ABSTRACT
This chapter examines on-going conflict between white settlers and Indigenous Māori over land, including wilderness, and cultural values attached to that land in Aoteoroa/New Zealand. It begins by setting out key Māori relationship with Te Whenua (land) and attitudes towards it. The chapter moves on to examine the conflict between a small but growing cadre of settlers and their descendants committed to conservation from the 1870s onwards against the great majority committed to development and ‘progress’. It concludes by looking at recent attempts of Māori iwi (tribes) to secure some kind of coexistence with the descendants of British settlers (Pākehā) through encouraging conservation of land, including some wilderness areas (notwithstanding that Māori do not valorise wilderness in the same way as Pākehā.) So, although this story is a variant on that of other former white settler colonies, it differs in interesting ways from efforts to protect wilderness undertaken in the USA, Australia, Canada and elsewhere, not only because of differences in the timing of settlement, and the composition of the immigrants, but also because of the involvement and resistance of the Indigenous people.
