21 Human Rights Commission Ngā Tautuhi | Definitions In Maranga Mai! To adequately grasp the breadth of impact upon Māori, here we define the concepts of colonisation, racism, white supremacy, and white privilege in Aotearoa New Zealand. These concepts are elaborated upon in more depth in Chapter 1. Colonisation refers to the systematic appropriation, seizure and exploitation of Indigenous lands and natural resources by settler colonies. Colonial processes undermine and disempower Indigenous self-determination, leadership, and political structures. In Aotearoa, colonisation employed Christianity and Western institutions to subjugate Indigenous spiritual beliefs and knowledge systems and dismantle first peoples’ societies, culture, social cohesion, and families. Colonisation is ongoing and intergenerational for the coloniser and the colonised. Settler colonial societies structure the world in a manner that benefits dominant colonial groups while marginalising, alienating, suppressing and oppressing Indigenous societies to a political, economic, social, cultural and impoverished periphery. In Aotearoa, colonisation establishes white supremacy, white privilege and racism that assumes a presumed superiority of whiteness at interpersonal, institutional, cultural and internal levels. Racism stems from cultural and ideological beliefs, bigotry and prejudice. Colonisation holds Western European culture and society as superior and ‘other’ Indigenous cultures and societies as inferior, backward, dangerous and untrustworthy. Racism justifies the exploitation and subjugation or destruction of Indigenous peoples for the benefit of Western cultures and societies. Backed by monopoly power over the institutions of colonial-settler society this prejudice manifests as all-encompassing racism exercised at interpersonal, institutional and internalised levels. • Interpersonal racism concerns derogatory attitudes, assumptions, remarks, abuse, or actions toward someone based on the perceived inferiority of their race and culture. The narrowminded discussion of racism in Aotearoa society minimises interpersonal racism, by describing it as unconscious bias and casual racism. This form of racism is often framed as accidental and innocent, acts of oversight and omission, that occur between people. • Institutional racism is the regulated exercise of different access to opportunities and resources in society that advantages and privileges dominant groups at the expense of a subordinated group based on their perceived racial inferiority. Pākehā built the structure and institutions of New Zealand society in their image for their benefit to the exclusion of Māori. The inequities and inequalities of outcomes we witness across housing, education, health, justice, employment and wellbeing are the results of that racism. Institutional racism is insidious, detrimental, damaging, and more intergenerationally harmful than interpersonal racism. Institutional racism causes the inequities and inequalities that marginalise Māori across all domains of life. The prevailing Pākehā tendency is to avoid acknowledging, recognising, or changing institutional racism. • Internalised racism is the acceptance by racially stigmatised peoples of negative ideas and messages about themselves and other members of their community. White supremacy is connected with colonisation and racism. White supremacy, whiteness, white culture and white norms carry the belief that Western European cultures are superior and Indigenous peoples inferior and less worthy. White supremacy assumes that other ways of being outside of these norms are invalid,