Ti'iti'i-a-Talaga

On one hand, by the global capitalist economy which these nations are absolutely dependent upon for material survival. The productive forces in postcolonial Pacific nation-states are extremely underdeveloped and non-self-sustainable. The dependency on international capital means that foreign interests are still in control of these lands. The only difference is that the colonial regime is now de facto. Explicit military occupation has ended in the former colonies because it is no longer necessary - the nation-state’s inability to respond to the global capitalist economy except by capitulating to it means that colonialism operates more smoothly and more productively than it ever did under de jure colonialism. 

On the other hand, postcolonial nationalism ends up centralising power in pre-existing materially privileged classes within the indigenous population. In Tonga, the traditional chieftainship consolidated itself into a monarchy; in Aotearoa, chiefly genealogical lines within iwi have essentially corporatised the tribal structure and established themselves as a CEO class. Nationalism provides no response for working class indigenous peoples to criticise this concentration of material political-economic power in the hands of indigenous capitalists. According to nationalism, the important distinction is between peoples’ ethno-national identities, not their actually existing relationship to material power. It doesn’t matter how much your labour is expropriated, how much your resources are appropriated, if the class who benefit from this process are “your” nation, then nationalism does not recognise exploitation to have occurred. Thus, the Tongan aristocracy appropriated millions upon millions of dollars from the labour of a population primarily sustaining itself by subsistence agriculture.