The photos of ancestors became an important component in their narratives of coming to identify as Māori.

Family rumor is a recurrent element in self-indigenization. The rumors in each case serve to explain how the official records (which show solely European ancestry) were not to be believed. The stories included a great-grandmother said to have had an affair with a Māori man and, for another self-indigenizer, a child of a Māori family said to be adopted by Pākehā ancestors despite there being no official records of the alleged adoption. In two cases, it was simply that official records were disputed as not recording the facts. In one case, specious explanations were given why “lateral descent” (Teillet 2022, p. 27)—specifically, a Māori great-uncle or great-aunt—should be reinterpreted as a direct Māori ancestor. When the self-indigenizers had extended family members who were Māori, but not direct ancestors, it appears to have encouraged the self-indigenizers to imagine that they too were Māori. In one case, finding a well-known Māori surname among their ancestors—albeit also a European surname—cemented their argument that they too were Māori. Yet “lateral descent”, of course, is not true descent. One self-indigenizer reported visiting the urupā (burial ground) of their Māori ancestors, who were in fact members of an early European whaling family who had Māori relatives. Vague claims that the children of Māori relatives may have been adopted somewhere along the line helped provide the veneer of substantiation to their claim.

In some cases, the self-indigenizers began with claims that were usefully vague, which made it difficult to pin down precisely what they were claiming. Yet the vagueness made it easier for them to change the details over time. A Māori great-grandmother in one telling became, in a later telling, a Pākehā great-grandmother who had an affair with an unnamed Māori man. A direct ancestor in one telling became the family member of a direct ancestor in another telling. Two of the self-indigenizers also related stories of undocumented additional wives or husbands.

Sturm identifies “the most common element” in the narratives of self-indigenizers as their claim that earlier generations denied their Indigeneity out of shame and that some contemporary relatives deny their Indigeneity out of continued shame (Sturm 2011, p. 33). Three of the four self-indigenizers employed this motif, which served to amplify their personal trauma and sense of victimhood, while also inadvertently revealing that even their own family members remained unconvinced by their identification as Māori. Yet shame and embarrassment at having Māori ancestry is, in contemporary Aotearoa New Zealand, an increasingly weak and uncompelling explanation, due to the diminishing stigmatization or increasing valorization of having Māori ancestry. In one case, a full sibling of a self-indigenizer provided online details of their DNA ethnicity matches. Although the self-indigenizer claims that they have one full Māori great-grandparent, their sibling’s DNA matches were entirely British with traces of Scandinavian ancestry—contradicting the self-indigenizer’s claim of Māori descent, as well as their claim that official records had erased a Māori ancestor.

The self-indigenizers regularly make mention of Māori elders and friends as a way to implant themselves into Māori communities. Kinship terms are used of friends in a way that ambiguously suggest they are Māori relatives. Friends and colleagues are regularly referred to as “sister”, “aunty”, “whaea” (aunty or elder woman), “kui(a)” (grandmother or elderly woman), “tāua” (grandmother or elderly woman), and “pōua” (grandfather or elderly man), and reference is made to “tūpuna/tīpuna” (ancestors, implying especially Māori ancestors).

There is a strong tendency among self-indigenizers to treat their lack of Māori community, culture, and language as a matter of personal trauma, discussed alongside and on par with the trauma of colonialization (cf. TallBear 2023, p. 99). One self-indigenizer—displaying a considerable lack of self-awareness—laments that they were brought up in a well-off Pākehā family, because it deprived them of experiencing Māori culture. Three of the four self-indigenizers blame colonialization for not being able to produce genealogical proofs of their Māori ancestry. Legitimate criticisms of the ways New Zealand has measured blood quantum, or half-castes, or used colonial bureaucracy to facilitate land acquisitions are regularly commandeered by self-indigenizers and then converted into a personal justification for lacking (“Western”, “colonial”, “modern”) proof that they are Māori.

Studies of self-indigenization identify considerable harms caused to Indigenous peoples and institutions by self-indigenizers. In the first place, each self-indigenizer has taken academic roles or other jobs from Indigenous people (Teillet 2022, p. 36) and depleted financial resources allocated to Indigenous peoples (Leroux 2019, p. 93). All of the Pākehā self-indigenizers have taken up roles that center their claimed Indigenous status within their various fields. By appropriating Indigenous identity, they therefore mislead others by pretending to speak authoritatively about Indigenous traditions, and they frequently misrepresent those traditions (Pewewardy 2004, p. 203). Some, similar to the newly founded Métis groups in Eastern Canada (Gaudry and Leroux 2017), even claim to possess the more authentic form of Indigenous traditions and practices, entering into dispute with leading Māori academics in their alleged iwi, in the process deprecating genuine Indigenous knowledge and undermining Indigenous ethical concerns. Legal claims and challenges by self-indigenizers may potentially divert time and resources from Indigenous peoples (Junka-Aikio 2023, p. 293). In addition, the exposure of Indigenous identity appropriation in academia has the potential to taint genuine Māori academics or to cast undue suspicion on Māori academics who are White-passing.

Self-indigenization in academia produces a series of detrimental outcomes specific to the sector. Jean Teillet (2022, pp. 5–6) likens fraudulent identity claims in universities to a “poison”, which “taints the integrity of academy, the scholarship built on the deception, and the Indigenous staff, students, and faculty of the university”. Teillet warns that other universities and students may avoid universities where self-indigenizers have been exposed and that postgraduate students may lose funding, be sullied by association, or disheartened by such a blatant breach of trust, in particular where a supervisor–student relationship exists (p. 38). Scholarship produced by self-indigenizers tends to misrepresent Indigenous societies, to misshape public policy, and to undermine Indigenous trust in higher education (Teillet 2022, p. 6). Where self-indigenizing Pākehā take up work in overseas universities, as has been the case for some of the four self-indigenizers, it is unlikely that the overseas university will have the expertise to determine whether they are Māori or not and, so, will rely on records from Aotearoa New Zealand. Given the lack of procedures in Aotearoa New Zealand universities to confirm Māori ancestry and affiliation to iwi—compounded by factors such as uneven consultation with tangata whenua, the widespread reliance of tertiary institutions on academic self-identification, and the pressure on university administrators to increase quotas of Māori scholars—there is a high risk of damage to the worldwide reputation of Māori academics from unchecked self-indigenizing Pākehā. That has been the experience in North America, where the lack of verification procedures with Indigenous communities in earlier years has now been recognized as a major encouragement for self-indigenizers, who did not think they would ever be caught (Pewewardy 2004, p. 200).

3. Māori Who Claim to Be Indigenous White Hotu

The group of central North Island Māori who claim to be the descendants of a White race called the Hotu may at first appear to present the inverse case of self-indigenizing Pākehā. Yet there are similar patterns, including motivations and harms, in their false claim to Indigeneity. The modern-day Hotu claim to be the only true Indigenous inhabitants of Aotearoa New Zealand, a claim that carries the heavy implication that Māori are not truly Indigenous. Their claim therefore represents another variation of false claims to Indigeneity that appropriate Indigenous status for personal gain.

Matāmua’s central claim is startling: “I am not and my people were not Māori or Polynesian” (in Aldworth 2019, p. 56). Her people, she claims, were a “white race” of people “who came to New Zealand over 2000 years ago” (in Aldworth 2019, p. 22). Matāmua contends that her people “were here long before the first Polynesian set foot on these shores, which makes us the true tangata whenua (people of the land)”. Pitting her family against Māori, she adds, “if it[’]s offensive to Māori to learn that a white race were the founder settlers of New Zealand, well that’s just too bad, because it’s the truth” (in Aldworth 2019, p. 41). She claims that, after being forced into hiding for centuries, today some 2000 surviving Hotu are standing up to be counted.

Via their competing and exclusive claim to Indigeneity, Matāmua and other self-identifying Hotu believe they have established a superior land claim against all other central North Island Māori iwi. Their belief in Hotu Indigeneity has motivated and sustained Matāmua’s three-decades-long legal battle to occupy a small (250-acre) section of her ancestors’ rohe (territory of land) in the Taurewa Block south of Lake Taupō. During this period, she has made numerous appearances in Land Courts and Waitangi Tribunal hearings. During her 50s, Matāmua lived in a tent at Te Rena for five years at the discretion of Tūwharetoa trustees. Her family were evicted by trustees on more than one occasion, and, in 2002, baches (small houses) that the Matāmua family had built there for two of Matāmua’s grandchildren and their families were forcibly removed along with equipment in a children’s playground. Her whānau (family group) were more than once restricted from visiting the land, including the family urupā (burial grounds), and incurred legal costs of some NZD 40,000. It was not until 2021 that her family’s legal claim to the land was eventually recognized. In all this, Matāmua and her family have been driven by the sense that they have a superior right to the land as the true Indigenous people.

After Matāmua had made a number of claims about descent from the Hotu in Waitangi Tribunal hearings, these claims came to the attention of the owner/editor of Papakura publisher Franklin eLocal, Mykeljon Winckel. A keen proponent of White pre-Polynesian settlement theories—encouraged also by Matāmua’s relatively fair complexion, green eyes, and auburn hair—Winckel believed that Matāmua’s DNA would provide the definitive proof of these theories. Winckel arranged for Matāmua to take a DNA test, paid for by the publisher. She obliged, and the results were published in a Franklin eLocal publication titled DNA to Rock the Nation (Capper et al. 2016). Winckel’s motivation to counter Māori claims to Indigeneity are clear from the title and are even more clear from his Editor’s Note, which reads, “One wonders how Monica’s DNA could change our current political landscape? Are we not all immigrants?”

Matāmua’s DNA results, according to the publication, were limited to her mother’s side (none of whom are Pākehā in any degree). Yet her DNA results produced a 24% ethnicity match with Northern Europe and the Mediterranean. On receiving the results, she recalls, “I just wept… because they prove beyond doubt I am not Polynesian, nor Māori”. Matāmua’s DNA results were cited as definitive proof of White pre-Polynesian settlement in publications by alternative-history authors John Aldworth (2019, pp. 21–74), Martin Doutré in (Marsh 2015), and Maxwell Hill (2016, p. xv). The widest publicity for Matāmua’s DNA results came, however, from a documentary trilogy produced by Peter Marsh and Gabi Plumm, Skeletons in the Cupboard, which was streamed on the OnDemand streaming service provided by the major New Zealand television network TVNZ (Marsh 2015; cf. Rose 2018). In addition, folk singer Paula Feather composed a song (“The Lost Ones”) as a paean to Matāmua’s White Hotu ancestors, which Feather performed at one of Matāmua’s Waitangi Tribunal hearings in Taumarunui in 2014 (Feather 2014).

Matāmua is aware that she has many Māori ancestors but believes that her White pre-Polynesian Hotu ancestry has somehow been preserved in such a way that it has come to the fore in her genetic make-up. Similarly, pre-Polynesian theorist John Aldworth explains away Matāmua’s many Māori ancestors, describing them as “genetic interventions” to her essential White racial identity:

Despite these genetic “interventions” and the fact of Māori intermarriage into Monica’s ancestral line, the predominant Caucasian genetic characteristics won through to make Monica truly the person she appears to be and knows that she is—a true daughter of the European-Mediterranean Patupaiarehe people who have lived in New Zealand for more than 2200 years.

(Aldworth 2019, p. 45)

Aldworth, like other pre-Polynesian theorists, understands Matāmua’s DNA to offer a direct route to an ancient, pure racial essence. It is an unsurprising conclusion, given that mainstream DNA research, too, has been criticized for resurrecting biological essentialism (Sommer 2010, p. 386). Genetic ancestry testing appeals to fantasies of discovering pure roots that thereby justify ethnic rights and privileges as inherent, invoking “assumptions of shared cultural ethos, racial coherence, and a clearly defined historical trajectory” (Oikkonen 2015, p. 766). Matāmua adopts a similar essentialist approach to her DNA results, using them to differentiate the Hotu from Māori. Matāmua writes, “my DNA test proved what we have believed all along, that we were farming, stone building, trading and seafaring people from the Mediterranean” in (Aldworth 2019, p. 37). The DNA results do show a small Mediterranean match, but Matāmua’s essentializing description of herself and her people as peaceful and in harmony with nature is her own gloss. By contrast, Matāmua describes the major Māori iwi in the area, Tūwharetoa, as essentially destructive and warmongering: “a belligerent, trouble-making, violent people” in (Aldworth 2019, p. 37; cf. Simon 2020, pp. 107–8). Matāmua’s DNA results provide her with not only purported evidence of her White pre-Polynesian ancestry but also an innate genetic and moral superiority to Māori.

Matāmua’s claim that her DNA test was limited to her mother’s side, however, is incorrect. She took the National Geographic’s Geno 2.0 DNA test in about 2013, a test that utilizes nuclear DNA —DNA she received from both her mother and her father. The booklet DNA to Rock the Nation also appears to misunderstand the nature of nuclear DNA, claiming that, as Matāmua had no Y-chromosome, “Monica’s paternal line could not be mapped” (but it was “mapped”, as Matāmua’s father of course gave her an X-chromosome). The publication also claimed that Matāmua’s DNA results derive wholly from “Mitochondrial Eve” (although nuclear DNA cannot be traced back nearly that far).

The Genographic Project matched Matāmua’s nuclear DNA results with the following population groups: Northern European and Mediterranean, 24%; Northeast and Southeast Asian, 48%; Southwest Asian, 4%; Oceanian, 18%; and Sub-Saharan African, 6%. When we take both Matāmua’s maternal and paternal sides into account, which is what her DNA results in fact measure, the results are almost exactly as we would expect. For one of Matāmua’s grandfathers, on her paternal side, was Joseph Ham (1860–1915), an immigrant from Cornwall, England. Joseph Ham was the descendant of several generations of Cornish people. Therefore, Matāmua is 25% Cornish, a figure that fully accounts for her 24% European–Mediterranean DNA. The remainder of her DNA, which agrees with other DNA profiles of people from Asia and Oceania, is what we would expect from a DNA test from ca. 2013, for a woman with three out of four grandparents who were Māori. Indeed, the DNA results are consistent with the genealogies Matāmua submitted to the Māori Land Courts and Waitangi Tribunal, where she identified her three-quarters Māori ancestry as deriving from Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Ngāti Pikiao, Ngāti Maru, and Ngāti Raukawa. As Cornish ancestry accounts for the remaining quarter of her DNA matches, Matāmua’s alleged White pre-Polynesian DNA reduces to zero. The spate of alternative histories that champion Matāmua’s DNA, as well as the television documentary Skeletons in the Cupboard, are all based on this major yet rudimentary error.

Matāmua’s belief that she and other Hotu descend from a mythic White race has served her well. The belief provided her and her family with the authority to oppose trustees of the major iwi of the area, Tūwharetoa, and the stamina and will-power to pursue her land claims that lasted several decades. Her invented White Indigenous whakapapa provided her whānau with the ideological compensation for real and substantial deprivations they had suffered. Yet her claim to represent the remnant of the only true Indigenous people of Aotearoa has had a significant detrimental outcome; it provides pseudo-scientific grounds to deny the Indigenous status of all Māori.

Matāmua’s identification as Indigenous White Hotu, furthermore, demonizes all Māori as violent colonizers of the true Indigenous people. Matāmua’s appropriation of White Indigeneity in effect replaces the colonizing British with Māori as the people that dispossessed the Indigenous people of Aotearoa. This implication is made explicit by Matāmua, who states, “Thank God the European came when he did. If the British hadn’t come here there would have been none of us [Hotu] left”.

The centrality of DNA evidence to Matāmua’s claims has convinced a great number of New Zealanders that pre-Polynesian settlement theories are correct. DNA results have more impact than other evidence, given the high epistemic authority accorded to scientific proof. Matāmua has thus emboldened a very large number of New Zealanders to deny Māori their Indigenous status. According to a 2022 survey (=1010), 39% of New Zealanders now deny that Māori were the first people to settle in Aotearoa, while only 22% affirm Māori as the first settlers (39% either have no opinion or are unsure: Galbraith and McClelland, forthcoming). Such beliefs also correlate with the evidence discussed above of increased backlash against Māori.

4. Conclusions

The study has provided the first examination of Indigenous identity appropriation in the Aotearoa New Zealand context. This study first places this phenomenon within the context of increased valorization of Indigeneity and increased stigmatization of colonialization, which in recent decades has provided the incentive for Pākehā to identify as Māori. It also situates Indigenous identity appropriation in the context of White backlash, which has provided an impetus for the wide dissemination of White pre-Polynesian settlement theories from the 1970s onwards, as well as motivation for academic self-indigenizers who have imagined they were disadvantaged by so-called “Māori privilege” and could be advantaged by identifying as Māori.

This study limits its examination of self-indigenizers to four Pākehā academics and the Hotu group. Such investigations are time consuming, and I have not considered the great majority of academics working in, or trained in, Aotearoa New Zealand who identify as Māori. I would expect future examinations of the self-indigenizing phenomenon would likely discover many further self-indigenizers in Aotearoa New Zealand academia and identify further motivations and methods for self-indigenizing. Outside of academia, in particular in the public sector, it is likely that there are several other self-indigenizers who have taken advantage of the current lack of confirmation procedures for those who self-identify as Māori. This study, I hope, raises awareness of a phenomenon that is widespread in other settler colonial states and demonstrates that Aotearoa New Zealand is just as liable to Indigenous identity appropriation as elsewhere. Lastly, this study highlights that current “check-box” self-identification procedures in many academic and other institutions are thoroughly inadequate to deal with the issue, if not negligent in their obligations to tangata whenua.