ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the joint government-tribal efforts to “fix” the Census 2018 iwi data after operational failures resulted in nearly one-third of the Māori population being missed. Working through the methodology shows that the production of the adjusted iwi counts relied as much on judgements about Māori demography, contemporary tribal politics and Māori identity as it did on the application of statistical methods. It also reveals a more fundamental problem underlying the production of iwi statistics arising from the conceptual mismatch between tribal definitions of belonging rooted in kinship and individuals’ self-identification in a government-controlled context. The chapter concludes with a reflection on the future of the census in Aotearoa and how devolving authority to tribes to define their own population parameters will likely produce better quality and more meaningful tribal data.
