Transcript MĀORI 370 and 271 Lecture 1 2016 (2)x

MĀORI 271 and 370
Māori and Media
Introduction to Course
Sue Abel
2016
Plan for this lecture
• overview of course
• discuss colonisation and decolonisation
• discuss the notion of indigenous media
generally, and Māori media in particular
• talk about Barry Barclay’s concept of “talking
in” and “talking out”
• outline what is meant by hegemony, and how
media fits into this as either hegemonic or
counter-hegemonic
My aim for this course
• Create a friendly, relaxed and inclusive environment
• Introduce you to new ideas. Your job is to
- see how these fit into things you already know,
- become familiar with them,
- think of examples of these in the media
- consider what the implications of these ideas are.
I hope that they will give you a new way of thinking about
things.
• Help you succeed academically
IMPORTANT NOTICE
If you do not understand
something, or want to talk
about something, come
and see me.
Bring a friend with you.
If my door is open you are
welcome.
Room 102 at the end of
the mezzanine.
• www.maoritelevision.com
Carol Archie
Dame Joan Metge
Hirini Moko Mead
Use of macrons
* Yes, except:
• When you are quoting someone who hasn’t
used them, or using a name where a macron
hasn’t been used
• Māori Television, but maoritelevision.com
Colonisation
“the historical processes of colonisation
…racialised Māori as ‘deficient’ (as individuals
and culturally), which in turn justified the
transfer of resources such as land to settlers and
the subjugation of cultural practices” (Paul
Spoonley in Nga Patai 1996 p.62)
The colonisers implemented policies which
denied the validity of Māori claims to:
• land and territories,
• the right of self-determination,
• the survival of language and forms of cultural
knowledge,
• natural resources and systems for living
within their own cultural environments.
• SO …
• colonisation can also be seen as the process
by which an independent autonomous people
lost their identity.
AND
• the values of the majority culture permeated
all aspects of the state’s institutions – and
while things have improved, they do continue
to do so today.
“Each language no matter how
small carries its memory of the
world”.
Decolonizing the mind: the politics
of language in African literature
Ngugi wa Thiong’o
Kenyan writer
“Here in Aotearoa we are
presently involved in a struggle
to ensure the revival and longterm viability of te reo Māori.
That struggle has emerged as
most recent response to the
coloniser who sought to erase
our memory of the world and
replace it with his own”. (2011)
Ani Mikaere
Lawyer and academic
Three forms of racism underpinning
colonisation
• Personal racism, where an individual’s
negative stereotypes and attitudes towards
other racial groups cause him or her to
discriminate against those groups.
• Institutionalised racism or structural racism,
where the policies and practices of
organisations work to deny members from an
oppressed group equal access to resources
and power; and
• Ethnocentrism or cultural racism, where the
dominant group believes that its values,
beliefs and ideas are superior to those of
other groups.
(Marewa Glover, Pat Dudgeon and Ingrid Huygens at
http://www.education.miami.edu/isaac/public_web/chapsixteen.htm#_ftn1)
• How might the “mainstream” media
contribute to the continuing colonisation of
Māori?
• Three weeks of news from ONE News, 3 News
and Prime News.
• 1,757 news stories
• % of these which included Māori?
• 1.8%
• Of this 1.8%, 56% were about...?
• Child abuse
An example of …
• “everyday acts of
colonisation”
Moana Jackson
Lawyer and activist
“Macroexclusions” in the
curriculum and in Māori and
Pacific role models at University
as a form of everyday colonialism.
Think about this in terms of
“mainstream media”.
David Mayeda Sociology
University of Auckland
Decolonisation
• “A process where a colonized people,
by developing a consciousness based
on the remnants of the traditional
culture, redefine themselves as
peoples and reassert the distinct
qualities that historically guided their
existence”.
• Michael B. Salzman, University of
Hawai` i at Manoa, 2007.
“Decolonisation is primarily
a “long-term process
involving the bureaucratic,
cultural, linguistic and
psychological divesting of
colonial power” .
(Linda Tuhiwai Smith: 1999 p. 98).
“the
bureaucratic, cultural,
linguistic and psychological
divesting of colonial
power”
• “decolonisation is
ongoing resistance”
Maria Bargh, 2007
“The first stage of resistance
involves a throwing off, or a
peeling apart of a forced way
of behaving. Layers of
engineered assimilation
begin to come loose in the
face of alternatives, Native
cultural alternatives”.
Haunani-Kay Trask (1993).
• “Decolonisation is a process that assists
indigenous people to identify as members of a
racial group that has been systematically
oppressed by a dominant culture; it enables
them to take action towards social
transformation. Facilitating an understanding
of oppressive processes and affirming the
legitimacy of a people’s ancestral culture
encourages cultural renewal”.
• (Dudgeon & Williams, 2000).
• “decolonising the
screen”
Merata Mita
Filmmaker
• Valerie Bell and Simone Alia:
indigenous media’s
contribution to the “the
conscious-raising process
essential to decolonisation”.
“Māori Television’s drive to
revitalise te reo and tikanga
is an immediate imperative
and can be justified as a
tactic of decolonisation that
can help to heal the impact
of European colonisation on
the social and cultural
structures of Maori society”
• [source unknown, alas]
And from one of the
students in this class a
couple of years ago:
“Māori Television dilutes
the whakamā”.
• Decolonisation for Māori needs the
decolonialisation of Pākehā
• “Both indigenous and coloniser people have a
part to play in effective decolonisation work.”
(Glover, Dudgeons and Huygens)
My argument
• Real equality for Māori and the development
of an authentically bi-cultural society in New
Zealand needs government action and
legislation.
• But
• Pākehā are the very dominant majority, not
only in terms of economic and political
resources but also in terms of the voting
electorate.
• SO …
• the attitudes and opinions of the majority
Pākehā and other non-Māori population play a
key part in the policies any government will
pursue to redress the effects on Māori of
colonisation, compensating for breaches of
the Treaty and honouring Māori culture and
tikanga.
• But to a considerable degree the attitudes
and opinions of non-Māori are formed by
what they read/see/listen to in the
“mainstream” media.
The Case for Maori Media
Māori media in the context of indigenous
media
• Indigenous communities, peoples and nations are those
which, having a historical continuity with pre-invasion and
pre-colonial societies that developed on their territories,
consider themselves distinct from other sectors of societies
now prevailing on those territories, or parts of them. They
form at present non-dominant sectors of society and are
determined to preserve, develop, and transmit to future
generations their ancestral territories, and their ethnic
identity, as the basis of their continued existence as peoples,
in accordance with their own cultural patterns, social
institutions, and legal systems.
• (Definition accepted by the UN Working Group on Indigenous
Peoples) (Maaka and Fleras, 2005, p. 31)
UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous
Peoples 2007
Article 16.
• Indigenous peoples have the right to establish their
own media in their own languages and to have
access to all forms of non-indigenous media without
discrimination.
• States shall take effective measures to ensure that
State-owned duly reflect indigenous cultural
diversity. States, without prejudice to ensuring full
freedom of expression, should encourage privately
owned media to adequately reflect indigenous
cultural activity.
Seven purposes for indigenous media
(Donald Browne, 1996)
1)
2)
3)
4)
to rescue the language
to increase self esteem
to combat negative images
to work for greater cohesiveness and,
through this, for political influence
5) to provide a visible and audible symbol of
indigenous society
6) to provide an outlet for creative production
7) to provide a source of employment.
Barry Barclay:
“Every culture has a right and a
responsibility to present its own
culture to its own people. That
responsibility is so fundamental
it cannot be left in the hands of
outsiders, nor be usurped by
them.” (1990: 127)
From the constitution for Te
Manu Aute, a Māori film
producers’ organisation.
• “Imagine as a whole culture not to be able to
talk about your own land in your own way.
Imagine if you were born in London or
Copenhagen, and the only – and I mean the
only – images of yourself were scripted and
shot by people from Algeria or Tamil Nadu and
transmitted simply to capture good ratings
amongst their own viewers”
(Barclay (1992)‘Amongst Landscapes’ in Film in
Aotearoa/New Zealand. p.123
WHAT IS MĀORI MEDIA?
“A Māori programme is one which makes a conscious
decision to reveal something of the past, present or
future Māori world. Its creative core will be Māori.
Its cultural control will be Māori. Its management
may be Māori or Pākeha”. (New Zealand on Air)
“A film made by Maori and set in the Maori
community” (Barry Barclay)
Barry Barclay
“Talking In” and “Talking Out”
Barry Barclay and Michael King filming Tangata
Whenua
• Broadcasting “selects
knowledge”.
• In doing this, it rejects other
knowledge.
• That which it selects is validated
• That which it rejects is validated.
Leonie Pihama
Pihama:
“The media is a key vehicle though which
representations of knowledge, language and
culture occurs, it is equally a site at which
representations of knowledge, language and
culture are suppressed”.
Antonio Gramsci and hegemony
• Gramsci was a leader of the
Italian communist party in
the 1920s and 30s,
imprisoned by the fascist
Mussolini regime.
•
He was concerned to
analyse why the Italian
working class consented to
their own oppression.
• Hegemony is a way of understanding how one
social group maintains its power over
subordinate groups.
• Hegemony exists where the dominant group
rules through the manufacture and promotion
of a consensus, rather than by/as well as
coercion.
• This consensus works to favour those holding
power, and comes to be regarded by large
sections of the population as ‘commonsense’.
• But hegemony is always a process in struggle,
it is never stable.
• What is seen at one time as the consensus
may be challenged.
• When this happens the consensus may change
enough to assimilate the potential threat,
without the dominant group losing its power.
(e.g. “biculturalism”; “principles of the
Treaty”)
• Or the dominant group may lose its power.
• “Turning off a Pakeha radio station was a
satisfying act of resistance in itself, but
coupled with turning on a Maori radio station
it became a positive political action. The
symbolic power of this act of resistance to the
messages of the dominant culture can not be
underestimated. In terms of the neo-Gramsci
discourse theories it is a hegemonic counterpractice.”
• (Ian Stuart in your Reader)
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