Indigenous Class Actions in Canada and Australia: Learnings for Māori in New Zealand.

The use of class action litigation in Canada and Australia is well known. Both jurisdictions have statutory-based regimes that facilitate efficient procedures with certainty to address collective harms. These procedures, however, are inefficient when it comes to addressing the collective harms of Indigenous groups. In light of New Zealand's forthcoming class action legislation and the shared experiences of Indigenous groups in British colonies, this article seeks to consider the possibility and prosperity of potential Maori class actions. It uses the experiences of Canadian and Australian Aborigine claimants to conclude that class actions used for compensatory relief are incapable of providing adequate redress to Indigenous groups. This is due to the overarching construct of the contemporary Western legal system and its failure to meet the requirements of Indigenous justice. While Indigenous class actions in Canada and Australia have yielded benefits such as increased public awareness, this article explains that such benefits are not good enough to prompt Māori to follow the same litigation path as their Indigenous counterparts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]