Land loss and the intergenerational transmission of wellbeing: The experience of iwi in Aotearoa New Zealand

Rowan Ropata Macgregor Thom and Arthur Grimes

Social Science & Medicine, 2022, vol. 296, issue C

Abstract: We analyse the impact of land loss, through colonisation, on contemporary cultural wellbeing and health outcomes of Māori, the Indigenous population of Aotearoa New Zealand. In 1840, Māori legally owned all land in the country; by 2017, Māori owned just 5% of land. Ties to the land (whenua) have been identified as being critical to spirituality (wairua) and health (hauora). All tribes (iwi) experienced major land loss, but the timing, extent and nature of land loss differed across iwi. In some cases, land was confiscated following the New Zealand wars of the nineteenth century. We draw on recently derived data for historical landholdings of 70 (North Island) iwi to link the extent of historical landholdings, and whether land was confiscated, to contemporary outcomes for five cultural wellbeing and health outcomes for each iwi: te reo Māori (Māori language) proficiency, importance of involvement in Māori culture, visiting an ancestral marae (meeting place), difficulty in finding support for Māori cultural practices, and rates of regular smoking. We find that higher land retention within an iwi's rohe at the end of the nineteenth century is supportive of contemporary cultural wellbeing outcomes, while confiscation is linked to higher contemporary rates of smoking. The evidence is consistent with historical trauma having significant effects on the cultural wellbeing and health outcomes of Aotearoa New Zealand's Indigenous population over a century later.

Keywords: Māori; Land; Cultural wellbeing; Te reo; Language; Health; Smoking; Aotearoa New Zealand (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953622001101
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:296:y:2022:i:c:s0277953622001101

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
http://www.elsevier. ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2022.114804

Access Statistics for this article

Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian

More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().