174 Media International Australia Tyron Love and Elspeth Tilley Abstract Time is a particularly powerful construct in postcolonial societies. Intermeshed with discourses of race, place and belonging, European ideas of time as linear, Cartesian and chronological function as enduring discursive categories that frame public debate within conceptual legacies from colonialism. There is substantial evidence internationally that modernist and mechanical temporal discourses of progress and eficiency have impeded Indigenous aspirations, including attempts to achieve sovereignty. In this article, we use a critical whiteness studies framework, and a critical discourse analysis methodology, to make visible the temporal assumptions in mainstream news articles from Aotearoa New Zealand. These articles, from inluential, agenda-setting media, discuss crucial issues of indigenous rights, including Te Tiriti o Waitangi negotiations. Our analysis shows that they do so within a culturally speciic, Western temporal framework, which limits their ability to provide balanced, informative coverage of the issues at stake. Territoriality is the power of things to impose their own assumptions of time and space. (McLuhan and Parker, 1968: 253) I Mua I Muri (the past is in front of us, the future is behind). (Te Papa Tongarewa, 2012) Chronological temporality may be the most taken-for-granted Western social discourse. What could appear more self-evident than that time ‘goes forward’ as the clock ticks? Yet theorists from numerous critical disciplines demonstrate that concepts of time differ between cultures, and are neither neutral nor natural, but historically, politically and socially constructed (e.g. Adam, 1990; Frow, 1997; Gosden, 1994; May and Thrift, 2001). Time is a particularly powerful construct in societies living with legacies of colonialism (which are called ‘postcolonial’, although the ‘post’ is itself extremely problematic, particularly in light of the temporal politics highlighted in this article – see McClintock, 1992). Intermeshed with discourses of race, place and belonging, European ideas of time as linear, Cartesian and chronological function as enduring discursive tools of colonialism, and have some ongoing divisive and destructive effects. For example, in Australia, Enlightenment discourses of ‘progress’ have played a role in impeding recognition of Aboriginal sovereignty, and have had environmental implications (Tilley, 2012). Yet time itself, as a culturally speciic discourse that is instrumental in power distribution, remains largely unmarked in mainstream public discourse, even in debates addressing Indigenous people and issues arising from colonialism where temporal politics may have important material effects. Anthropologists routinely have put Indigenous TEmporAL discoursE And ThE nEws mEdiA rEprEsEnTATion of indigEnous– non-indigEnous rELATions: A cAsE sTudy from AoTEAroA nEw ZEALAnd