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Background

The following provides examples of the ubiquitous and damaging nature of mass media representations of Māori that began at first contact, accelerated with colonization in the 1800s and persists today. The colonizing project produced contradictory, binary representations of Māori including Māori as the ‘noble savage'and uncivilized. In print, for example, John Ward's (1839). Information relative to New Zealand: A colonist's handbook, although referring to the ‘noble savage,'contained some of the first codified representations of Māori as inherently lawless, immoral, and criminal.