Resisting settler-colonial property relations? The WAI 262 claim and report in Aotearoa New Zealand

This paper gives a brief survey of the WAI 262 claim, and the Tribunal Report, in Aotearoa New Zealand. Colloquially known as the Native or Indigenous Flora and Fauna Claim, WAI 262 was the first whole of government claim to the Waitangi Tribunal, requiring a commission of enquiry to investigate how New Zealand constitutes intellectual and cultural property regimes in relation to Māori peoples across the spectrum of governance, from arts and cultural production to medical research, language, and broadcasting. I give a brief summary of the claim and report, but focus primarily on the ways in which languages of cultural difference and incommensurability are mediated within this quasi-legal framework. I argue that rather than presenting ontologically incompatible frames of ‘culture’, which is ultimately disempowering for indigenous people in the context of the settler-colony, indigenous alterity is a strategy to assert and reorganize the foundations of sovereignty. The strategic relationship between governance, sovereignty, and property regimes has become a zone of contestation and indigenous cultural production.