Calling Australia Home

Almost one in five Maori — or 151,000 of the total population of 815,000 — now live outside New Zealand, with most — 140,000 — calling Australia home. An increasing number were born in Australia into families who had been there for two or even three generations, said demographer Dr Tahu Kukutai, a research fellow at Waikato University. Kukutai said Maori living in Australia had not lost their sense of being Maori and were quite unlikely to have taken up Australian citizenship. Nevertheless, she did warn that the shift would require a rethink of what it means to be an indigenous New Zealander. “Are there ways of being Maori away from home?” she asked. “How many generations can you sustain that? What about land succession?”