Tackling Maori Masculinity: A Colonial Genealogy of Savagery and Sport

Abstract

The primary aim of this paper is to deconstruct one of the dominant discourses surrounding Mäori men—a discourse that was constructed to limit, homogenize, and reproduce an acceptable and imagined Mäori masculinity, and one that has also gained hegemonic consent from many täne. I use a genealogical approach to outline the historical underpinnings of the image of the Mäori man as naturally physical, and the mechanisms, including the confiscation of land and a racist state education system, that served to propound and perpetuate this construction. The contemporary portrayal of the natural Mäori sportsman has evolved from these historical roots in what has become a largely subconscious but no less insidious pattern of subjugation through positively framed sporting images.