ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the cases and statutes that extended the jurisdiction of the colonial courts, and colonial marriage laws, over the indigenous Maori people, assimilating Maori to a centralised, homogenous set of laws and practices, and excluding Maori marriage laws and customs from that jurisdiction, and from the emerging nation. It traces the racing and gendering of marriage jurisdiction as a process of the creation of internal difference within the emerging nation-state. The chapter discusses the project of solidifying New Zealand as a white, Christian nation-state by drawing jurisdictional and national boundaries in marriage cases that exclude Maori marriage laws and practices through associating them with the pre-modern, raced concepts of concubinage and polygamy. Territorial jurisdiction contributes to the construction of political subjectivity by tying individuals to the fixed boundaries of the modern nation-state. Jurisdiction participates in the homogenisation of an emerging nation through a centralised power system.
