Māori Status in New Zealand Law · Part 07 · 1908–1949
How did Māori-specific subjecthood become general nationality and New Zealand citizenship?
The Māori-specific subject rule was consolidated in 1908, repealed as a separate enactment in 1909, then overtaken by general British nationality law and the creation of New Zealand citizenship in 1949.
The 1865 declaration did not simply vanish from the statute book in the nineteenth century.
The Native Rights Act 1908 consolidated it. Section 2 again provided that every person of the Māori race in New Zealand, whether born before or after New Zealand became a British dependency, was to be deemed a natural-born subject of His Majesty.
The Native Land Act 1909 then repealed the Native Rights Act 1908 as part of a much larger consolidation and reorganisation of Māori land law. The repeal of the Māori-specific Act did not mean Māori suddenly became aliens. By the twentieth century, status was increasingly governed by the general law of British nationality.
New Zealand's British nationality legislation incorporated substantial parts of the Imperial British Nationality and Status of Aliens regime. The 1943 amendment expressly records that the 1928 New Zealand Act had made provisions of the United Kingdom nationality Acts part of New Zealand law so far as applicable.
The British Nationality and New Zealand Citizenship Act 1948 created New Zealand citizenship. It also provided that every New Zealand citizen had, by virtue of that citizenship, the status of a British subject, alternatively called a Commonwealth citizen. Its transitional section made qualifying pre-existing British subjects into New Zealand citizens.
What changed
The legal basis of status moved away from a Māori-specific rule toward general nationality and then New Zealand citizenship.
What did not follow
Nothing in that transition means Māori ethnicity, whakapapa, rangatira status, hapū membership and citizenship became synonyms. Citizenship is a nationality relationship with the state; the other categories answer different questions.
By 1949, a Māori New Zealander could be both Māori and a New Zealand citizen, with British-subject status attached by the 1948 Act. Those are layered statuses, not one identity replacing the others.
Primary statuteNative Rights Act 1908.
Primary statuteNative Land Act 1909 — repeal schedule.
Primary nationality lawBritish Nationality and Status of Aliens (in New Zealand) Amendment Act 1943; British Nationality and New Zealand Citizenship Act 1948.