If 3% of My DNA Is Scandinavian, Am I Norwegian?

The 1961 census in New Zealand counted 167,086 people as Māori, using a criterion of at least 50 per cent Māori ancestry.

Then, in the 1986 census, the Labour Government, led by David Lange with Phil Goff as minister of statistics, introduced new rules allowing individuals to self-identify as Māori and, as a result, the recorded Māori population began to increase.

One could speculate that the reason a Labour Government would champion such a change is the simplistic assumption that Māori usually vote more left than right and increasing the number of people identifying as Māori would therefore lead to an increase in the Labour vote – but that is surely too cynical to be true.

As an aside it’s also an interesting concept to believe that any degree of Māori ancestry, and even in some cases none at all, allows one to claim to be ethnically Māori.

Ask yourself how this idea might play out elsewhere, in the USA or Japan, for example: Does a personal and undocumented assertion that a long-dead ancestor had been a native of that country automatically allow one to also be categorised as native, with all the citizenship benefits thereto attached?

And the answer is of course that it would not happen. Those countries, and practically all others in the world, are not so accommodating. After all, fractionality of ancestry does not make one ethnic to that specific fraction, no matter how much one would wish it otherwise.

But, moving back to the basic question: if there were only 167,086 Māori in NZ in 1961, and using the recorded birth rates of Māori as a guide, how many descendants of this population could there be today?

And conversely, how many of those currently identifying as Māori should actually be classed as Pākeha (or at best Pākehā Māori) since this is where more than half of their ancestry is rooted?

The answer looks like this (see Appendix A for calculations):

Biological-only projection from 1961 base of 167,086 persons:

≈ 530,000–560,000

Midpoint:~545,000 Māori today.

This number is the absolute maximum because it assumes that the 1961 Māori population only intermarried amongst themselves going forward, so that the 50 per cent plus ancestry criteria could still be applied.

In reality many would have married spouses of other ethnicities, thus diluting the ancestry of their subsequent offspring to less than the 50 per cent level.

However, for the purposes of this analysis we will use the 545,000 number as calculated.

Consequently, given the 2023 census declaration that there are 978,000 persons of “Māori descent”, then at least 433,000 of these should be more accurately classified as Pākehā Māori.

Interestingly, for the Pākehā Māori population to grow from effectively zero to 433,000 people over the 64 years since 1961 requires a compound growth factor of 22.47 per cent per year, and if this rate of ‘discovered Māoriness’ continues then every Pākehā in NZ will be identifying as Māori by 2040!

Extremely unlikely of course, but even the current numbers beg the question: why do so many people want to deny their actual ancestry and whakapapa to an ethnic group that is not a predominant part of their genetic makeup?

And the answers are varied. There are some, the very vocal few, who see a political and consequently monetary advantage. Included here are certain iwi leaders and Pākehā/Māori politicians who masquerade as champions of the Māori cause under the cloak of their personal and often only part-Māori ancestry.

There are others who, amounting to little in the Pākehā world, shifted their focus, identifying as Māori for the financial handouts available. (For example: “Ngāi Tahu, Why So Many?”)

Another group (not mutually exclusive) recognised that perhaps it is simply better to be a bigger wheel in a smaller clock than the opposite pertaining to their inconsequential status in the Pākehā world.

And finally there are those who follow the herd, embracing the Māori fraction of their heritage in the belief that it somehow enhances their ‘mana’ as one of the chosen people in ‘Aotearoa’; a view regularly reinforced by the MSM and the Tiriti industry in particular.

Summary

There are significantly fewer genuine Māori people in NZ than the 2023 census implies, and which the beneficiaries of this myth, such as Willie Jackson, John Tamihere and the clowns of Te Pāti Māori, would have us believe.

Consequently any claims that Māori as a group are underprivileged/improperly treated by the state/suffer lower life expectancy rates, etc, must be statistically inaccurate.

This follows because the statistics that underpin these claims encompass results from all of those who are described in the census as being of “Maori descent”.

However, given that almost 50 per cent of these people are only Pākehā Māori, i.e., no more Māori than I am Norwegian, because three per cent of my DNA is Scandinavian, then their inclusion totally corrupts the data.

Logically, only the circumstances under which genuine Māori live should be reported in any statistical analysis of the ‘Māori condition’.

To include the many who are not in fact Māori skews the results so much that any generalised claims pertaining to the status of Māori in NZ are patently wrong.

In reality the situation of our genuine Māori population may well be worse than is currently reported.

But, because the statistics underpinning present analysis are rendered grossly inaccurate by the inclusion of Pākehā Māori in the samples, we will never know.

And you cannot fix what you cannot measure.

APPENDIX A

Step-wise projection of ‘Genuine Māori’ population numbers.

Generation 1 1961(start point of 167,086 Māori in census) → ~1989)

Average Total Fertility Rate ≈ 5.0
Growth factor ≈ 5.0 / 2.1 = 2.38

Population:
167,086 × 2.38 ≈ 398,000

Generation 2 (~1989 → ~2017)

Average Total Fertility Rate ≈ 2.8
Growth factor ≈ 2.8 / 2.1 = 1.33

398,000 × 1.33 ≈ 529,000

Partial Generation 3 (~2017 → 2023)

Average Total Fertility Rate ≈ 2.4
Full generation factor = 2.4 / 2.1 = 1.14
Apply ~0.2 generation:

1.14^0.2 ≈ 1.026