Indigenous corporate networks: Maori corporate warriors and their agribusiness links

Abstract

Modern Indigenous development sees an ever-widening array of players engage with corporate organisations in the extraction of wealth from Indigenous land and waters. In Aotearoa New Zealand, extensive personal and professional links now connect Maori individuals and collectives into capitalist systems of production. This paper presents a Social Network Analysis (SNA) of these corporate links in an effort to first describe modern development networks for Maori and secondly analyse the relationship of these links to such historical events and forces as tribal Treaty settlements, agribusiness expansion and foreign investment into Indigenous ventures. The paper seeks to provide insight into the concept of recolonisation – in this case of Western agribusiness – by Indigenous groups.