Beyond Citation: The Doctrine of Discovery, White Possessive Sovereignty and Mana Motuhake in Aotearoa New Zealand – A Response to Paul Moon

Abstract

This article responds to Paul Moon’s claim that the Doctrine of Discovery had little or no bearing on British colonisation in Aotearoa New Zealand. It argues that Moon’s analysis is constrained by an evidentiary frame that treats the Doctrine as a discrete historical instrument, whose relevance depends on explicit citation in British colonial documents. Against this narrow historicist approach, the article reframes the Doctrine of Discovery as a wider colonial grammar of possession, adapted through imperial law, discovery claims, Crown pre-emption, radical title, native title, waste lands policy and paternal governance. Drawing on Kaupapa Māori analysis, Aileen Moreton-Robinson’s theory of white possessive sovereignty and scholarship on mana motuhake, the article demonstrates that the Doctrine’s significance in Aotearoa lies not in proving direct papal authority over Protestant Britain but in tracing how its operative logics were secularised and enacted. Two sites are central to this argument: the Crown’s assertion of sovereignty over Te Waipounamu and Rakiura by right of discovery and the paternalist assertion of authority over Māori, including non-signatory hapū and iwi who never ceded mana motuhake. The article conceptualises the latter move as a ‘right of paternalism’, that is, the Crown’s claimed authority to govern Indigenous peoples while recognising their presence but denying their equal jurisdiction. It concludes that Moon’s functionalist account risks reproducing colonial innocence by fragmenting colonisation into contingent motives while leaving the structure of possession intact. Mana motuhake exposes this structure and demands a historiography attentive to colonial enactment, beyond mere citation.