Māori Covid-19 Responses as Practices of Indigenous Sovereignty: The Political Significance of Grassroots Responses to the Pandemic

The Covid-19 pandemic saw the emergence of many grassroots mobilisations to either complement or fill in for state and international responses. This article seeks to advance the study of grassroots Covid-19 responses deployed specifically by Indigenous communities. Drawing on poststructuralist sovereignty theory, it argues that Indigenous responses reached beyond practices of resilience and mutual aid to constitute sovereignty practices. By exploring Māori Covid-19 responses and their entanglement with processes of contestation and constitution of political ordering, this article contributes to understanding the transformational political import contained in these self-organised initiatives. The contents, goals and interpretations of these responses are here approached through the thematic analysis of interviews conducted with organisers and through a complementary document analysis of secondary sources. Findings indicate that Māori Covid-19 responses both challenged the state’s sovereign claim and sought to actualise a different political order rooted in the assertion of a specifically Māori form of sovereignty.