Influence of other Cultures
Looking back through some of my entries and I can see some of my frustration with blogger coming through. That and the fact that my tendency for sarcasm and irony just doesn't convey itself well through electronic mediums.So. Scratch that plan.
Instead of going through my daily activities, I thought I'd try to take this blog into a different direction. More dangerous waters, as it were, since I'm going to wade through some of my observations about kiwi life. Not to make any grand sweeping statements, so much as to just be...well...more scientific. If I'm capable of such a thing. This isn't to say I won't still post the occasional blurb about my life, especially if I've done anything interesting... but I also want to take a moment to take aspects of the Kiwi culture and put it out there for other people to think about.
However.... I'm not an expert. I'm going to say things that are wrong. I'm going to be unable to find the proper phrasology or be unable to articulate my thoughts accurately. The latter is a problem I always have, the former is one I hope to overcome.
The first can of worms I want to open up is what will undoubtably be a reoccuring topic: The influence of other cultures upon New Zealand. The influence of their Scottish heritage, the influence of Maori, American (US) culture, Asian culture, etc. I'm going to try to be as politically correct as I possibly can, so I just want to preface by saying that my babblings are just a stream of consciousness, a breeding ground for thought, as opposed to an actual Statement of Fact.
One of the primary reasons I was excited about coming to New Zealand was because of the Maori culture. Being part Native American myself, and having studied Native Americans for years, I was absolutely thrilled to be given the chance to look at a different indigenous culture, particularly one that we don't hear about on the East Coast of the USA. To see how it was taught, to see what the influence of the past had on the present, to see how the two cultures (Euro and Maori) are influencing each other.
I cannot help but think, from the perspective of Native North Americans and just minority studies in general, that New Zealand is making amazing leaps with addressing minority-group discrimination. This isn't to say that the Maori aren't discriminated against, because that would be far, far far far from the truth. It's just that, through the rose colored glasses of an outsider, and one who is studying at a university (where social change often takes place in the first place), it just seems like they're doing at least Something Right.
It's not just that the signs are in English and Maori. It's not just that they have a center devoted to Maori, or that they push awareness of Maori and Pacific Islander issues out into the public eye. There seems to be this tremendous movement to not so much as integrate Maori into mainstream society so much as form a symbiotic relationship between Euro-culture and Maori-culture. My rose-colored glasses give me such great hope for the future.
It is remarkable for me that New Zealand is putting this much effort into being political correct. I'm still making generalization here, but let me put it this way: to most Americans, Native Americans are still exotic. They are an unknown quantity. Many people are vaguely aware that many, many tribes are stuck on reservations somewhere in the West, and that they're suffering because of it. More people know that Native Americans run casinos...and many of those people actually think that they're making money off of it, and thus don't need support. But I would also be willing to bank that more people are aware of the social strife of other ethnic minority groups in the States. We're a large, diverse country, and it's -hard- to be aware of 'all the issues'...but because the Native Americans are not in the public eye, except in the occasional advert for Land O' Lakes butter or Western reruns, most people don't know that they're some of the poorest people in the nation.
To New Zealanders, Maori are people. At least, that's what I see at the University of Otago. They aren't something exotic, they're the guy who sits next to you in Geography 101. They're the people in your clubs, and their issues matter because they're as much a part of the university as you are. But even in the greater nation, I would imagine that many people are still -more- than well aware that Maori exist. They have their own TV station, a BRILLIANT move imho on utilizing mass media. At the very least, people will see their station as they flip through the channels.
This isn't to say that I haven't noticed where their presence is lacking. In many, many of the adverts on TV, it seems like they have the 'token Maori' character. Or none at all. Many of the TV programmes here still feature primarily white actors....meaning, the TV programmes they don't import from the UK or US.
In any case, I'm not trying to say that Maori have it 'better' than the Native Americans. I just feel like there is progress being made here for this indigenious culture that is not being made in the US. And it makes me wonder -why-. Is it the small size of New Zealand? The fact that Maori have, nearly since the beginning, 'stood' as a relatively unified group of people since the introduction of Europeans to their land? That they still stand unified? Is it because Maori are making use of the Euro-based culture, alla TV?
One aspect that I really want to study more while I'm here is how the Maori culture is preserving their traditional identity while yet straddling the (for lack of a better term) 'modernization' going on around them... most cultures (not just cultures like Native Americans, but -any- group of people that have a combined cultural identity) have to deal with change. It's always fascinating for me to figure out how they go about it.
It's definitely an issue that I am eager to learn about... and as I learn more about the Maori, hopefully I'll be able to tell where their culture interacts and influences the Euro-culture.
I got a little off-topic here... oh well, that's what you get for stream of thought.
posted by Hoot @ 2:37 PM
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