US rugby club puts the macron in M¯aori
The Fox Valley Maoris rugby club chose their name out of respect. Now they are set to show that by getting the name correct.
The tiny club in Northern Illinois, US – founded in 1975 – told it was likely to remove the incorrect plural ‘s’ from the name, and add a macron to become ‘Fox Valley Ma¯ ori’.
‘‘Not only would we consider it, we’ve already talked about it,’’ club president Josh Gaeth said.
‘‘It actually came up at a board meeting or two ago that we should correct the spelling to be proper.’’
The club also has a logo with a stylised, tattooed male Ma¯ ori face.
‘‘Obviously with the New Zealand Ma¯ ori, we see how it’s spelt correctly, and so we’ve had a discussion about changing the name and the logo so it’s spelt the way it should be,’’ Gaeth said.
‘‘We’ll do it at some point soon – it just makes sense to do it right. There’d be a lot of openness to correcting the name to the proper name.’’
The club was founded by brothers Danny and Benny Kenyon, who wanted to keep playing rugby after college.
‘‘New Zealand has always been the best rugby club, the best rugby country, and our founders thought the Ma¯ori were some of the toughest people in the world.
‘‘It was mostly just-graduated college kids and they felt if you were going to start a rugby club, you might as well name yourself after some of the toughest people around.’’
Waikato University associate professor Tom Roa (Waikato-Tainui/ Nga¯ ti Maniapoto) said the issue of cultural appropriation in these instances brought ‘‘a really fine line that we’ve got to play’’.
‘‘There’s an obvious idea in this group’s mind that they want to honour and acknowledge and do respect. It’s interesting that they’ve already discussed the macron etc at board level and it seems there’s a clear level that they’re honouring a connection, which is to be celebrated.
‘‘But then again – it’s a case of us watching this space – and, perhaps, an invitation to such groups to engage with Ma¯ ori. ‘Thank you’ but let’s talk with each other and not just think that we can take somebody’s name.’’
Gaeth said the club doesn’t – yet – have any Ma¯ ori players.
‘‘We’ve been mostly Midwestern boys for years and then about 2005 we started getting a couple of Islander guys. We don’t have any Ma¯ ori yet – we have two Fijians, a Samoan and a guy from PNG.
‘‘We’ve started embracing some of the Island culture – we’re big fans of kava and after games we’ll put on the lavalava. It definitely tastes like you’re drinking a mud puddle, but our Fijians love it,’’ Gaeth laughed.
Gaeth said there was an awareness in US sport of team names and cultural appropriation with Native Americans and hence the club wanted to emphasise the honour in their name.
‘‘We’d like to think they’re [Ma¯ ori] an inspiring group of people.’’
The club plays in division three of the Midwest competition – which covers a vast area from western Pennsylvania to Iowa, Minnesota and Kentucky – and has just finished its season with 10 wins and a sole defeat in the conference semifinal last Sunday.