Tapu Misa: Name game poses multicultural challenge

New Zealanders still have trouble seeing past their own cultural lenses

My daughter brought me home some cookies from New York. They were chocolate-covered, with coconut sprinkles, and they were called "Samoas". The schoolgirls who sold them to her didn't know that Samoa was a place in the South Pacific. Ignorant? Certainly. Culturally insensitive? I didn't think so, so we ate them; they weren't bad.

Having the name of your country of birth on a cookie is nothing to get wound up about. Having a name you regard as offensive and insulting is a different story. Nigger cookies, anyone? How about a "Maori mix" cigarette?

Cultural sensitivity is derided these days as overweeningly PC and precious, and occasionally it is. Some years back I recall a Pacific Island family wanting the name of their street changed because it had an offensive meaning in their language. Such are the perils of living in a multicultural, multilingual society. At our church when the minister greets his small but diverse flock on Sundays, the Niuean greeting "fakalofa lahi atu" never fails to draw a few nervous titters. It's the pronunciation of that first word that does it. I think "faka" but others see "f***er".

What constitutes cultural high-handedness? And when should people be told to get a life? Sadly our cultural compasses aren't all that reliable, especially if we've been used to seeing the world a particular way.

All this talk of cultural sensitivity reminds me of the infamous "Haka Party" incident at Auckland University 30 years ago this week, when Maori and Pacific Island protesters confronted engineering students during their dress rehearsal of a mock haka.

According to the numerous academic papers since written about the incident, the "haka" had been performed by Pakeha engineering students since 1954, as part of capping week. It involved students dressing in hula skirts, painting obscene sexual symbols on their bodies, and performing with offensive phrases and gestures. One version of the mock haka reported by the Auckland District Maori Council went like this: "Ka Mate! Ka Mate! Hori! Hori! [with the right hand simulating masturbation]. I got the pox from Hori! Hori!"

A clear-cut case of cultural insensitivity you might think, but despite years of complaints to the university authorities from Maori and Pacific communities, and church and student groups, the increasingly offensive capping week "haka" continued. That was until 1979, when matters came to a head.

On the morning of May 1, as academic Kayleen Hazlehurst recounted, a group of about 20-25 young Maori and Pacific Islanders "burst in on the engineering students during their rehearsal of the 'haka' in the common room of the university's engineering faculty. The protesters were said to have told the students that they were not to 'mock the Maoris' and that they were to stop their 'bastardisation of the Maori culture' ... Some blows were exchanged, and the main force of the attack evidently came from the intruding protesters. In less that 10 minutes the raid was over and the intruders fled the building leaving many of the students with welts, bleeding noses, cuts, and bruises. Three of the students were more seriously injured."

Of course, the public outrage focused on the actions of the protesters, rather than the 25 years of cultural denigration that came before.

Thirty years later, we're still having trouble seeing past our own cultural lenses.

For instance, it never occurred to the marketing geniuses at Phillip Morris that calling a brand of cigarettes "Maori Mix" could be considered "culturally offensive and exploitative", until a Maori Smokefree Coalition delegation gave them the message in person in 2006. To its credit, the tobacco giant apologised and withdrew the cigarettes.

And the Dutch biscuit company Van der Breggen which made Negerzoenen - "Nigger Kisses" - needed "meticulous market, brand, and consumer research" before coming to the conclusion in 2006 that the name of their biscuits belonged to a (happily) bygone era, saying, "Some people think it is a shame the name is disappearing because they have known it for so long."

This sounds like the same argument being run by those who seem to feel that New Zealand society as they know it will crumble under the weight of political correctness if Wanganui gets an "h" where it belongs, and the North and South Islands finally get official Maori and English names. In typically temperate fashion, Wanganui Mayor Michael Laws has called the New Zealand Geographic Board "cultural zealots" for suggesting it.

All right, so no one likes change, especially when it means new letterheads, but why so much outrage? Plenty of countries have dual heritages, which are reflected in their official languages and place names. And what possible harm could there be to the dignity of Mr Laws and the denizens of Wanganui in correcting a spelling mistake? It doesn't seem like a lot to ask. As Whanganui campaigner Ken Mair said on Media 7 this week, "It is about respect and the integrity of our name. Our name is our identity, our name has been recorded within our river, within our landscape, and a mistake has been made ... it needs to be corrected. It's as simple as that."

Or maybe not. To name is to claim, says Ranginui Walker. There's power in them names.