(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 21st 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.
