The Price of Milk: Dairy Farming as Colonialism in Aotearoa New Zealand

Abstract

This paper critically analyses the history and culture of dairy production in Aotearoa New Zealand through a historical-materialist approach. It is argued that the violence of settler colonisation in Aotearoa New Zealand is pervasive and multifaceted. In historicizing the production and ideological maintenance of pastoralism and dairy farming in Aotearoa New Zealand, I argue that this has resulted in ongoing interspecies violence. A decolonial perspective is adopted, focusing on how pastoralism was the bedrock for animal agriculture and the alienation of Māori from their land and ways of being. The first part of this paper explores the development and growth of dairying in Aotearoa New Zealand, arguing that this was enabled in large part due to the confiscation of Māori land by the British colonial government. Following this, insights from postcolonial theory and critical animal studies are applied to examine the ongoing effects of capitalist colonisation and dairy expansion on the environment, the cows themselves, and Māori. Critical discourse analysis is then employed to explore dominant colonial ideologies of dairy farming that have persisted into the present day.