KIWI ROMANY ‘Stop stealing our culture’
Kiwi Romany say being a Gypsy is not a lifestyle choice, nor an image to be used for commercial gain. Nina Hindmarsh reports.
It’s time Kiwis stopped the ‘‘insulting’’ misappropriation of Gypsy culture, a Romany Gypsy campaigner in Auckland says. Robert Kamulo Lovell says being a Gypsy is not a lifestyle, nor an ethos or image to be used for commercial gain.
The 70-year-old from Orewa says people are born Gypsies and cannot become one by choice.
A Gypsy is another word for the Romany people – a minority ethnic group found in many countries throughout the world.
Lovell has been trying to raise awareness about the issue for years, including lobbying the Government to stop businesses from exploiting Gypsy culture for profit.
Lovell and other Romany campaigners have asked for help from various authorities, but say they have been ignored.
Now he is unhappy that freedom campers identifying as ‘‘gypsies’’ and ‘‘travellers’’ recently protested for special rights to stay at a popular river site in Golden Bay.
The group was part of what it called a ‘‘travelling community’’ of like-minded people that moved around the top of the South Island as a way of life, and don’t have permanent homes. They have since been moved on by police.
Lovell says he is tired of the racist stereotypes. Being a Gypsy has nothing to do with being homeless, a ‘‘free spirit’’ or a traveller.
It is unclear how many Romany are in New Zealand, but a recent study estimated there to be between 1500 and 3000, mostly migrants from the United Kingdom and, more recently, refugees from Europe.
In the 2018 census, 132 people responded as affiliating with the Romany ethnicity category.
‘‘To misuse the term Gypsy by non-Roma and make claims based on a lifestyle is a gross misrepresentation of who we are as a race of people, and very misleading to the general public,’’ Lovell says.
He’s concerned the growing number of itinerant freedom campers around the country might be labelled ‘‘gypsies’’ by those who hate their lifestyle, fuelling racism against Romany.
He says Gypsy communities in Britain have faced problems because non-Roma people could claim gypsy status, pushing true Romany out of encampments.
Gypsies in Europe endured centuries of systemic persecution, genocide, human rights abuses and discrimination.
In New Zealand, more than a century of cultural appropriation has continued, and Lovell says it is ‘‘time to stop’’.
‘‘It’s as offensive as a group of non-Ma¯ ori going around dressing up as traditional Ma¯ ori and making money out of a show, doing the haka, or claiming special rights. That would be shut down instantly,’’ he says.
‘‘All we want is for Romany Gypsies to be given the same respect as other races here as part of New Zealand’s ethnic diversity.’’
A member of the freedom camping group declined to comment, but said she regretted the gypsy reference and had apologised.
Lovell is an elder in the Romany community of New Zealand, whose DNA results trace back to the Indian subcontinent where they first originated. He speaks the Sanskrit-derived Romany language, which was spoken in his home growing up.
Romany migrated beyond northern India about 1500 years ago and spread throughout almost every country in Europe in the past 500 years. They were called ‘‘Gypsies’’ because Europeans mistakenly believed they came from Egypt.
Nowadays, its used as a colloquial term to describe a ‘‘nomadic’’ or ‘‘free-spirited’’ person, but can also be used in a derogatory way.
The word ‘‘gypped’’ – which means to be cheated or swindled – comes from the word gypsy.
Last year, Facebook temporarily banned the accounts of several Kiwis because of hate speech regarding the term.
Members of a Facebook group ‘‘Gypsy Scammers in NZ’’, which tracked the movement of a controversial family of unruly British tourists that caused nuisance wherever they went, were banned for up to a month at a time for using any iteration of the term gypsy in their posts.
There was no evidence the family were Gypsies.
In New Zealand, the term is most often associated with a bohemian, new-age hippy lifestyle. However, Lovell calls it ‘‘romantic racism’’ because of the way it falsely romanticises the culture.
He says using the term gypsy to describe a business ethos, product or fashion statement is racial appropriation.
From the Gypsy Kings to Fleetwood Mac’s song Gypsy, the term has been used in popular culture for years, and is increasingly gaining commercial currency through brand names, products, and by businesses as a marketing ploy.
A New Zealand Companies Register search reveals 67 businesses using a company name including the word ‘‘gypsy’’. Gipsy Caravans, the Lost Gypsy Gallery, Gypsy Tearooms, Neon Gypsy, and Urban Gypsy are among the retailers across the country.
Lovell has previously sought legal advice against the operators of The Original Gypsy Fair for exploiting Romany culture for commercial gain.
However, taking them to court would cost about $10,000, and he says he doesn’t have the funds.
He says the owners of the fair, which has been running since the 1990s, use copyrighted images of British Gypsies on their horse wagons – some of whom are his blood relations – to promote the travelling fair that goes to various towns and cities in the North and South Islands.
He has contacted the fair owners and asked them to stop using the images and stop calling themselves gypsies, without success.
According to its website, the fair provides a venue for ‘‘likeminded travelling folk’’ to earn a living to support their chosen lifestyle.
But Lovell says the notion of earning a living while ‘‘moving around in a van culture’’ and making a claim to be Gypsies confuses a lifestyle choice with the authentic Romany culture.
Most Romany earned a living doing traditional Gypsy work, such as blacksmithing, fruit picking, buying and selling horses, and grinding cutlery. ‘‘Not by selling tie-dye T-shirts and dream catchers.’’
Gypsy Craft Fairs Ltd, trading as The Original Gypsy Fair, is owned by Jim Banks and his wife Venus, who both declined to comment. A similar event, called The Gypsy Extravaganza, has also been approached by Lovell and, in response, its organisers changed the name to The Extravaganza.
Auckland academic Cliff Harvey, who runs a group for people of Romany descent in New Zealand, has also been campaigning.
He says there is no other race for which the ‘‘caricaturising, appropriation of cultural icons, or the blatant use of racist terms’’ is still so widely accepted.
He likens the appropriation to a group of white people dressing up in blackface and touring the country as the ‘‘Original Negro Fair’’ because they like AfricanAmerican culture, and feel they have ‘‘negro souls’’.
He believes the use of the term gypsy by businesses – using
stereotypes and fetishism – is at odds with some aspects of New Zealand law, such as that around fair trading, advertising standards, and Companies Office requirements for businesses and trademarks not to use offensive terms.
Harvey has taken the ‘‘educational approach’’, and contacted business owners using ‘‘gypsy’’ in their names. He says the reactions have typically been heartening, and some have changed their branding and names as a result.
However, others, even those claiming to be holistic or spiritual, have come back with patronising responses such as, ‘‘I feel like I have a gypsy soul’’, or ‘‘I was a gypsy in a past life’’.
Harvey says many New Zealanders are genuinely ignorant about the history of the Romany race.
More than half the Romany population was killed in the Holocaust, and in some Eastern European countries, such as Slovakia, Gypsy women were forced into sterilisation until only recently.
In Italy today, many Gypsies are denied citizenship because of their ethnicity, despite being born there.
‘‘We are lucky here, because Romany people don’t face that level of persecution like they still do in Europe,’’ Harvey says.
‘‘But for a lot of us, it’s about recovering the language, culture and lineage because we lost it through centuries of oppression, persecution and genocide. For a long time it was dangerous to be identified as a Gypsy, even illegal.’’
AUK human rights report says the Romany population is in a unique situation compared with other ethnic groups, because Romany are not indigenous to any of the continents they live in, nor do they have a homeland.
However, the socioeconomic disadvantages and discrimination they frequently face parallels those of other populations, be they indigenous people, refugees, migrants, or other groups, it says.
Gypsy communities in Europe have the worst outcomes of any ethnic group across a huge range of areas, including education, health, employment, criminal justice and hate crime, but little is being done to tackle longstanding inequalities.
Lovell has been in touch with various authorities in New Zealand, with little success.
When he contacted Ethnic Communities Minister Jenny Salesa in 2018, he says he was ‘‘fobbed off’’ to Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Kris Faafoi, and to the Human Rights Commission.
Lovell and other campaigners have lodged a complaint with the Commerce Commission, but he says they have not heard back.
They also wrote to Faafoi in 2018, demanding a legal review to remove the term gypsy from all registered business names. To date, they have not received a response.
When contacted, Salesa’s office referred Stuff on to other authorities.
Chelsea Haughton, communications adviser for the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, whose remit covers commerce and consumer affairs, would not comment on Lovell’s concerns. She said there was a list of restricted names and words on the Companies Office website that people could check to see whether a proposed business name was offensive or breached any laws.
The law states that a company is not allowed to have a name that is offensive, obscene, or likely to cause offence to any particular religious group or section of the community.
However, on its website, the Companies Office has not listed ‘‘gypsy’’ in its restricted names.
The Human Rights Commission said Lovell could lodge a formal complaint. It took up complaints where there was evidence a person or group had been treated differently from other people in the same situation in a way that disadvantaged them.
These included when the discrimination was based on certain grounds, some of those being race and ethnic or national origin.
Massey University professor Paul Spoonley, who specialises in race relations, says the New Zealand use of a label such as ‘‘gypsy’’ is troubling.
‘‘Partly because some people use it to denigrate others, while some claim it when they have no right to. Gypsy is the colloquial term for Romany – and it is often used in unthinking ways by many New Zealanders.’’
He says it does not help that some of those who should be promoting diversity, such as government departments, are ‘‘completely silent’’ on the term.
Spoonley was involved in some UK research on Romany and was ‘‘appalled’’ at the way in which Romany were treated.
‘‘They certainly faced explicit racism and discrimination. In New Zealand, with a smaller Romany population, there tends to be a lot more ignorance. I can understand why local Romany get annoyed.’’