104 ● Anaru Eketone and Shayne Walker
namely, those of British and French origins. Usage of the term did not, how-
ever, last long; it was replaced with the term multiculturalism, in recognition
of the multicultural nature of Canadian society. From a New Zealand Māori
perspective, it is interesting to note that this change was due not to a recogni-
tion of Canada’s indigenous First Nations peoples but rather to the objections
of Ukrainian Canadians, who felt that a bicultural Canada excluded them
(Lalande 2006).
In New Zealand, the term biculturalism has a different meaning. Rather
than being a description of the nation’s demographics or a single specific prac-
tice, it encompasses the wide range of governmental, institutional, and social
policies and practices. It has grown out of a recognition of New Zealand’s
past. Through the latter part of the twentieth century, the New Zealand gov-
ernment and growing numbers of New Zealanders increasingly recognized
that government policy and government entities at all levels had been oper-
ating from a Eurocentric worldview, whereby the values of Pākehā (specifi-
cally, in this case, European settlers and their descendants) had become “the
norm and the marked standard by which others were judged and criticised”
(Fleras and Spoonley 1999, 236). The answer to this Eurocentric monocul-
turalism and Pākehā dominance was an advocacy for a type of biculturalism
that recognized “the coexistence of two distinct cultures, Māori and Pākehā,
within New Zealand society with the values and traditions of both cultures
reflected in society’s customs, laws, practices, and institutional arrangements,
and with both cultures sharing control over resources and decision making”
(O’Reilly and Wood 1991, 321, quoted in M. Durie 1998, 101). Bicultural-
ism acknowledges that there are two fundamentally distinct cultures within
New Zealand, an indigenous Māori culture and a New Zealand national cul-
ture that is based primarily on the values, language, and customs of British
settlers. There is, of course, an obvious tension that arises with the growing
ethnic diversity of New Zealand that relates to how to incorporate consideration
of the place of people who identify with neither Māori nor Pākehā cultures,
and we shall discuss multiculturalism shortly.
In 1840, Māori leaders and representatives of the British Crown signed
the Treaty of Waitangi, establishing a British Governor of New Zealand
and ostensibly giving Māori the rights of British subjects. In 1852, the New
Zealand Constitution Act handed the running of the country to the settler
population, who exploited their dominance in political matters by marginal-
izing the Māori political voice, ensuring that Māori had little, if any, influ-
ence in the nation’s affairs. In 1867, four distinct Māori electoral seats were
created, compared with the 70 available to Pākehā, despite the fact that in
proportion to their population, Māori may have expected 15 to 25 represen-
tatives. The marginalization of the Māori vote ensured that the institutions