Closing the doors on the Maori Schools in New Zealand1

Abstract

For 100 years a system of Native Schools operated in New Zealand, the principal objective of which was to support a state policy of assimilation. Decisions to disband the system were made in a context of social, economic and demographic change, and were rationalized as providing a positive step forward for Maori. Also influential was the growing international debate on issues of racism. The juxtaposition of Maori and Pakeha systems, albeit within an official policy of non‐segregation, was posited by education officials as being potentially dangerous socially, and attention came to be focused not on the benefits of an integrated system, but on the dangers of an increasingly segregated one. This paper examines the politics of transfer that marked the absorption of individual schools into the mainstream system, and the ultimate disestablishment of the Maori Schools system. Drawing on interviews from an oral history project, it juxtaposes understandings of the system as it was officially expressed with insights offered by individual pupils and teachers, suggesting that whilst the system began with colonial intentions of assimilation, the impact of personnel central to the schools became important in shaping what the schools meant to the communities. The paper argues that the multifaceted decisions to disband the system did not necessarily reflect the rights or aspirations of Maori. In most cases, in fact, such decisions were counter to Maori personal and collective interests. More significant, perhaps, is the fact that Maori were unfavourably positioned to have their point of view seriously considered in the decision‐making process.

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