With the signalled 2014 end of the historical Treaty of Waitangi settlements process, are we ushering in a new era in Crown-Māori relations?  Demographic change will be one driver of changing relationships. The ethnic profile of New Zealand’s population has changed significantly over the last 50 years, and we can expect to see an increasing ethnic diversity in the peoples that call New Zealand home.  At least as important, however, is how we think about our identity – the importance we ascribe to ethnicity, how we describe our ethno-cultural identities to others, and how we choose to relate to one another in terms of those identities. This has also changed significantly in New Zealand over the last 50 years and will continue to change as New Zealanders shape and re-shape terms of engagement in an increasingly complex, multicultural society.

We begin with a brief discussion of migration to and from New Zealand. We then introduce the conceptualisation and measurement of ethnicity, some aspects of population change, and report Statistics New Zealand projections of the future ethnic mix of New Zealand’s population. We include questions around who is ‘Māori’, and who or what is ‘the Crown’.