'Toheroa Wars': Cultural politics and everyday resistance on a northern New Zealand beach

Abstract:  This paper examines how the cultural politics of resource management were played out on the North Kaipara beach between about 1900 and 1971 between Māori and the representative of the Crown, the Marine Department. Particular attention is devoted to how, after regulations were introduced to protect toheroa, the giant surf clam, Māori struggled to assert their rights through a range of transgressions. The paper argues that this illustrates how cultural politics works both from the top down (the Marine Department's implementation of policy) and the bottom up (Māori resistance). It concludes that through an examination of this particular 'culture war', the foreshore emerges as a contested domain where politics, culture and epistemology are inseparable.