Cultural appropriation is one of the means by which civilisation progresses

(First published in the Manawatu Standard, the Nelson Mail and Stuff.co.nz, February 20).

Complaints about cultural appropriation are a bit like earthquakes and outbursts of hysteria on social media. It’s only a matter of time before the next one comes along.

On Waitangi Day, Radio New Zealand broadcast an interview with expatriate New Zealand journalist Denise Garland, who was concerned about British breweries using Maori names and imagery to promote their beers.

New Zealand beer and hops were increasingly popular overseas and breweries naturally wanted to use New Zealand themes in their advertising, she said, but some “crossed the line between respect and offence”.

Only weeks before, controversy had arisen over an award-winning cheese called Tuteremoana Cheddar, which is produced by Fonterra subsidiary company Kapiti Cheese and takes its name from the highest point on Kapiti Island. 

Tuteremoana was also the name of a high chief who once lived on Kapiti, and Maori trademarks advisor Karaitiana Taiuru said putting his name on a food product was insulting to Tuteremoana and his descendants. In customary terms, it meant that people were eating him.

Taiuru, it turns out, has also been in touch with some of the British brewers mentioned by Garland. In all cases, it seems, the breweries were apologetic and responded by withdrawing the offending promotional material. They obviously had no wish to be disrespectful.

Similarly, although the Tuteremoana brand had been around without controversy for 10 years, Fonterra said it would review the use of Maori names in its branding and consult with iwi to make sure such use was “respectful”.

Clearly, this thing called cultural appropriation has become a minefield for image-conscious companies and their risk-averse PR advisors.  Even the mighty Disney empire buckled when complaints were made about the use of tattoos on kids’ costumes marketed to promote the movie Moana.

We can attribute this trend to the phenomenon known as identity politics, which brings with it a heightened sense of exclusive proprietorship over the symbols and traditions of specific cultures.

But as Garland acknowledged on Radio New Zealand, Maori culture is respected internationally. Attempts to mimic it appear to be driven by admiration rather than any desire to mock it. Shouldn’t that count for something?

As a country, we use Maori culture to promote our tourism industry. A Maori symbol, the koru, adorns the planes of our national airline. The haka is a ritual that precedes every All Blacks game.

This could all be seen as cultural appropriation, but no one seems to mind. At what point, then, does it become offensive? Where is the line to be drawn between what’s acceptable and what’s not?

A starting point, perhaps, is where there’s a clear intention to demean Maori culture. But even then, some wiggle room must be allowed for satire and free speech.

And here’s another thing. Guardians of Maori culture often give the impression that all things Maori are off-limits. But what’s striking about complaints of cultural appropriation in the Maori context is that they flow only one way.

Maori are free to borrow from other cultures, as they have enthusiastically done since their first contact with Europeans, yet they seem to expect their own culture to be treated as sacrosanct. Is that fair or consistent?

Maori eat food, play sports and wear clothing that were brought to New Zealand from other countries. They have become masterful exponents of reggae music, which comes from Jamaica.

Nobody objects, and neither should they, because every culture on earth has borrowed, stolen and adapted ideas from others since the dawn of time. That’s how civilisation progresses.

Virtually everything we do – the books we read, the ideas we adopt, the clothes we wear, the food we eat, the language we use, the songs we sing and the religions we follow – came from somewhere else.

The Irish don’t seem too bothered, for example, that virtually the entire Western world has seized on St Patrick’s Day as an excuse for drinking, partying and indulging in over-the-top demonstrations of supposed Irishness, regardless of whether the revellers have Hibernian roots.

The idea that Maori culture must be fenced off or exempted from this rich global cross-fertilisation is wrong as well as futile, as is the notion that we can somehow raise the drawbridge and retreat into our individual cultural bunkers. 

In the case of Tuteremoana cheese, there’s an additional issue. This is the 21^st century, and while cultural traditions are generally entitled to respect, there’s a point at which they should be dismissed as primitive superstition.

If the descendants of Tuteremoana want to believe they’re devouring their ancestor if they eat the cheese that bears his name, that’s fine, but they can’t expect the rest of us to go along with it. That would be like Christians insisting that everyone must believe in the virgin birth.