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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsDemocrats need to learn how to do the Haka
If you have not seen the video yet you need to see it:
Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke a member of New Zealand's Parliament responds to a proposed bill to change an 1840 treaty with the country's indigenous tribe the Maori.
There are different ways to deal with oppression and injustice. You can be polite and civilized or you can show your anger and your outrage.
New Zealand has Clarke and we have Jasmine Crockett. We need more young Democrats to get vocal about fighting for democracy and the values that our country must defend. This takes a lot of courage and we can only pray they find it!
LearnedHand
(4,076 posts)The haka is a very powerful statement. Do you have a link to that video?
wiseowljedi
(73 posts)kelly1mm
(5,224 posts)cbabe
(4,179 posts)I am so done with cultural appropriation. The history of humanity is trade. Every culture have been trading and appropriating since day 1. Food, spices, tools, raw materials, ideas, art. Welcome to history.
BannonsLiver
(18,015 posts)Days and weeks of debate about how awful and over privileged it was and how everyone involved should be deeply ashamed.
I once watched someone rail on and on about cultural appropriation... while wearing jeans and sneakers.
Isn't it wild that it only seems to work one way?
The whole point of the 'Great Melting Pot' was the mixing of culture and society. I guess we have decided to ignore that concept these days.
meadowlander
(4,741 posts)White European settlers came to New Zealand, violated the Treaty that allowed them to come there, stole land, killed people, kidnapped kids, forced them to go to schools where they were beaten for speaking te reo and doing the haka, told them for generations that their culture was inferior and forced them to obey "superior" Western cultural norms.
It's only in the past thirty years or so that efforts have been made to save te reo Maori as a language and to recognise the contributions of Maori indigenous knowledge and values to New Zealand society.
So sorry but it's ridiculous to compare white people shaking their hands and asses and repeating words that "sound cool" when a rugby team does it with no concept of what those words actually mean or the cultural context they come from to Maori kids wearing jeans. They didn't sign up for a "Melting Pot" and even today they have barely recovered from one.
The Treaty Bill being proposed by ACT would fundamentally rewrite the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi. Basically it's saying "the British Crown and the Maori chiefs signed an agreement 180 years ago allowing British people to settle legally in New Zealand on the basis that Maori chiefs retained kawanatanga, or governship of their own people and the rights to administer their own "treasures" including their lands, fishing rights, their native language, cultural heritage, etc."
Now ACT wants to rewrite that completely to say the principles of the Treaty are that all people have equal rights under the law when that is explicitly not what the Treaty says. It says that the British Crown will protect Maori and empower them to look after their own interests. ACT have decided that since they are part of a coalition government currently in power that they can rewrite that Treaty unilaterally. But they are not a party to the Treaty. The British Crown is. And their Bill has less than 20% popular support which is why Te Pati Maori tore a draft of it up - to say this is nonsense that you have no right to introduce into Parliament.
That's the cultural context in which they are shouting "ka mate, ka mate" - it is death to our culture and to our rights to agree to this Bill.
So I'll take a generous interpretation of the OP's proposal - that we need more of people standing up and getting in the face of bullshit right-wing proposals but not literally that they do the haka stripped of all of the cultural context that makes it a meaningful gesture in the first place.
"Let's all be a melting pot" is literally the opposite of what they are trying to say which is "you don't get to assimilate us on your terms."
OldBaldy1701E
(6,393 posts)The comment I was responding to did not mention a specific area, just that the concept of cultural appropriation would interfere with doing anything like this here in the US. I was also talking about events that were here in the US. The person I was referring to was here in the US.
I am well aware of why the. Maori did what they did. I support it. I am glad they did it. I hope that there will be something like it done here, but that is wishful thinking.
Hekate
(94,763 posts)🌺
Hekate
(94,763 posts)Dont think so .
mopinko
(71,842 posts)Hekate
(94,763 posts)I really like these two stories.
mopinko
(71,842 posts)havent seen the other. came out about the time my kids were too big for disney.
lilo was very not a princess. they did a good job of showing hawaiian culture w/o reducing it to kitch, but also the struggle to keep it.
Hekate
(94,763 posts)cbabe
(4,179 posts)Bill will destroy Māori constitutional rights as New Zealand turns hard right.
https://m.
wiseowljedi
(73 posts)LearnedHand
(4,076 posts)Hekate
(94,763 posts)OldBaldy1701E
(6,393 posts)Many years ago, I was privileged to film the National Hula Competition in Orlando. I enjoyed it so much. (I also played music there as well.)
I would love to see this happen. Like, every time those rethugs start in with their 'Project', a major Haka should immediately break out.
I would be grabbing my drum, that is for sure!