Editorial: Maori ABs deserve special place

Separate representation for a racial minority is in no sense "racist". Photo / NZME

It is just a pity that the selection criteria was not more culturally demanding.

The Lions' opponents tonight, the Maori All Blacks, may seem a strange designation for a collection of players who always include a few whose Maori heritage was hitherto unknown to the public. It is quite obviously a third ranking All Black team, including all of those unlucky to miss out on the squad selected for the Lions series. But while all players contracted to New Zealand Rugby can nominate themselves for national Maori selection, NZ Rugby has a kaumatua for the team whose task it is to check the whakapapa of every player considered for selection.

That will not please those among the public who find it strange that we still field a "race-based" team. It is not strange in the slightest, it is thoroughly healthy that Maori have a distinctive presence in international rugby. It is just a pity that the selection criteria was not more culturally demanding. Ideally there would be no possibility that a top player with a distant genealogical connection could stand in the way of a player whose identity and whakapapa requires no research.

The value of a Maori representative team should be the ability of all Maori to identify with it, they are less able to do so if it appears to them to be open to anyone on the verge of higher selection. Rugby has been such a well integrated sport in New Zealand since its inception that it probably sees no need to ensure Maori have an unequivocally distinctive team. Indeed, a common misconception these days sees a distinctive team to be "separatist" even akin to "apartheid", a word rugby remembers too well.

Separate representation for a racial minority is in no sense "racist" unless the minority happens to hold the power of the state to itself, as white South Africans did for so long. Separate representation for a minority under majority rule is quite different, very healthy and necessary in many areas of public life if the minority has no other country in the world to call its own.

Some in this country seem wilfully to misconceive the purpose of Maori electorates for Parliament, iwi consultation under the Resource Management Act, "race based" considerations in university admissions, even this week a Maori All Black team. They seize on Governor Hobson's comment at the signing of the Treaty, translated as "We are now one people", overlooking the fact that oppressive majority rule in 1840 would have required all to be Maori people.

The chiefs gave the newcomers the power and space to establish their own law, government, culture and community life. Land purchases, immigration, war and confiscations did the rest. Restitution began less than 40 years ago and with it comes recognition of the special place of an indigenous race in the state we share.

Rugby has been so well integrated since its beginnings in the colonial era that All Black teams have sometimes contained about equal numbers of Maori, Pakeha and Pacific Island players. It was so well integrated that nobody was counting them. In clubs and provincial sides, too, the participants mixed so easily that it went largely without remark. No wonder, then, the selection that used to be called New Zealand Maori has become less visibly Maori and is now designated the Maori All Blacks.

Most of them are indeed All Blacks but they should always express Maori rugby with distinction. It is in our blood.