Pakeha ethnic consciousness during the Rugby World Cup

The Rugby World Cup comes to an end tonight when the All Blacks face off France, yet I wanted to take time to think about the impact the event has had on developing a Pakeha ethnic consciousness.

In the late 1990s both Avril Bell (1996) and Augie Fleras and Paul Spoonley (1999) agreed that the term Pakeha was more of a cultural category than an ethnic group, with a sense of belongingness and ethnic consciousness. Yet as the Rubgy World Cup has progressed I have been interested in hearing comments from my friends and family, who belong in the Pakeha ethnic category, that have said how they have become so excited about Rugby, how they have felt a sense of unity and overall felt positive about their local areas. Granted this is a generalisation, but I would argue that perhaps the event has developed some sort of consciousness or sense of belonging within this ethnic category.

Combining Ernest Renan’s 1882 idea of a nation born out of violence and the success of that nation through the forgetting of that violence and a more recent example of New Zealand as ahistoric, by theorist Stephen Turner in his chapter, Settlement as Forgetting in the book, Quicksands: ‘Foundational histories in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand’. Both Renan and Turner believe there is some notion of forgetting to develop a ‘new’ country. Turner argues about the significance of sport in New Zealand culture as being central to a sense of belonging to a wider culture. He suggests the excitement of the moment created through the hype of watching sport can be seen as another example of forgetting. Perhaps the excitement of the Rugby World Cup has initiated this feeling of belongingness that my friends and family have felt. Perhaps it is new because they are female and as they have admitted to me not usually hardcore rugby supporters. In this sense is the sense of belongingness temporary? If the All Blacks loose, what will happen then? Will we forget about this sense of belongingness and resort to drunken violence and abuse?

A brief look at the opening ceremony might aid the answers to the above questions. Maori in the opening performance are used as the discursive Other. This is depicted by portraying Maori just before Europeans came to New Zealand and afterwards in the form of a haka, a part of Maori culture that signifies distinctiveness from white European culture. The narrators describe the European journey to Aotearoa as “travel” and “adventure” forgetting the violence between Maori and Pakeha. This brief look suggests there is a notion of newness and forgetting in place when displaying what New Zealand is to the world.

This brief look at the Rugby World Cup has lead me to believe that the sense of belongingness is perhaps not a form of ethnic consciousness for Pakeha, but more so a temporary feeling of excitement that comes from living in the moment. I feel this excitement and sense of unity is dominated by the Pakeha commonsense that underlies the structure of the Rugby World Cup, making this a Eurocentric event that reinforces Pakeha’s dominance and New Zealand as a new nation making its mark on the world.

References:

Bell. A, (1996). We’re just New Zealanders: Pakeha identity politics. In P, Spoonley. C, MacPherson. & D, Pearson, (Eds.), Nga Patai: Racism and ethnic relations in Aotearoa/New Zealand. (pp. 144 – 158). Palmerston North: The Dunmore Press.

Fleras. A, & Spoonely. P, (1999). The cultural politics of postcolonialsim: being Pakeha. In Recalling Aotearoa: indigenious politics and ethnic relations in New Zealand. (pp. 80 – 93). Auckland: Oxford University Press.

Turner. S, (1999). Settlement as forgetting. In K. Neumann, N. Thomas & H. Ericksen (Eds.), Quicksands foundational histories in Australia and Aotearoa. New Zealand Sydney: UNSW Press.

Cherokee Indians and the Internet: Accepting Marginalization

I thought I’d elaborate on the pros and cons of the Cherokee Indians’ use of the internet as outlined by Arnold and Plymire, as I noticed the topic was absent from the test.

The positive aspects: After their land had been taken away from them in the early 19^th century, websites allowed the Cherokees to take hold of a new space for themselves; that of cyberspace. The websites Eastern Band and Cherokee Online have enabled the marginalised group to assert their own identities, culture and heritage free from any sort of government censorship. The Internet enables the use of pictographs allowing the user to dictate how they read particular stories; “like the storytelling tradition, in which both teller and audience participate in the exchange of stories and their meaning” (Arnold and Plymire, 256).

Moreover, the historical information provided on the sites help counter any pre-conceived stereotypical images visitors may have. Instead, the self-representations depict the Cherokee’s “proud legacy of a strong people who survive and prosper” (Arnold and Plymire, 260). The fact that the sites function as a network also helps the tribes interact as an online community, managing their cyberspace independently. They can also discuss and negotiate issues affecting their culture, without any real discrimination from outsiders, as the users’ identities can be hidden. This relates directly to Lisa Nakamura’s article Headhunting on the Internet: Identity tourism, avatars and racial passing in textual and graphic chat spaces.

“The Internet deemphasises hierarchical political associations, degrading gender roles and ethnic designations, and rigid categories of class relationships found in traditional, visually based geographically bound communities.” (Arnold and Plymire, 257)

The negative aspects of the Cherokees using the Internet:

Arnold and Plymire focus on the issues of cultural dilution (in Eastern Band in particular), involved with tourism marketing. Firstly, the Internet can also universalize geographies, which are fundamental to tribal identities; “the pervasive universalism and individualism of the World Wide Web is antithetical to the particular localities, societies, moralities, and experiences that constitute tribalism” (Arnold and Plymire, 258). Thus, for tourists identity in relation to land is less significant.

Secondly, although Eastern Band’s recent focus on attracting tourists in order to make revenue for the Cherokee community, the images used to express their culture have been said to conform more and more to a stereotypical “white man’s Indian” (Arnold and Plymire, 261). I understand that portraying complex identities may put off tourists as the culture may appear too foreign, unfamiliar and thus, unapproachable. However the long term consequences of using stereotypes can impact significantly on the integrity of the Cherokees in the eyes of the dominant USA culture.

Arnold and Plymire conclude: “The Eastern Band website and its links continue to both reflect and contribute to increasingly successful efforts by Cherokees to recover and retain participation in the capitalist economy of the larger nation” (263). Although the pros outweigh the cons, I think that this ignores the fact that this is a last resort for the Cherokees. They have been forced to re-appropriate themselves into a fictional sphere: a non-space. By thinking that everything is “ok” in the Cherokee culture as their websites attract attention, ignores the fact that they have lost their land war, and are now continuing to fight for attention in cyberspace. For example, they are only in the dominant culture’s imaginary if they want them to be, as users would have to actively seek out the sites, therefore the Cherokees can continue to go unnoticed, absent from USA society, just as marginalised groups can remain absent from other media institutions such as Newspapers and television.

Works cited:

Arnold, Ellen L and Plymire, Darcy C. "Continuity Within Change: The Cherokee Indians and the Internet.” In Gauntlett, David and Horsley, Ross (eds), Web Studies. London: Arnold, 2004. Print.

Nakamura, Lisa. “Headhunting on the Internet: Identity tourism, avatars and racial passing in textual and graphic chat spaces’.” Cybertypes : race, ethnicity, and identity on the Internet. New York: Routledge, 2002. Print.

Colonialism and Photography

Photographing different cultures can be seen as exploitative and a discrete form of colonialism. Ethnographic photography objectifies the indigenous people and reinforces the Western obsession with the beautiful, exotic 'other'.

New Zealand photographer, Alfred Burton (1834-1914) was an influential ethnographic photographer in the late nineteenth century, well acknowledged for his photographs of Maori and Pacific Island culture. In 1884 Burton travelled on the tourist steam ship ‘Wairarapa’ on a journey to three islands, Fiji, Samoa and Tonga. These islands were under rapid development, as they dealt with colonialism, incoming immigrants and tourists. Alfred aimed to document the western influences as well as the Islands original culture.

Burton's works raise many themes surrounding the discourse of power representations. Michael Hayes wrote an article on Burton's Pacific cruises and claimed that this photography is one of the "most insidious forms of colonialism" (Burton 23). Hayes felt that representing the indigenous terrain and people through a white camera lens confirmed the tourist's power of the the indigenous.It is an example of the 'white eye' being outside the frame and seeing and positioning everything within it (Hall, 10). Although many of Burton's subjects willingly had their photos taken they were still unaware of how their image would be represented and disseminated in the future. His works like The Fijian Girl 1884 (fig 1) emphasise the exoticism of these indigenous women.

This links to the photographer we looked at in the Post-colonial lecture, called Shigeyuki Kihara. Kihara is a contemporary New Zealand artist from Samoa. Her works are responses to colonialism photography such as Burton’s. Her works explore the theme of the colonial gaze, and how indigenous people are objectified, sexualised, stereotyped and powerless through these photographs. Kihara’s Samoan identity is crucial in her works as she often uses herself as a model. In her photo’s such as the one we looked at in class 'Fa'a fafine: in the manner of a woman' 2004 (fig 2) Kihara uses herself as a model and shoots herself in provocative poses representing colonial images of indigenous women as sexual objects. Her black and white photographs explore themes of “Pacific culture, identity, colonialism, indigenous spirituality, stereotypes, gender roles, and consumerism”. Kihara challenges the act of looking, by returning the gaze and positioning herself in dominant and powerful positions.

Both Kihara and Burton are working at completely different time periods. Burton’s photographs are capturing different cultures during a period of great change. However, his photographs can be related to issues of invasion and power. Burton’s photographs can be viewed as documents of colonialism. But in contrast, Kihara’s can be seen as quite the opposite, by being a form of post-colonialism. Kihara aims to challenge the ethnographic gaze, and images of the exotic other.

References:

Bros, Burton. Burton Brothers : fotografen in Nieuw-Zeeland, 1866-1898 = photographers in New Zealand, 1866-1898. Amsterdam: Fragment Uitgeverij, 1987.

Hayes, Michael. "“Photography and the Emergence of the Pacific Cruise: Rethinking the Representational Crisis in Colonial Photography." In Colonialist photography: imag(in)ing race and place, by Gary David Sampson, 171-185. New York: Routledge, 2002

Shigeyuki Kihara: Artist and Independent Curator, http://shigeyukikihara.wordpress.com/