Kate McMillan (Te Herenga Waka-Victoria University of Wellington)
In 2025, Mr John Ruddock, a citizen by descent of Māori (indigenous) ancestry, returned to live in New Zealand with his three overseas-born children. He found that none of the children was eligible for citizenship because of New Zealand’s restriction of transmission of citizenship by descent to one generation.
Mr Ruddock said ‘I was shocked to discover that my New Zealand citizenship by descent did not automatically extend to my children, even though they are Māori, carry our whānau [Māori family] names, and have ancestral rights to the whenua [land] through me. This was not just a surprise – it was devastating. I had always believed they were entitled to be recognised as tangata whenua [people of the land] here’.
Mr Ruddock took his case to New Zealand’s Waitangi Tribunal, a kind of statutory ‘truth and reconciliation’ body for Māori, claiming that the denial of citizenship to his three children was a breach of the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi. Signed between the British Crown and the leaders of over 500 territorially-based Māori tribal units, the Treaty of Waitangi guaranteed those leaders, and the tribes or sub-tribes on whose behalf they signed, certain rights in return for the establishment of British government in New Zealand. Mr Ruddock claimed some of those rights are breached by the restriction of citizenship by descent to one generation.
In October 2025, The Waitangi Tribunal’s released its findings into Mr Ruddock’s case. It agreed with him that the citizenship by descent provisions of the New Zealand Citizenship Act 1977 breached several ‘principles’ of the Treaty of Waitangi, and recommended that the New Zealand government ‘take immediate action to extend citizenship by descent to two generations for Māori’.
In this blog post I explore the nature of the citizenship claim considered by the Tribunal in 2025, summarise the Tribunal’s findings and recommendations, examine the government’s reaction, and ask what happens next. As background, the blog first briefly explains the history and functions of the Waitangi Tribunal, and what is meant by the ‘principles’ of the Treaty of Waitangi.
Background: The Waitangi Tribunal and the ‘principles’ of the Treaty of Waitangi
In 1975, in recognition of a long history of Māori claims that the Crown had breached the terms of the Treaty of Waitangi, the Waitangi Tribunal was established by statute. Its mandate was to investigate such claims and make non-binding recommendations as to how any breaches found to have occurred might be redressed or avoided in future. Complicating this task were differences between the te reo Māori [Māori language] and English versions of the Treaty, differences which were significant enough to create conflicting understandings about what had been agreed to by both parties. Another difficulty was determining the contemporary application of a 19th century treaty.
A way to navigate these challenges was found through the concept of ‘principles’ of the Treaty. The Waitangi Tribunal was charged with developing a set of principles to be used in interpreting the Treaty, based on what it could establish about ‘the intent of the parties that signed the Treaty’ (Hayward, 2004, p. 29). It is against these principles that the Waitangi Tribunal assessed the Citizenship Act 1977.
In carrying out inquiries, the Waitangi Tribunal operates as a commission of inquiry, and its members are expected to have ‘a deep understanding of relevant principles; both Western legal principles and those of tikanga Māori’ [Māori cultural protocols]. Thus, the Tribunal heard evidence from a number of experts on Māori culture, law, demography, tikanga, and worldview, as well as on international law relating to indigenous peoples.
The focus of the inquiry
The New Zealand Citizenship Act 1977 provides three routes to citizenship: by birth in New Zealand to a New Zealand citizen or permanent resident; by descent for one generation of those born overseas to a New Zealand citizen; and by grant. Citizens by descent can apply to transform their citizenship by descent into citizenship by grant, providing they meet the normal residency and other requirements for citizenship by grant (which Mr Ruddock did not), after which their overseas-born children are eligible for citizenship by descent. Overseas-born children of citizens by descent who do not meet the normal criteria for citizenship by grant may apply to the Minister of Internal Affairs to use his or her discretion to grant them citizenship. The Department of Internal Affairs provides a citizenship guidance document about the factors that may be taken into consideration when decisions about citizenship by grant are made.
The Act does not contain any references to the Treaty of Waitangi or to the status of Māori as indigenous people and as partners to the Treaty. The criteria for citizenship by grant include English but not the Māori language.
Mr Ruddock’s counsel argued that the Citizenship Act 1977 is ‘antiquated’, having anticipated neither the growth in emigration from New Zealand nor the much greater constitutional emphasis placed now on the Treaty of Waitangi. It also, he argued, fails to recognise that Māori have a special relationship to their ancestral lands, and such failure constitutes a breach of the rights guaranteed to them under the Treaty of Waitangi. Both the Act itself and its interpretation in the citizenship guidance document were the focus of the inquiry.
The evidence
The Tribunal was presented with a number of Māori perspectives on issues core to citizenship: the source of collective and individual identity; who gets to determine who belongs to a community; the importance of ancestry vis-à-vis place of birth in determining membership; the relationship between territory, residence and rights; where the right to self-government resides and what form that takes; and indigenous vs non-indigenous claims to citizenship.
Much of this evidence identified differences between Māori perspectives on these questions and the logic enforced in law through the Citizenship Act 1977. Central to many presenters’ arguments was the belief that Māori citizenship is rooted in the concept of whakapapa. While based on ancestry, and thus analogous to a jus sanguinis concept of citizenship, legal scholar Carwyn Jones, argued in his submission that whakapapa goes beyond being a ‘genealogical tree’, and should be seen as a ‘foundational explanation not only of how life came to be, but also how it should be lived’ (Moana Jackson, cited by Jones). In his view, the Treaty ‘overlaid’ this pre-existing Māori form of citizenship with ‘Crown citizenship’, while promising to protect both. Other submitters argued that as whakapapa endures inter-generationally, so should the right to belong in New Zealand.
In respect of the process of applying for a Ministerial grant of citizenship, the evidence of Ms Keisha Castle-Hughes, also a citizen by descent with Māori ancestry, described this process as an expensive, bureaucratic, intrusive and racist experience.
The Tribunal’s Report: He Tangata he whenua
The Tribunal’s findings, in brief, were that the Citizenship Act 1977 breached and continues to breach numerous principles of the Treaty of Waitangi, in a variety of ways. One such breach was identified in the absence of any mention of either the Treaty or the status of Māori as indigenous people in the Citizenship Act 1977, and the lack of any consultation with Māori in determining the Act’s contemporary interpretation. The Tribunal found this to contravene the principles of ‘partnership’ between Māori and the Crown, the Crown’s obligation of ‘active protection’ of Māori interests, and of ‘good governance’.
Second, it found the Crown to have breached the principles of rangatiratanga, defined by the Tribunal in 2023 as the right for Māori ‘to continue to exercise full authority over lands, homes, and all matters of importance to them’ (Vol. 1, p. 183), by ‘designing an application process in which a Government official is empowered to determine the legitimacy of someone’s whakapapa’.
Third, by ‘prioritising location of birth over whakapapa during the citizenship application process’ the Tribunal found the Crown to have breached the principle of ‘equal treatment’, as it resulted in the Crown ‘differentiating between groups of Māori in a way that would not occur in te ao Māori [the Māori world] and potentially exacerbating divisions between native- and foreign-born Māori and their descendants’.
Finally, it found the principle that Māori should have ‘options’, that is, to ‘continue to live as Māori in a manner of their choosing’ (p.9) to be breached by ‘forcing Māori to choose between pursuing opportunities overseas and the right of their tamariki [children] to return to their whenua [land]’.
To redress these breaches, the Tribunal recommended, among other things, that the Crown consult with Māori about how to amend the Citizenship Act 1977 so that it acknowledges both the status of Māori as tangata whenua [people of the land] in New Zealand and the Crown’s responsibility to uphold the Treaty of Waitangi. Such consultation should, they argued, lead to a culturally appropriate way of assessing the ancestry claims of Māori. It also recommended, as mentioned above, that citizenship by descent be provided for two generations for Māori.
What happens next?
The ACT Party, a libertarian party that is part of the right-wing governing coalition, and of which the Minister responsible for citizenship (Brooke Van Velden) is a member, is vehemently opposed to the current Treaty principles. ACT Party leader David Seymour has described them as ‘totally inconsistent with liberal democracy’, and in 2024 the Party introduced (unsuccessful) legislation into Parliament to replace the current Treaty principles. No surprise, then, that Minister Van Velden said following the release of the Tribunal’s report that she had no intention of revisiting the Citizenship Act. Her view was that nobody should be ‘given citizenship based on their race’.
The ACT Party’s resistance to treating Māori differently with respect to citizenship appears to be shared by the two major parties in New Zealand. Both the Prime Minister, National Leader Christopher Luxon, and the Leader of the Opposition, Labour’s Chris Hipkins, have expressed the view that citizenship laws should treat all New Zealanders equally.
Here, then, is the challenge facing any government wishing to respond to the Tribunal’s report: balancing citizenship’s core claim to be a status of political equality with the Tribunal’s recommendation that an amended citizenship law embed the different citizenship status of Māori, as protected by the Treaty of Waitangi.
This is a politically tricky but not necessarily insurmountable challenge. A first step for any government wanting to meet this challenge is to acknowledge that difference and equality need not and should not be locked in a zero-sum game. A second would be to look for institutional innovations that go a long way towards satisfying the demands of both. To this end, an amended citizenship act could acknowledge the status of Māori as indigenous and as Treaty partners, insert the Māori language as an alternative to English in the citizenship by grant criteria, amend the citizenship guidance documents so that the Minister can consider specifically Māori connections to New Zealand, and provide Māori with more control over the process of determining whakapapa. It could also provide citizenship by descent for two generations of Māori and non-Māori alike.