Leading demographer Tahu Kukutai says people need to rethink what it means to be Maori after discovery that almost one-fifth of all Maori in the world now live outside New Zealand. Yesterday, the Population Association conference was held in Auckland where Kukutai spoke on Maori demographics. According to Kukutai 151,000 of the 815,000 Maori people in the world now live overseas, 140,000 of them in Australia. Using census data from Australia, Britain, the United States and Canada, Kukutai has calculated the numbers of Maori in those countries at the beginning of the last decade, and has estimated population growth since then. Figures are approximate since some countries do not directly register Maori ethnicity so estimates were used by matching birthplace data with ethnic categories such as “other race not Chinese”. There is now multi-generational Maori communities living away from New Zealand, said Kukutai. A third of people with Maori ancestry in Australia were born there, and about 6000 are third-generation Australian Maori whose parents were also born there. Although some Maori have gone overseas since the earliest days of European contact Kukutai argues that Maori remain close to their original identity. “It's something about the identity, that sense of longingness, because the notion of being Maori is so heavily rooted in being in Aotearoa. That perhaps gives the support for enduring Maori communities away from home,” said Kukutai. The growing Maori diaspora, requires new thinking, says Kukutai. “Are there ways of being Maori away from home?” she asked. “How many generations can you sustain that? What about land succession?” Kukutai said iwi (tribe) organisations were trying to maintain contact with members who still had land rights but lived abroad. Despite these efforts, Maori groups were struggling to keep up contact details and Kukutai suggested Maori would need to come up with modern ways to keep the connection with their home country. BM
