Every week there is some explicit or implicit attack on iwi, hapū and whānau Māori.
Last week it was the removal of Māori property rights in the Marine and Coastal Act amendment Bill. This week it is government ministers saying that the swastika, a world-renowned symbol of white power, racism and violence, is not intimidating.
As destructive as these government actions are right now, they are not defining the future for iwi and hapū Māori. Our future is in our own hands.
Last week I attended the fourth of the Kotahitanga hui at Tuahiwi Marae, in Canterbury. It was a huge hui as the others had been, with incredible manaaki from Kai Tahu and Tuahiwi whānui.
The theme of the kōrero at this hui was indigenous economics and tribal institution-building. This topic built very logically from that of the hui held in Kahungunu at Omahu Marae which considered the collective political structures that would work best for hapū Māori.
At Omahu it was clear that any political structures would not mirror those of the Parliament nor arise out of the Parliament.
Rather, tikanga would be the structural guide, marae would be the site of authority and hapū would be the decision-makers.
The Omahu hui was an excellent reminder that we have our own institutions through which to act collectively and we do so every day.
The Tuahiwi hui expanded on that approach by considering our indigenous economic independence at iwi and at hapū level. The discussion touched on iwi economic growth and kāinga businesses building housing and producing kai.
Examples from other first nations communities showed how broad and deep indigenous economic independence can be.
Writing about indigenous economic independence is always tricky.
Māori are bombarded with conflicting economic messages. On one hand we are regularly described in the deficit, always poor, always dependent and criticised for that.
Māori poverty is a common trope that is heavily researched and publicly discussed, especially by government departments. Often the underlying narrative is that it is a unsolvable problem, persistent because it is innate to us as individuals.
On the other hand, Māori wealth, especially of collectives, is treated like a threat to national security. Wealth means independence and independence somehow leads to fears of secession and then all hell breaks loose.
In fact, the poverty suffered by whānau is not about Māori individuals at all: it is a direct consequence of the persistent failure of the Crown to honour articles 2 and 3 of te Tiriti o Waitangi.
The poverty narrative benefits those who want to keep the focus on "Māori dependency" rather than foster Māori economic independence. The dependency narrative keeps us under control whereas economic independence is liberating.
The kōrero at the Tuahiwi hui was not just its own challenge to the Māori poverty narrative, it enabled honest appraisals about the need for indigenous economic independence and how it might be achieved.
There is a lot for iwi and hapū Māori to work with.
The Māori contribution to the New Zealand economy already exceeds $70 billion and is set to reach $100b in a few years. Iwi, hapū and Māori-collective owned businesses have interests in farming, forestry, food supply, energy, infrastructure and many other commercial and social services.
Māori have been economic entrepreneurs since before the first wave of colonisation and continue to be so.
That is hugely challenging. If anyone read the anti-co-governance pamphlets from the last election, you would have seen just how terrified the authors were of the potential economic power that iwi Māori might wield.
This is why the "Māori poverty" narrative is so important to those people. The prospect of Māori exercising the same or better economic power as they do means accessing the same political and legal power that they do.
The "anti" lobby jealously guards its political and legal power.
But as much as many of them might have the ear of this particular coalition government, the fact is that Māori economic endurance has a longer life than any particular government. There are many more opportunities for economic growth both at the iwi or national level and the marae or local level.
This is why the kōrero at Tuahiwi was so exciting. It was a discussion on how we might structure our economic futures based on our tikanga and sourced in our kāinga.
Just as the Omahu hui reminded us about the strength of our own political institutions, the Tuahiwi hui reminded us of the tenacity of our economic independence.
■Metiria Stanton Turei is a senior law lecturer at the University of Otago and a former Green Party MP and co-leader.
