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Homeless in Our Own Land: Māori, housing, prison, and the silence around structural racism
Paperback
Native American HistoryCriminologyPoverty & Social Work
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Jun 24 2026
Pages: 82
Weight: 0.27
Height: 0.17 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
How did we become homeless in our own land?
How did tangata whenua - the people of the land - become people sleeping in cars, garages, tents, emergency motels, overcrowded houses, prison cells, and streets named after ancestors whose descendants cannot afford to live there?
This is not just a story about homelessness. This is not just a story about poverty. This is not just a story about Māori who do not want to work, or Māori who are called lazy, drunk, drugged, gang-affiliated, broken, or useless.
Those words are part of the problem.
They are the labels placed on people after the system has already failed them. They are the easy insults used to stop deeper questions from being asked. They turn suffering into personal blame. They turn history into silence. They turn government failure into Māori shame.
But this issue is bigger than shame.
It is bigger than one person making bad choices. It is bigger than one family struggling. It is bigger than one street, one town, one gang patch, one prison sentence, one benefit payment, one addiction, one eviction, or one night spent sleeping cold.
This is about a country that can find money for prisons faster than it can find homes.
This is about a government that can spend millions managing the consequences of poverty, while refusing to properly repair the causes of poverty.
This is about a justice system where Māori are imprisoned far beyond our share of the population.
This is about a housing system where tangata whenua can be priced out, pushed out, locked out, and then blamed for having nowhere to go.
This is about wages that do not meet the cost of living, rents that rise faster than incomes, and whānau being told to work harder in an economy that has already decided they will stay behind.
This is about racism - not only the loud racism of slurs and hate, but the quieter racism of policy, funding, policing, housing, education, health, and justice systems that keep producing the same unequal results generation after generation.
When Māori are over-represented in homelessness, over-represented in prison, over-represented in poverty, and under-represented in ownership, safety, wealth, and decision-making, we have to stop pretending this is an accident.
We have to ask who benefits from the story that Māori are lazy.
We have to ask why the country is more comfortable blaming the poor than questioning the powerful.
We have to ask why a person in prison can cost the taxpayer more in one year than many working people earn, yet the same society says there is not enough money to house people before they fall, support them before they offend, or heal them before they break.
We have to ask why homelessness is treated like a personal failure when it is clearly a political outcome.
This book is not written to excuse harm. It is not written to deny personal responsibility. It is not written to say every Māori person is innocent or every government worker is evil.
It is written to say the truth is bigger than the stereotype.
It is written to break the stigma.
It is written for the father coming out of prison with nowhere to go. For the mother trying to keep her babies warm in a motel room. For the young fulla told he is a criminal before he has even had a chance. For the kuia watching her mokopuna grow up disconnected from whenua, language, safety, and hope.
It is written for the people who are tired of being judged by those who have never had to survive what they survived.
And it begins with one question:
How can Māori be homeless in our own land?
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