43 Human Rights Commission Assimilation Colonisation dangled the carrot of civilisation in the face of Māori. The promise was that if Māori assimilated and became civilised, they would become equal with Pākehā. Assimilation denied the existence of racism and equality never arrived (Taonui, 2021). Massive land loss caused the rapid urbanisation of impoverished Māori between 1950 and 1980. In the towns and cities, Māori experienced racism daily. The New Zealand government knew about the rising tide of racism against Māori but did nothing about it for decades. By 1960 government officials agreed that a widespread problem of discrimination did exist and that “the problem was probably growing more acute” but many Pākehā refused to concede that there were fundamental flaws in New Zealand. Rather than address racism against Māori, the government reframed the problem as social maladjustment in the cities and then focused attention on Māori assimilating as quickly as possible to become like Pākehā (Hill, R. 2009, pp. 85-86). Cultural tokenism Cultural tokenism based upon a well-intentioned but misconceived sense of ‘kindness’, becomes a default position as Pākehā refuse to confront their racism. Pākehā like to revitalise ‘decorative’ aspects of te ao Māori (Husband, 2020) in preference to discussing more confronting issues about racism: While ongoing colonisation permits, for example, the revitalisation of kapa haka, and that is wonderful to see, it does not allow the revitalisation of self-determination. It doesn’t allow Māori or any other Indigenous places, like Australia and Canada, to reclaim the right to govern ourselves (Jackson, 2021a). Cultural tokenism occurs every day. An example of this is Family Group Conferences which when set up in 1989 were: hailed as a New Zealand innovation which at their best, fully involved whānau, hapū, iwi, and family groups in decisions about the welfare or alleged criminal offending of their children and young people... (Beacroft, 2017) However, a 2016 study of Māori experiences of family group conferences found the process was ‘Eurocentric’ and not culturally responsive in the way “that advocates repeatedly claim”. Rather, it marginalised Māori and was tokenistic toward Māori culture, such as using kaumātua only for ‘performative’ aspects of tikanga, like leading karakia, while not drawing from their expertise during the substantive process (Moyle and Tauri, 2016, pp. 87, 101). Similar messages have been given to successive governments most recently by the Oranga Tamariki Ministerial Advisory: Oranga Tamariki is self-centred and constantly looks to itself for answers. Its current systems are weak, disconnected, and unfit for the population of tamariki it serves, and there is no strategy to partner with Māori and the community (Tukaki, Glavish, Solomon, and Pakura, 2021, p. 10). Cultural tokenism explains why, for example, some white people will strive to correctly pronounce commonly-used French words but do not extend the same courtesy to Māori names or words (see Higgins, 2019).