The white people being more Maori than the Maori is pretty accurate actually.
No. It’s just that some of us Pākehā actually care about preserving and supporting a people and a culture that our ancestors did their best to eradicate.
Those of us that care enough, will find out the appropriate ways to provide such support.
Auckland Airport has some (IMHO somewhat crass) token Māoritanga in the international terminal. They’re quite happy to exploit Māori when there’s tourism dollars to be made.
You can’t say no and just prove his point. Good job on the whitewashing though, phenomenal theft of their culture.
Try reading past “No.”
Those of us that care enough, will find out the appropriate ways to provide such support.
I enjoyed the meme, but it’s still better to have folks embrace your indigenous culture than try to stamp it out or banish it to the undesirable parts of your homeland.
You’re right, but it’s pretty cringe sometimes. I’ve seen a video call full of white people having a meeting about something that has nothing whatsoever to do with Maoridom start a meeting with a Karakira. It’s very performative a lot of the time.
It’s kinda hard to describe the attitude some people have.
There’s performative bullshit because someone gets it in their head that a karakia is some from of “support”. It’s our version of “thoughts and prayers”. A token gesture requiring no actual effort or investment to tick a box.
IMHO one of the best things to do is just lean our actual history, and not just post European contact history: there’s another six centuries of history before that just in NZ. Though 19th century is the most important to learn.
Unfortunately it got embraced heavily in corporate office culture not so much in everyday culture so most peoples day to day experience with maori culture is very soulless and performative. The only positive is its keeping the language alive.