Tackling Māori masculinity: A colonial genealogy of savagery and sport

Abstract

The primary aim of this paper is to deconstruct one of the dominant discourses surrounding Māori men-a discourse that was constructed to limit, homogenize, and reproduce an acceptable and imagined Mā ori masculinity, and one that has also gained hegemonic consent from many tāne. I use a genealogical approach to outline the historical underpinnings of the image of the Māori man as naturally physical, and the mechanisms, including the confiscation of land and a racist state education system, that served to propound and perpetuate this construction. The contemporary portrayal of the natural Māori sportsman has evolved from these historical roots in what has become a largely subconscious but no less insidious pattern of subjugation through positively framed sporting images. © 2004 by University of Hawai'i Press.