Zealand Identity Research Articles

Mixed Messages: Māori/Pasifika Masculinities and Aotearoa/New Zealand Identity in Television Advertising, 2000–2019

There is an ongoing association between masculinity and New Zealand identity which can be traced in popular culture and television advertising. Until the early 2000s, white (Pākehā) men/homosocial “Kiwi blokes” predominated but television advertising has since featured a steady increase in Māori/Pasifika men and boys, which also reflects their greater prominence in local popular culture (in comedy, for example). Similar to representations of African American men, Māori/Pasifika masculinities are subject to binary stereotyping: generally more positive in advertisements for commercial products and more negative in anti-drug public service advertisements. These categories relate to the incorporation of non-white subjects into colonial, patriarchal discourse (and shift according to its imperatives). One important shift internationally is the emergence of non-white fatherhood as a way of signalling ethnic diversity while also reaffirming colonial and neoliberal values. There is a related shift from the male “hard bodies” of the 1980s and 1990s towards a more relational, “softer” masculinity; locally, there is a shift away from the “hard” Kiwi bloke (or non-white sporting “warrior”) towards “postfeminist fatherhood.” This features kindly, often humorous paternalism and “magical” scenarios, including literal and metaphorical father/son relations, which may, in the local context, take on connotations of tāngata whenua welcoming manuhiri (Pākehā) into “their land.” A “progressive” discourse of positively imaging Māori/Pasifika men as implicit “fathers of the nation” (and clearly there is a slippage here between Māori and Pasifika through the use of ethnically ambiguous actors) justifies heteronormativity and reconfirms the homosocial emphasis in New Zealand identity as well as neoliberal values.

Motivation as ethical self-formation in learning te reo Māori as a second language

ABSTRACT This article explores the motivation of non-Māori learners of te reo Māori as an L2. Inspired by calls for contextualised investigations of the L2 motivation of learners of LOTEs, our study utilises an ethical self-formation framework [Hennig, B. B. 2010a. “Language Learning and the Self: Exploring Hong Kong Students’ Motivation for Learning German as a Third Language from a Foucauldian Ethical Perspective.” Doctoral diss., University of Hong Kong. https://bibliography.lib.eduhk.hk/tc/bibs/fdb173c8] to analyse data from semi-structured interviews with 10 learners enrolled in a voluntary course of Māori language for staff at a New Zealand university. Through a discussion of findings associated with three of the framework’s axes (ethical substance, mode of subjection and telos), we offer an interpretation of the learners’ L2 motivation as linked to a self-directed process aimed at achieving an improved version of themselves, and of this process of self-formation as rooted in personal belief systems about the value of te reo Māori in their personal and professional lives and for New Zealand as a whole. Overall, the ethical self-formation framework emerges as a useful lens for highlighting the links between the learners’ L2 motivation, their personal connections with te reo Māori and their sense of membership in an ideal collective New Zealand identity, and for exploring dimensions of the convergence of the personal and the societal in L2 motivation.

Flagging a ‘new’ New Zealand: the discursive construction of national identity in the Flag Consideration Project

ABSTRACTNew Zealanders were presented with the opportunity to change the national flag and opted to retain the current New Zealand flag, despite arguments that it was unable to reflect national identity adequately. This article unpacks the particular version of national identity constructed in discourse in the infographic, Our Nation. Your Choice. which was released prior to the final referendum that determined the outcome of the Flag Consideration Project. We used Fairclough’s (1992. [Discourse and social change. Cambridge, England: Polity Press]) critical discourse analysis to examine the discursive construction of national identity by the Flag Consideration Panel that oversaw the process. The authoritative assertion of national identity on behalf of New Zealanders emphasised inclusiveness and unity by acknowledging cultural diversity. Biculturalism was confined to an old understanding of New Zealand identity while the ideology of multiculturalism, not yet officially implemented, was positioned as common-sense. There was a focus on situating New Zealand in a global context to distance New Zealand from colonisation and connection to Britain. The positive, cohesive conceptualisation of New Zealand suggested that the Flag Consideration Project was, in fact, an exercise in re-positioning New Zealand in the global context, in which the national flag would represent the national brand rather than contribute to national identity.

The Anzac Iliad: Early New Zealand School Journals and the development of the citizen-child in the new dominion

The New Zealand School Journal was established in 1907 to provide reading material across the primary school curriculum. Linked to reforms of the school curriculum, the School Journal aimed to introduce curriculum content relevant to New Zealand children. With the outbreak of the First World War, however, the School Journal became harnessed to the war effort, becoming entrenched in civic instruction and an upsurge in imperialism. Inclusion of patriotic reading material strongly reflected notions of self-sacrifice and reinforced concepts of the dutiful citizen-child. This article explores how preparation for war, and portrayal of war, fostered a particular notion of New Zealand’s developing identity and the role that the citizen-child had to play in the new dominion. Literary integration of subjects and genres, collapses of time and location, along with juxtaposition of items within the School Journal, particularly through the use of the Anzac story, solidified this emergent New Zealand identity. The School Journal, as de facto curriculum, became complicit in the creation and maintenance of the Anzac myth as a basis for the ideal New Zealand citizen through annual commemorative issues of the School Journal, culminating with Anzac Day as a newly created national holiday in 1923.

Enactments of Identity in the New Zealand Short Story

New Zealand, as a nation, has been in existence for less than two centuries—whether one dates its assumption of sovereignty to the 1835 Declaration of Independence by the Confederation of United Tribes, the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi between Maori and the British Crown, or its attainment of Dominion status in 1907. The question of a separate cultural identity for this post-colonial, multi-cultural country has therefore always been a complex one, and one which has had a strong influence on much of our artistic expression to date: particularly, perhaps because of its inherent tendency towards the self-analysis only really possible within language, literature. The fact that our most famous locally born writer to date, Katherine Mansfield, specialised in the short story has certainly helped to establish that as a vital genre here. This paper accordingly takes four successive anthologies of local short fiction—Frank Sargeson’s Speaking for Ourselves (1945), Michael Morrissey’s The New Fiction (1985), Warwick Bennett and Patrick Hudson’s Rutherford’s Dreams (1995), and Tina Shaw and Jack Ross’s Myth of the twenty-firstCentury (2006)—and attempts to characterise their respective, overlapping visions of New Zealand identity by conducting a close reading of a representative story from each of them. The essay concludes with a call for a new anthology which might attempt to give expression to this series of gradual erosions of our initial cultural certainties into something more adequate to the realities of our place in the world, both geographically and culturally.

Seeking ontological security through the rise of China: New Zealand as a small trading nation

ABSTRACTMaintaining global peace as China rises is a key strategic goal of Western liberal democracies. Compared to other western liberal democracies, New Zealand's response to the ‘rise of China’ is notable for its absence of security and political frictions and for the achievement of a series of diplomatic ‘firsts’. Can this be explained only by material concern over the national economic interest as China's role in the global economy increases or do ideational factors also underlay how New Zealand engages China? This paper employs the ontological security framework to demonstrate how New Zealand identity as a ‘small trading nation’ and ‘good international citizen’ has shaped its turn to Asia and response to the ‘rise of China'. It first analyses the origins of New Zealand's outward facing identity and resultant foreign policy positions long before China became an important aspect of New Zealand trade policy. It then shows how New Zealand seeks ontological security as a ‘small trading nation’ and ‘good international citizen’ in its relations with China and how China has responded to this type of engagement. The paper illustrates the importance of ideational factors in Western liberal democracies’ responses to the ‘rise of China’.

広島・反核芸術とニュージーランド・アイデンティティ

広島・反核芸術とニュージーランド・アイデンティティ

As Kiwi as? Contestation over the place of men’s football in New Zealand culture

Men’s football has long been marginalized within New Zealand culture, struggling for acceptance as an appropriately masculine and truly national sport. New Zealand’s unexpected qualification for the men’s 2010 FIFA World Cup – for only the second time in the nation’s history – created a space for media and public reimagining of football’s connection to New Zealand identity and its place in the sporting landscape. In this paper, we investigate the dynamic interaction between news media discourses and public perceptions via analysis of 1112 online news articles and photographs, and 1423 online public comments on news and fan websites. We conclude that media discourses that masculinized, ethnicized and nationalized the national men’s team were taken up by the public in complex ways that moved the national team closer to the centre of New Zealand sport, but did little to disrupt public perceptions of the sport as a whole.

“A deluge of shrieking unreason”: Supernaturalism and Settlement in New Zealand Gothic Fiction

“A deluge of shrieking unreason”: Supernaturalism and Settlement in New Zealand Gothic Fiction

A Made-Up Place by Anna Jackson et al. (review)

Reviewed by: A Made-Up Place by Anna Jackson et al. B.J. Epstein A Made-Up Place. Anna Jackson, Geoffrey Miles, Harry Ricketts, Tatjana Schaefer, and Kathryn Walls. Wellington, NZ: Victoria UP, 2011. 224 pp. Despite a strange cover that seemingly shows two girls in their underwear, this fascinating book by New Zealand-based scholars who teach children’s literature discusses what is likely to be new ground for many of us: young adult literature from New Zealand. It analyses a number of topics (ranging from race to sport, the Gothic to money) and refers to many authors, including Margaret Mahy, Maurice Gee, and Witi Ihimaera. The main topic is national identity, which is connected to other issues, so Jackson, Miles, Rickets, Schaefer, and Walls analyze young adult literature from New Zealand with the apparent aim of understanding what such works say about New Zealand and about the New Zealander identity (or identities). [End Page 95] This work helps New Zealand to escape from being known as “just” another Commonwealth country; the authors focus on the country’s literature and identity in its own right, rather than as an offshoot of Britain. And yet, there is a distinct sense of confusion about where New Zealand identity lies. Is it with the English, in a sense of Englishness, whatever that might be? Is it more generally European white (which is referred to as Pākehā)? Is it with the indigenous Māori? Is it some combination thereof? Is there such a thing as New Zealandness? Or something else altogether? The authors—and New Zealanders in general, it seems—are not sure. If it is true that “[w]here New Zealand YA authors represent the kind of institutionalized management of national identity or invention of tradition proposed by [Ernest] Gellner or [Eric] Hobsbawn, then, this is almost invariably in a critical spirit” (12), then this comment suggests an ambiguous feeling towards national identity. An implicit question in this book seems to be: is there a coherent New Zealand identity? Or are there multiple New Zealand identities? The authors respond: “Pākehā New Zealanders are defined at one and the same by their difference from the English, and by their English heritage” (45). But then, in “other New Zealand books for YA readers, we find similar representations of Englishness as a respectability against which New Zealanders define themselves by their difference; as a heritage which defines the Pākehā New Zealander in contrast to the Māori; as connected both to memory and to forgetting” (45). Memory and forgetting seem to be key themes in YA literature from New Zealand, and they recur frequently here, though the chapters themselves seem somewhat randomly ordered. In the chapter on historical fiction, Ricketts points out how historical novels for young adult readers are popular because“[t]he past, particularly the YA fictional past, is a potentially safe space to escape to, to fantasize about, even (through imaginative games) to pretend we live in” (68). And yet, “[one] of the oddities of New Zealand YA historical fiction is that until now it has almost exclusively been the preserve of Pākehā writers” (69). These Pākehā writers have been inspired by British historical fiction whose nationalist/imperialist attitudes have often found their way into NZ historical novels (73). As a result, NZ historical fiction tends to focus on settler experiences at the expense of Maori history. Ricketts offers an alternative explanation for this. Since the Māori view time and history differently from Europeans, the past is not necessarily past but rather a place you can return to easily, so historical fiction is perhaps a contradiction. Another popular genre in New Zealand young adult fiction seems to be utopian and dystopian novels. Miles suggests, “[in] a sense, the real country of New Zealand emerges out of this tradition of utopian fantasy and speculation” (88). Miles makes the case that futurist fiction is in some ways about identity and can be descriptive even if it is not realistic. He writes: “New Zealand’s YA dystopian fiction, then, is not simply following an international fashion for such fictions; it also springs from specifically New Zealand anxieties…about race...

Belonging and Differentiating: Aspects of New Zealand National Identity Reflected in the New Zealand Picture Book Collection (NZPBC)

Belonging and Differentiating: Aspects of New Zealand National Identity Reflected in the New Zealand Picture Book Collection (NZPBC) Nicola Daly (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Although we all use the term “national identity” confidently, defining what constitutes an individual’s or group’s sense of how they belong to a place and a citizenship is not easy. Jeffries defines national identity as “a shared sense of belonging of a group of people that depends on a common area of named place, a common set of beliefs and values, and positive feelings for a specific named geographical area” (4). Fox defines it as the “characteristics a society (or nation) feels its members share that distinguish it from others” (44). Meeks describes national identity as a way of differentiating between “us” and “others,” and explains “the role that children’s literature plays in the development of children’s understandings of both belonging…and differentiation” (x). What all these definitions share is a rejection of a static, essentialist view of identity (not only of national identity, but also of gender and ethnic identity) and an acceptance that national identity is forged through interactions between individuals and their environment. “People are seen as being involved in continuous negotiation of different aspects of their identity…based on the new norms, practices and situations which they encounter in their everyday interactions” (Jamarani 2). This letter examines a collection of picture books from New Zealand in terms of how they reflect and thus contribute to the negotiation of the national identity of children. To date, several researchers have indicated a strong link between New Zealand national identity and its children’s literature (Hebley et al). The recent A Made Up Place explores the reflection of New Zealand identity in young adult fiction through a series of topics including sport, money, religion, history and Maori Gothic (see the Reviews section of this issue of Bookbird for a fuller discussion). Hebley’s doctoral dissertation draws attention to the frequency with which two landscapes feature in New Zealand children’s fiction published between 1970 and 1989: seascapes (no New Zealander [End Page 73] lives more that 130km from the sea), and volcanoes (tectonic activity is a part of the national conscious as New Zealand lies on a fault line). Moore explores national identity through the visual imagery used in The New Zealand School Journal, a magazine produced for use in New Zealand schools. She argues that, while the role of art in New Zealand has been discussed with relation to national identity, illustrations have not been included in such analyses. Yet as a longstanding publication for use in New Zealand schools, The School Journal “has offered us many ways to imagine ourselves as a kind of community of possibilities—always becoming” (23). Moore shows how this idea of a community that is “always becoming” is revealed through images of New Zealand’s flora and fauna, and through references to Maori visual culture. Thus, to date, research has indicated a strong link between New Zealand national identity and New Zealand children’s literature in a number of ways including landscape (sea and volcanic), visual and textual references to flora and fauna, and visual and linguistic references to Maori culture. Jeffries’s examination of national identity in New Zealand children’s picture books has indicated that this is a poor category of literature for dealing with New Zealand identity. However, given my previous work with parents who reported on the importance of the picture book for developing the national identity of their children after a month reading a set of 13 New Zealand picture books to their children, I believe this warrants further investigation. New Zealand has been inhabited by the Maori for approximately the last 1,000 years, and was “discovered” by a Dutch explorer, Abel Tasman, in 1642. Whalers and sealers began traveling to New Zealand; a great deal of British activity then followed which led, in 1840, to the signing of a treaty between the chiefs of many (but not all) New Zealand Maori tribes and the British crown. The ethnic diversity of present-day New Zealand society grows with each census. The most recent census...

Difference and Diversity in Aotearoa/New Zealand: Post-neoliberal constructions of the ideal ethnic citizen

In the last decade, the political rhetoric around citizenship for ethnic minority groups, particularly recent migrants, in Aotearoa/New Zealand has been influenced by two dominant paradigms. In the wake of the post-neoliberalism advanced by the Fifth Labour Government (1999–2008) and the efforts to build an inclusive state, the idea of the ‘active citizen’ has evolved, encouraging ethnic migrants to contribute to their own communities and to a wider New Zealand identity. Equally, broader discourses on the recognition of group-based citizenship have helped ethnic communities in securing a multicultural framing of social rights. Based on qualitative analysis of interview and policy documents, this paper argues that the active citizen and the rights-bearing citizen emerge from discrete paradigms that reveal a fundamental tension between policy-centred celebration of diversity and the political recognition of difference.

Better than an Ironclad: Leonard Isitt, Temperance and Greater Britain

The English-born New Zealand temperance activist, the Rev. Leonard M. Isitt, undertook a number of temperance ‘missions’ in Britain between 1895 and 1905, offering historians a deeper insight into the lived reality of the ‘British world’ and ‘Greater British’ identity. Addressing several areas of imperial historiography, the article uses newspapers from both New Zealand and Britain to acquire a truly ‘Greater British’ perspective of an imperially mobile individual, from which can be drawn lessons about imperial identities and ‘networks’. Isitt's participation in a self-consciously imperial temperance movement highlights the development of a New Zealand identity that depended upon both contrast and commonality with Britain, but it also points to a politics of imperial peregrination, with the temperance reformer's visits to the ‘Mother Country’ factoring in the highly divisive drink question in both New Zealand and Britain. The article concludes with reflections on the nature and limitations of a ‘Greater British’ politics.

Palettes and palates: Jacqueline Bullmore's Florentine diary

Jacqueline and Edward Bullmore, in their early twenties, left New Zealand for Florence in 1959. The art found in Florence would change the course of Edward's artistic oeuvre, ultimately distancing him from New Zealand's nationalist prescription of representational landscape painting. Jacqueline, homesick and a young mother-to-be, kept a diary of their daily routines. Away from New Zealand they tried their hardest to emulate aspects of New Zealand in their Florence apartment. Being in an international context was also about retaining their New Zealand identity, including their diet. A diary of private proportions has brought to life a six-month sojourn in a city imbued with the classical world, the Renaissance and the contemporary work of Italy's metaphysical painters, all of which fused together making Edward Bullmore one of New Zealand's earliest Surrealists. This essay discusses Jacqueline's diary and how it has assisted in the understanding of two young New Zealand travellers, both artists distanced from family and familiarity.

The Construction and Use of National Identity in Contemporary New Zealand Political Discourse

New Zealand's Labour-led coalition governments in power from 1999 to 2008 committed themselves to defending and promoting a unique and confident sense of national identity. While Labour officially defined the nation in terms of openness, diversity and tolerance, this article argues that in practice they tended to stress a narrower set of identity markers: those, such as creativity, flexibility and innovation, consistent with its reading of global economic necessity. The article demonstrates how the construction of a supposedly unique and confident New Zealand identity remained strongly structured by global norms. It also shows how an insistence on a shared national vision and a common identity can lend itself to a reductive address of citizens as role-performers and, therefore, to a problematic marginalisation of divergent interests and identities.

‘Quiet as lambs’: Communicative Action in the New Zealand Parliamentary Debates on Human Assisted Reproductive Technology

Communicative action in the Human Assisted Reproductive Technology (HART) debates in the New Zealand Parliament in 2004 is analysed in this paper using Habermasian concepts of deliberation. The marked cooperativeness of these debates, which surprised the elected participants themselves, is demonstrated through a comparison with the related and almost simultaneous Care of Children debate, using a Discourse Quality Index inspired by Steiner et al (2004), assisted by qualitative analysis software. Using the thematic content of HART debates themselves, assisted by international literature on related debates, how this cooperativeness was accomplished is examined. Our analysis suggests that “conscience” voting, intentional sequestration of potentially destructive topics, active attempts to create unity, and a degree of Habermasian “deliberative reasonableness” all had parts to play. Why these debates exhibited these features is discussed in the conclusion where we draw attention to concepts of “the greater good”, the perceived importance of the topic and reference to aspects of New Zealand identity. Finally, we point to a contradiction in the resulting legislation which relegated on-going debate on HART to appointed committees meeting in private.

At Home He's a Tourist: New Zealand's Architectural Culture in the Eighties

I will discuss how architecture was presented and received during the 1980s in the non-specialist print media: magazines and books intended for the general public. During the decade, both the magazine and book publishing industries enjoyed unprecedented growth. The magazine sector saw the dominance of the New Zealand Listener challenged by new titles. Of these, Auckland Metro is the most interesting for architectural culture, since it published regular critiques (by the likes of Peter Shaw, Hamish Keith, David Mitchell and Pip Cheshire) of buildings and of town planning in Auckland. It also documented the rise and fall of the property developers, while arguing for the protection of historic buildings. Equally remarkable, though, is how Metro's interest in the civic aspects of architecture waned during the middle of the decade, as it became less concerned with politics and more with "lifestyle." Its emphasis shifts from public buildings to private houses, and discussion of these houses is centred more on the client than the architect. At the same time, individual architects are pictured as men (and sometimes women) of style, alongside fashion designers and hairdressers.
 This movement towards lifestyle can be found in other publications of the period and represents a withdrawal from the public square to the private space. Architecture is represented less as a public concern and more as a personal desire - about finding the ideal home. This acquisitive and aspirational interest in architecture is represented most clearly in the Trends family of publications, but also in books of the period. A contiguous development was a growing interest in historic buildings. These are shown both as desirable places to live, but also as representations of New Zealand identity. Old buildings also became an important aspect of New Zealand's tourist industry. One important part of this representation is in the work of art photographers, such as Robin Morrison and Laurence Aberhart.
 Parallels obviously can be made with the political climate of the decade, with its emphasis on personal gain and the dismantling of the public sphere by privatisation and de-regulation. Equally apparent is the contradiction of New Zealand discovering its heritage at a time when the historic buildings of its cities were being demolished. During the decade, buildings, architects and architecture become totems of larger forces in New Zealand society: of a nostalgia for the recent past, of progress to a brighter future and of a rediscovery of collective identity.

Imperial White: Race, Diaspora, and the British Empire (review)

Reviewed by: Imperial White: Race, Diaspora, and the British Empire Angela Woollacott Imperial White: Race, Diaspora, and the British Empire. By Radhika Mohanram. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007) Despite the efflorescence of critically-engaged work in British imperial history (along with comparable work on other empires), there has been little cross-fertilization between postcolonial studies and whiteness studies within it. Perhaps the main reason for this is the dearth of historical scholarship on empires and colonialism that brings the insights of the interdisciplinary field of whiteness studies to bear. Given the central role of British and other settlers within the British Empire from the seventeenth century onwards, and the large scale of settler migration in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the lack of application of theory from whiteness studies (a field that has developed substantially in recent years) has been surprising. For this reason even if there were no other, Radhika Mohanram’s new book Imperial White is to be welcomed. Mohanram, a scholar who brings together postcolonial studies, feminist theory and cultural studies, has explored the potential of applying insights from whiteness studies to various areas and episodes of British imperial history, and has produced several original interpretations that emphasize both embodiment and psychoanalytic categories. The book is a collection of essays, some of which were previously published (including one article in this journal). This format of self-contained essays unified by thematic interests allows for a diverse range of topics. Mohanram succeeds in revealing the heterogeneity of whiteness, and especially its historical specificity—the ways in which it has been variously shaped by quite particular geographic, historical and cultural circumstances and racial hierarchies. Moreover, her focus moves around the empire, between and across colonies and the metropole. One of the great strengths of Mohanram’s work, to my mind, is her inclusion of the white-settler colonies in the same frame of analysis as the colonies of exploitation. In her first book Black Body: Women, Colonialism, Space Mohanram discussed feminism and racial politics in New Zealand, and raised fascinating questions about how feminist theory shifts as it moves between northern and southern hemispheres. Here, the colonial sites which compel her attention range from India, to Australia, and New Zealand. An example of the originality and suggestiveness to be found in the book is the fifth chapter, on the emotional dimensions of settler history in nineteenth-century New Zealand. Based on several accounts by settlers, Mohanram posits that white settlers in nineteenth-century New Zealand experienced a great deal of mourning and melancholy—due to death, loss of their children, accidents, illness, mental breakdown, alcoholism, and the uncertainties of the settlement process. Settler melancholy became linked to guilt and denial about the deaths of Maori. These psychological and emotional dimensions were so imbricated in the process of settlement that there was “an illegitimacy at the heart of racial identity,” and melancholy became integral to whiteness in nineteenth-century New Zealand (123). Mohanram uses Freud to consider the role of mourning and melancholy in subject formation; and links the trope of cannibalism to the devouring of land by Pakeha (the term for white settlers in New Zealand), particularly in the context of the failure of the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi to prevent the wars of the 1860s. She suggests that New Zealand identity is defined through loss: the loss of land for the Maori and the loss of home for the Pakeha, with “both groups caught in the web of denial of loss and incorporation of the Other” (138). Pakeha as a white-settler identity was “a melancholic formation” due to “loss of home and the cultural and bodily safety that the familiar conveys,” while Maori too became melancholic because of the loss of their land and their “lack of economic and social privileges” (138–9). White settler women, she suggests, had an even greater sense of loss and isolation and therefore degree of melancholy than settler men. Chapter Six analyzes the interesting topic of the Irish in India, within a wider discussion of skin and modern racial taxonomies—again with reference to Freud. Mohanram approaches the topic of the Irish in India through a reading of Rudyard Kipling...

The Lapita motif that got away

A particular decorative motif of some antiquity is still used by Fijian, Samoan and Tongan women when dyeing and painting bark cloth. This motif (See Figure 1) has been taken into the public domain in New Zealand by individuals and groups as a representation of Pacific/New Zealand identity. The motif is popularly (but erroneously) believed to represent a Frangipani flower, a conflation of Oceanic peoples’ love of perfumed flowers and leaves, and the constant use of photographs of the flower in tourist brochures and advertisements as an identifier of Pacific island-ness.

Tutira Mai Nga Iwi (Line up together, people): Constructing New Zealand identity through commercial radio

This article addresses a controversy within New Zealand radio broadcasting policy. As part of its activities to ensure the promotion of New Zealand content in the media, the non-government public organisation New Zealand On Air funds music recordings, promotional videos, album promotion and radio airplay initiatives targeted at the commercial broadcasting sector within that country. Supporters of the organisation, and its music sector agent provocateur Brendan Smyth, point to the increase in New Zealand music sales, improved concert attendance and greatly enhanced representation in mainstream media and popular culture as evidence of the scheme's resounding success. In some popular music genres, New Zealand content has increased from under 2 representation on commercial radio playlists to over 20. Detractors argue that in attempting to increase the quantity of New Zealand-sourced music that is broadcast, funders have favoured to the point of exclusion music that emulates international repertoire in order to appeal to conservative radio programmers, and in so doing have decimated that which makes New Zealand popular music uniquely kiwi. The article seeks to shed light upon the conditions and decisions that led to this situation, rather than attempt to reconcile these two divergent positions. However, it also endeavours to point to some possible lessons that may be found in the case of New Zealand music radio for broadcasting policy-makers and those who would seek to promote local music through radio programming interventions. The title of this article refers to a popular traditional Maori song often used in a powhiri ceremony, greeting newcomers to the marae. An exchange of songs takes place, and Tutira Mai is the Maori language song most often learned by non-Maori speakers for the occasion. It is thus ingrained in both Maori and non-Maori New Zealand culture alike and is taken here as symbolic of a coherent bicultural New Zealand-ness, as problematic as that concept may be.