Why Hīkoi Terrify The State - And What Other Protest Movements Can Learn From It

What looks like a long protest march is actually a deeply rooted display of material power, something most protests fail to generate

Regular protests often frame themselves around specific grievances (e.g., climate change, housing). In contrast, hīkoi are expressions of whakapapa in motion, ancestral obligation, intergenerational responsibility, and embodied resistance. This gives them a depth and legitimacy beyond liberal-esque appeals to the state. They emerge from a living historical continuum, not just a reaction to a current event.

For capital and the state, that’s deeply threatening: it signals a long-term resistance rooted in identity, land, and history, not short-term agitation that can be managed or co-opted.

They Revive Collective Discipline and Tikanga as an Alternative Social Order

A hīkoi is like people practicing tikanga together, making decisions collectively, caring for each other. That models a radically different kind of social reproduction. It challenges the individualism of capitalist liberalism.

The idea that people can move, feed, house, and organise themselves outside the state and market is terrifying to both.

They Represent a Refusal to Be Passive “Stakeholders”

Governments love consultation and managed participation, where Māori can be included as long as they play by the rules. Hīkoi flip that on its head. They’re unapologetically autonomous. They represent mana motuhake in motion. Not asking, but asserting.

That kind of political subject, self-determining, grounded in tikanga, and outside the rules of representative democracy, is deeply threatening to the legitimacy of both settler governments and capitalist institutions.

They Disrupt Capitalist Spatial Order

Hīkoi re-map space. Capitalism depends on smooth flows of people, commodities, and productivity. A hīkoi, especially when it moves through cities or highways, disrupts that flow. It asserts Indigenous spatial sovereignty over settler-imposed infrastructure. The land becomes contested again, physically and publicly.

This material disruption of everyday capitalist function is far more threatening than, say, a sanctioned rally in a public square.

From a Materialist Perspective, a Hīkoi Increases Bargaining Power by Changing the Terrain of Struggle in Several Concrete Ways, Economically, Socially, and Politically

Withdrawing Consent from Capitalist Time and Settler Space

A hīkoi is a strike on normality. It disrupts the flow of goods, people, and productivity that capital depends on. When hundreds or thousands move as a collective force across whenua, it becomes clear: the land isn't settled, and neither are the people. This raises the cost of ignoring demands, not in money alone, but in governability.

Signaling Autonomous Organising Capacity

A hīkoi shows that Māori communities can mobilise without relying on state, union, or NGO infrastructure. That’s a real threat to capital and the Crown because it shows independence. The more independent your movement is, the less leverage the system has over you. That forces negotiation on terms more favourable to the hīkoi, not just symbolic inclusion or policy tweaks.

Demonstrating Mass Cohesion and Logistical Skill

A hīkoi proves something critical: we can feed ourselves, house ourselves, move together, decide together. That is a practice of proto-sovereignty. It increases bargaining power by showing that Māori aren’t dependent subjects but organised political actors capable of governing and reproducing themselves outside capitalist relations.

Raising the Political Risk of Inaction

The larger and more sustained a hīkoi, the more it captures public attention and political oxygen. That pressure forces governments into a bind, either ignore it and lose space and legitimacy, or respond and risk empowering a deeper resistance. Either way, the power balance shifts, especially if the hīkoi threatens to escalate into land occupations, wider mobilisations, or legal challenges.

Strengthening Internal Capacity for Long-Term Resistance

Materialist power is about building enduring capacity. Every hīkoi trains rangatahi, connects hapū, builds logistical infrastructure, and renews collective identity. That’s long-term strategic leverage, making future resistance easier, cheaper, and more powerful.

Most Regular Protests Lack Material Leverage, and That’s Why They’re Often Shut Down, Ignored, Co-Opted, or Forgotten

Most protests make demands without power to impose costs if those demands are ignored.

They often happen on weekends, follow police instructions, last a few hours, and go home. Capital and the state can easily absorb them, no disruption, no risk, no consequence.

Even worse, many rely on the very institutions they’re protesting: they ask the state to fix itself, appeal to media owned by capital, and hope for visibility instead of building autonomy.

Contrast That With a Hīkoi

It disrupts space and flow, shows independent capacity, not managed dissent. It activates real risk for the state, loss of legitimacy, visibility of Indigenous power, potential escalation, independence. It sustains itself through collective organisation.

That’s bargaining power. It forces a response because it changes the terrain of struggle, economically, socially, and politically.

Most protests don’t do that. They ask. Hīkoi assert. That’s the difference.

John Key’s “Hīkois From Hell” Comment Is a Perfect Example of the State Recognising the Unique Political and Material Power That Hīkoi Represent

That fear is grounded in a very real calculation:

They know hīkoi can mobilise mass participation fast, especially when the issue touches on tino rangatiratanga, whenua, or whakapapa.

They know a hīkoi isn’t just a march, it’s a signal of deep collective will, capable of escalating into occupations, sustained resistance, and major political backlash.

They know hīkoi connect across iwi, hapū, urban and rural Māori, unifying political blocs that are usually fragmented under Crown frameworks.

And they know that when hīkoi happen, Pākehā media and public opinion can shift, if only because of the spectacle and moral clarity it brings.

Politicians like Key fear hīkoi not just because of the optics, but because they understand it could ignite a wider, less controllable movement.

When he said “hīkois from hell,” he wasn’t being dramatic. He was revealing that the state knows Māori can still move in ways the state can’t contain.

This Is the Heart of It: What the State Actually Stands to Lose

Most protests can be spun or ignored. But a hīkoi, especially a large, righteous one, commands attention. It breaks through media control, reshapes public discourse, and shows Māori are sovereign actors. That loss of narrative control is huge. If people start believing the Crown is illegitimate, its authority erodes.

They Risk Exposure of the Crown’s Fragile Legitimacy

Hīkoi remind everyone that Māori never ceded sovereignty. They force the settler state to confront its origins: stolen land, imposed law, broken treaties. If that gets mass visibility again, especially alongside collective action, it undermines the moral and legal foundation of the entire political system. That’s existential.

They Risk Escalation Into Harder-to-Contain Actions

Hīkoi are the beginning of movement. Politicians like Key fear they can evolve into occupations, blockades, land reclamations, or pan-tribal mobilisation. That would strain police, disrupt infrastructure, and draw international attention. The Crown fears it can’t stop that once it starts.

They Highlight the State’s Weakness in Māori Mobilisation

The state rules through bureaucracy, not relationships. A hīkoi shows the opposite: mobilisation, collective discipline, mutual care, and shared purpose. It reminds everyone that Māori don’t need the state to organise, we don’t funnel our movements through a bureaucracy, we already have each other.

That makes bargaining power shift: if you don’t need the Crown, the Crown realises it has lost power over you.

So What Do They Lose?

Control. Legitimacy. Narrative. Stability.

That’s why a hīkoi is bargaining power in motion, it puts all that on the line and reminds the Crown just how little they can actually enforce when Māori stand up.