This is a history of ideas about race which are taken for granted. It examines racial tropes applied to Māori and Aboriginal people: tropes so fundamental to our perceptions of them as people that they have become naturalized and normalized within both contemporary and historical understandings of Australia and New Zealand. In response to such ‘normalization’, this analysis interrogates racial thought at the time it was expressed as well as how it has subsequently been represented in national histories. The racial thought created in the early period of British connection with the indigenous peoples of the region, from the Cook voyages to the Treaty of Waitangi, is not merely of historical importance, but informs stereotypes which continue to hold great power in contemporary society. The racial categorization of the indigenous peoples of Australia and New Zealand had broader consequences than the creation of stereotypes, however, with important material effects for both colonizers and colonized. The most fundamental of these effects was, and continues to be, understandings of land ownership and sovereignty. The most basic comparison in the race relations of Australia and New Zealand is that Māori were understood to be sovereign owners of their country while Aboriginal people were not. The most important contribution of this work is to examine the processes by which this happened.