The Ngai Tahu's Tribe Economic Changes In New Zealand

This paper is dedicated to the writing of economic ethnography of Maori Ngai Tahu tribe. Ngai Tahu is a typical Maori tribe in Newzealand comprising 18 papatipus(clans) throughout the South Island. Its economy has experienced a transition from collecting/fishing/hunting to colonization and then to modern capitalist economy.The colonization of UK in New Zealand started from the signing of "Waitangi Treaty" in 1840. The invasion of western capitalism to Maorian primitive soceity has thoroughly changed the socio-ecosystem of the last inhabited continent by human beings. After nearly 150 years' unfair treatment of losing homeland and being destitute, Ngai Tahu people launched claims to the Crown in 1986, which are first Maori tribe claims in NZ. Te Runanga o Ngai Tahu Act 1996 and Ngai Tahu Claims Settlement Act 1998 were passed by the Congress respectively.After reviewing the historical process, this paper holds that there are two fundamental historical reasons for Te Runanga o Ngai Tahu to gain its legal status and the repayment of the Crown. One is the Pan-Maori ethnical movement represented by Maorian sovereignty. In the late 200 years, Maorian Sovereignty has experienced an evolution of awareness starting from scratch, from the vaguely defined'shadow of land' to land ownership, from individual power of tribe (papatipu) chiefs to collective autonomy power. This movement reached its climax in 1970-80s. The other reason is the "Rogernomics" adopted by New Zealand government. This prevailing political-economical evolution in major western countries was originated from the new liberal economics of Hayek and Freedman.Te Runanga o Ngai Tahu has capitalized collectively after the settlement. It founded Ngai Tahu Holdings Corporation and employs professional management team to run, according to the model of long-lasting inter-generation corporations. In the meantime, it introduces western election mechanism and modern bureaucratic system as well as implements tribal autonomy and manages the distribution within the tribe, indicating the secondary legal position of Ngai Tahu Tribe in New Zealand--the formation of tribe authority. As a small ethnic group of only a couple of ten-thousand people, it utilizes collective memory and identification of the tribal people, meanwhile integrating with modern main-stream political and economical governance models, thus openes up an innovative way of participating regional,national, even global competition by minority ethnic people.If such innovation is also a kind of return—return to the ancient kinship, then whether tribal collective property rights could survive in modern society becomes an inevitable question to be answered by this paper.From the perspective of western economics, the nature of Ngai Tahu's tribal capitalism is a kind of welfare system under principal-agent relationship, a modern adpation of Maori traditional soceity to the capitalism. In the context of liberal economics, clear individual property rights helps people form reasonable expections in the process of exchange. Such expections are expressed in different laws, customs, and moralities in different societies. In modern Ngai Tahu tribe organizations, the reciprocal expectations represented by'hau'in traditional Maori society function as individual property rights.From the perspective of political economics, the reversed relationship between people and land for 300 years not only questions the fairness of inter-generation inheritance, but also challenges human objective living style itself.From the perspective of economic anthropology, collective indigenous property rights criticizes that western cultural order based on individual possession jepodizes the natural attributes of living in groups. This order is not an universal natural rule.Lastly, whether this "limited-objective rationality"diachronism continuurn could survive in the long run depends on whether the Ngai Tahu people could "'maorilize" western social system and ideology so as to move toward a higher level of tribe intergration while maintaining its tribal culture.