Two-year-old Albert Apsassin feeling the spirit at National Indigenous Peoples Day in Camrose, Alberta.
Tag: culture
WorldRugby Haka time at the Women’s Rugby World Cup 2017 semi-final
i like how they must have said to the white menbers at some point “yeah becky yall gon do this too get up we all have to learn”
Actually most New Zealanders (white and non white) learn this as children at school and with their friends. Like Kiwi culture’s really a mix of indigenous and non-indigenous elements so there’s not that much cultural segregation as you would have in the states
I’m white as a chicken and mayo sandwich and I learned two or three haka at school. If I’d joined the kapa haka group it would have been more and certainly wouldn’t have been the only white person doing so.
#also if I was the opposite team I would be “WELL WE ARE FUCKED :)”
That is 1000% the point of the Haka. Here’s a really good explanation of it.
I’ve never seen women doing the Haka before and holy shit I’m in love
When I did kapa haka at school, lo these many years ago now (ok about 15), I was taught that it was tikanga in most iwi that women didn’t do the haka (as men don’t do the karanga at pōwhiri). That seems to be changing, which is neat, but it’s very much something that’s up to wahine Māori to change and Pākehā women to follow their lead on, like the varying tikanga on women speaking on the marae.
(but also v agreed that it is incredibly common for Pākehā in NZ to have learned at least some elements of Māori performing arts/kapa haka, if they’re under 40; if a white person in NZ has never done that they’re either an adult immigrant or exclusively attended posh private schools, and even the last might not apply these days. The average non-Māori-speaking NZer understands 80-100 words of te reo. American norms of segregation do not apply.)
There are still some pretty racist towns in New Zealand where they don’t teach any Māori culture even in public schools (mostly rural towns in the South Island). I didn’t learn any Te Reo until I moved to Wellington, and my brother who only just left my old high school had pretty much the same experience.
We’re a lot better than the US, but there’s still more cultural segregation than there should be.
I’m married to someone who grew up in a rural South Island town, so yeah, I know. But ‘rural South Island towns’ only represent about 10% of the NZ population, so this is an exception, not a norm; the experience for the overwhelming majority of Kiwi kids is one where they get at least some exposure to te reo and tikanga Māori as part of the public education system.
(For non-NZers, rural North Island towns are often more Māori than the cities, not less; the majority of the pre-colonisation Māori population lived in the northern half of the North Island.)
That captain looks like a female Dwayne The Rock Johnson and I love her.
My primary school was very big on Maori culture, everybody learned a bit and we also had Maori Club if you wanted to learn more. It was long enough ago that girls Did Not Do The Haka, but one day at practice the boys just weren’t in the mood and were being very low-energy. So our (awesome!) teacher said that we girls should show them how it was meant to be done.
We’d never formally been taught a haka, but of course we’d been there for all the boys’ practice sessions, so we knew it. I swear half of us girls in Maori Club had just been waiting for our chance, and the rest were swept up in the enthusiasm. We roared. We stamped so hard the gym floor vibrated. We got right up in their faces and had them backing away and when we finished there was a breathless pause… and then the teacher just said, “See? Do that.” XD XD XD
Eighth Generation is what modern Native American design looks like without cultural appropriation
Louie Gong describes his company, Eighth Generation, as “a Native-owned, community-engaged small business that began when I started putting cultural art on shoes.” It’s true, in 2008, Gong began decorating sneakers and skateboarding apparel with indigenous Nooksack patterns — a move that, as a Nooksack himself, set him apart from the non-Native designers who’d been doing so for years. As demand grew, so did Gong’s ambition.
Here you go, kids!
How to procure Native-American-and-First-Nation-themed items without entitlement or cultural appropriation in one easy step.
BUY THE THINGS DIRECTLY FROM THE PEOPLE THEMSELVES.
Because if they’re selling these representations of their culture and being fairly compensated, you’re not appropriating, you’re appreciating. And helping good folks make a living while you’re at it.
Everybody wins.
^^^this is the difference. participate in the parts of culture that people CONSENT to sharing!! it’s that simple, if you buy directly from the source, they are creating with the idea that people outside the culture will be consuming, and can pick and choose what they are okay with you having.
the same idea as wearing traditional dress that someone of that culture gave you as a present vs. buying a knockoff version for “fashion”
I’ve used this argument for a long time as a difference between appropriation and appreciation. If you are buying directly from the people of that culture you are supporting them in keeping certain practices and talents alive. They are choosing what they share while making a living from their work. You are supporting them, while enjoying their culture. This is not only okay but it can really help people from these communities.
With appropriation, you are taking money away from the people. While mocking everything they stand for, and giving money to big companies who only care about profit, and have no understanding of the people they are stealing from.
Eighth Generation is awesome! They ship fast in addition to having gorgeous merchandise. Five stars.
I appreciate everything in this post
Because it took like 4 steps to find the damn thing, here is a link to the place:
(yes ok that was obvious but c’mon, we’re all lazy here)
While I was born here in Bluff, I was raised amongst my mother’s people in Whakarewarewa. I grew up in a village within a hapū, Tūhourangi Ngāti Wāhiao. One of my fondest memories as a child was sitting in the baths with all the kuia who had moko. I was just fascinated, fascinated with lines. I used to stare at them. I just loved moko. Back then a lot of the kuia had moko, and growing up in the pā you used to run around and into everybody’s house, and they fed you, cuddled you, looked after you.
The moko was very common, but only among the kuia.
By Mum’s generation, nobody was being done. That would have been post-war, I suppose. When we had only one kuia left in the pā, I asked my Mum, “Why don’t you get one?”
She said, “Too sore.”
She’d seen it done in the old way as a child; it was a whole lot of blood, and they never flinched or made a sound. My mother was absolutely not having any of that. And by that point I think people thought it was gone, a part of the old world.
But I loved looking at the moko and at the kuia.
I came back to Bluff as a young woman and helped develop the marae; we were quite young to be doing that. There was nothing visibly Māori here, or little to none, back in 1973. There was what they called the Māori house and the Waitaha Hall for functions. After the wharekai was opened, I’d chat with my peers and we’d say we should all get a moko when we turned 40. But no-one was game enough, and it wasn’t the thing to do. It had almost become invisible.
As they started to revive the moko in the past 15, perhaps 20 years, I would see the women and see photographs and think how beautiful it was. A few years ago Mark Kopua, who had come down to do a tā moko wānanga, asked me about my kauae. “Funny you’d say that,” I told him, “because I’ve always wanted one, but now that I have the opportunity I’m a bit scared.”
Three years later I said yes. I’d given myself enough time to get the courage.
I’m thrilled with the revitalisation of the arts. I love seeing the other women and it’s almost like we have a link; an unspoken thing. I don’t know if it’s our moko talking to each other or if it’s the wairua that goes with it.
I think I was fortunate that my parents who raised me understood the beauty behind it; the beauty of the moko. If I think back, there were photos on the wall of two of my kuia with moko kauae – my grandmother’s sisters – from the time I was a baby. And I had a picture of my great-grandmother, and she had one as well.
Mihipeka Wairama of Tūhourangi, painted in 1912 by Charles Goldie, is Hana’s great-grandmother.
Tā moko rising
I think my favorite thing about the fandom culture on tumblr are the headcanon posts. They’re all revolutionary, because they almost invariably come from marginalized voices. We who have been unloved by the world imagine our favorite characters loving us, fighting for us. Where their creators expect us to exalt them through uncritical worship, we do it by humbling them instead. We make them better by making them one of us.
We racebend, or we explore and celebrate the cultural backgrounds of non-white characters whose ethnicities have been canonically overlooked. We reclaim them as queer or non-binary or neurotypical or disabled, and then we imagine them loving themselves and being loved by their communities. We take characters who have been broken in their battles and envision for them days of quiet happiness, of rest and healing and small comforts, because we’ve been there and we know exactly what you need. We turn them into the role models we should have, that we desperately need, and I think it helps us love ourselves more too.
So don’t ever stop writing posts about Scott McCall hearing his mother sing lullabies in Spanish or Bucky Barnes helping kids get prosthetics or charity-starting bisexual Steve Rogers who stands up for women’s rights or Hogwarts houses validating their trans students. Give me all your fan art of fat Feferi and hijabi Rose Lalonde and the Avengers in a big cuddle pile of mutual self care. This is so important, don’t let anybody tell you differently. I appreciate it all so much.
knitting in the dark 