The
performance of haka by non-Maori people has always been a
controversial phenomenon for decades. Recently, my Indigenous roommate introduced me to watch the video - a video about a white-looking bridegroom performing haka in his
wedding with his Maori bride suddenly attracted me.
Here
the Pakeha culture represented by the white-looking bridegroom and the Maori
culture, represented by the Maori bride, are fused.
In
the video, the haka is firstly performed by a majority of Maori guys
wearing western suits; then, the white bridegroom joined the
performance.
In
the social and cultural level, “Pākehā culture may be the
national culture in terms of
providing
the pervasive, common-sense underpinnings for the ordering of social
life, but Māori culture is the national culture when distinctiveness
and ethnic exoticism is called for”, from Woodward's lecture.
From
my point of view, the bridegroom's performance is a kind of reaction
to the Maori community. He is showing his willingness for accepting
the Maori culture. He is respecting the Maori way of life. The video
ends by showing their hugs and the ritual of Hongi.
The
power of this ritual – haka is significant. The bride was crying in
the video. She said in another video which showed the Maori
perspectives toward haka, that she cried just because she felt the
strong power of the ritual. Even to me, a traditional Asian girl,
with rare indigenous knowledge before coming to New Zealand, was
feeling enthusiastic when I watching the haka. It is just
fascinating. It can be seen as a symbol of culture and it is just
like the Spanish flamenco dance.
From
my personal thought, the reason why she was crying also lies on the
transition for her from her original Maori family to a new, white
family.
The
content of this video, in my opinion, fits into the point suggested
in the lecture, “the hybrid postcolonial subject resists
assimilation into the dominant culture but no longer completely
inhabits a pristinely indigenous pre-colonial world”. The society
needs to be developed, so does the issue of race. The culture will be
hybridised and this is the first step to do it. Media has the power
to disseminate the ideology of respecting and accepting the culture
of indigenous even the minority group. As
this video was published on youtube, it has the function to influence
people with their thoughts toward the issue of Maori and Pakeha
relation, and to promote the harmony between them.
Sources:
Woodward,
Suzanne. "Pakehaness/whiteness in Aotearoa NZ." FTVMS 325.
The University of Auckland. 29 Apr. 2016. Lecture.
Woodward,
Suzanne. "Postcolonialism." FTVMS 325. The University of
Auckland. 6 May. 2016. Lecture.
Sorry but the bridegroom is actually māori, he describes his heritage in an interview about this viral video.
ReplyDeleteSorry but the bridegroom is actually māori, he describes his heritage in an interview about this viral video.
ReplyDelete