Abstract

This paper focuses upon the marginalisation of young Māori people within contemporary New Zealand society. This is done by discussing the perspectives of Māori youth who live upon Māhia Peninsula. The paper explores how these youth are marginalised by discussing how practices of domination, suppression, and exploitation produce key dominant and marginalised discourses that significantly influence their voices and silences. This paper highlights the marginalisation process and how it impacts upon their lives by showing how certain discourses produce dominant narratives that feed off and shut down marginalised ones. These discourses are examined in accordance with how the dominant Pākehā (New Zealanders of predominantly European decent) social group shapes and moulds ways of thinking and knowing, possibilities for practice, and understandings about being a young Māori living in rural New Zealand today.