The anthropology of postcolonialism has tended to neglect or homogenize the varied expressions of cultural and national identity of British settler descendants. Against the backdrop of research with white settler descendants who farm large Crown pastoral lease properties in the South Island high country of New Zealand, this article examines evidence they presented before the Waitangi Tribunal about their attachment to land as a politicized expression of belonging, of one set of Pakeha voices. It analyzes how high country runholders speak about and symbolically construct belonging and suggests that the high country landscape is a central metaphor in the conceptual systems of its inhabitants, providing them with a way of thinking about their cultural distinctiveness within the arena of contestations in the meanings of cultural identities defined by the Waitangi Tribunal.
