Communicating Culture: An Exploratory Study of the Key Concepts in Maori Culture on Maori Web Sites

Abstract

Introduction The explosive growth of the Internet creates an opportunity for different ethnic to communicate their cultural values to a worldwide audience. Maori, the indigenous people of New Zealand, use the Internet in different ways: to promote their cultural values, to teach young Maori language, spiritual and ethical values and social rules of conduct and to present relevant facts and databases to support their claim for land and natural resources. Internet tools are also used to promote Maori enterprises in the global economy (Maori e-commerce sites) and for communication between members of tribes and others interested in Maori issues. However, the Internet poses some threats to the cultural values of Maori people, as discussed by Smith (1997). Modern technology allows to anyone to easily reproduce and disseminate digital images and documents on the Internet and that raises concern with Maori that their heritage for example, the digital images of their ancestors or face tattoos (Moko), will be exploited and sold. could be viewed as culturally offensive since Maori place great importance on the concept of cultural property (the rights of cultural and ethnic to control of the knowledge and information created over generations by the group). The question we are interested in is how well Maori web sites actually reflect Maori culture in this new environment, i.e. in the virtual world of the Internet? Is there a correspondence between the oral (very important in Maori tradition), written and virtual worlds? If a correspondence exists then we can say that the Maori community has been re-constructed in the virtual world. Another set of questions is related to Maori web sites design. Although some authors, such as Benton (1996) takes marae--one of the key Maori cultural concepts--as a metaphor and relates it to a certain Internet tool--discussion forum, so far there have been few attempts to recognise Maori cultural concepts and relate them to the elements or tools in the virtual world (see Kovacic, 2001). (Benton (1996, p. 136) says that the message section is the marae of Te Wahapu (communications system launched in 1990 in New Zealand).) However, it is not just a matter of using Maori themes or how the site displays Maori art forms, but more importantly how the whole concept of the site design (that is particularly important for an educational site) is embodied in 'te ira tangata' (the life principle of people), which is the essence of Maori knowledge. (Tangaere (1997) made an attempt toward establishing Maori human development learning theory. According to him, to be able to socialise in a particular manner within a Maori context a person has to use the appropriate language and the entire interaction should be based on the customs, value and tradition. This is known in Te Kohanga Reo and Kura Kaupapa Maori as 'Te Aho Matua', the philosopical body of knowledge which bonds us to our ancestors, the land, the universe, and Io Matua Kore (God).) Also, how have the Internet technologies been used to build a Maori web site which follows the tradition of tribe rituals and communications, or which incorporates the specific approach Maori have taken in transferring knowledge to the younger generation? (Cormack (1996, p. 163) uses the axiom of Maori social dynamics groups compete, individuals co-operate to build appropriate and effective learning environment for Maori students.) In this paper we made an attempt to provide some answers to these questions. Analysis at this stage is exploratory in nature and we consider it as the first step toward deep linguistic and semantic analysis of Maori web sites when a contextual analysis of each site would be applied. The Multidimensional Scaling method has been used to analyse a data set and create a perceptual map. The relevance of our results are threefold. Firstly, using this map we provide a picture of how the web sites are associated with key cultural concepts. …