A cultural minefield
the symbols and traditions of specific cultures.
But as Garland acknowledged on Radio New Zealand, Ma¯ ori 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 Ma¯ ori culture to promote our tourism industry. A Ma¯ ori 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 Ma¯ ori culture. But even then, some wiggle room must be allowed for satire and free speech.
And here’s another thing. Guardians of Ma¯ ori culture sometimes give the impression that all things Ma¯ ori are off-limits. But what’s striking about complaints of cultural appropriation in the Ma¯ ori context is that they flow only one way.
Ma¯ ori 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?
Ma¯ ori eat food, play sports and wear clothing that were brought to New Zealand from other countries. They have become expert 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 those celebrating have Hibernian roots.
The idea that Ma¯ ori culture must be fenced off or exempted from this rich global crossfertilisation 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.