Maori Role Models

New Zealand is a model for Canada in improving its relations with indigenous populations. By adopting lessons from the Maori experience, a report by the Winnipeg-based Frontier Centre for Public Policy is urging a change in Canadian aboriginal policy. The report’s researcher Joseph Quesnel found in a 10-year study of aboriginals from four countries, that Maori made the greatest gains, with better educational attainment and higher incomes. Here’s the important point: “There was an understanding that any movement toward indigenous cultural and political self-determination had to be accompanied by economic self-reliance. They could not call themselves self-governing while receiving handouts and massive government transfers.”