Hard News: It would be polite to ask
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Is anyone really indigenous, apart from Africans?
Not to get metaphysical, the main point was that the Dorset Culture predate the so-called Eskimo, and in some parts of the far North regions the Norse predate them or arrive contemporaneously. So they aren't any more indigenous than the Greenland Norse would be, rather.
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Yes. For example, Maori are all descendents from Polynesian settlers, yet "Maori" as a culture is indigenous because it has evolved here as a uniique response to the land and the generations of history that have passed since then.
Hmmm, good response. But then, haven't virtually all peoples inhabiting any nearly any place you care to name "evolved [t]here as a uniique response to the land and the generations of history that have passed...." to some degree or other? Your cultural interpretation of indigenous seems to vitiate the word somewhat.
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Isn’t the real issue here the fact that there are sweets shaped like ... people?? Call them Eskimos, jelly babies, jellied poms, ozzies it doesn’t matter. They’re still people.
And when you think about it, that’s a bit yuk.
(Says someone who does enjoy eating the odd plane from time to time)
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It's alright, Keir. I'm probably the one being too metaphysical.
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Michael Laws in incredibly stupid statement shocker!
Wanganui mayor Michael Laws, who was holding a referendum to decide the most preferred name for his town, said the geographic board's decision was "crazy" and culturally biased.
"Where else could you go in the world and the locals have actually two different names for everywhere?"
Gee, Michael, I don't know. Wales, perhaps? Or Ireland? Or, you know, any number of places where two or more different groups of people speaking different languages have historically occupied the same ground? Like, you know, New Zealand?
But no, it is clearly impossible in the whole history of language for any object to have two simultaneous names. There are no synonyms! There can be only one!
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Ha, I managed to find a transcript of the QI episode about the Eskimo/Inuit thing:
Stephen
"Warm the hands on." I think we'd better move away from gender differences. Let's have a look at the picture. What would you call this person here behind you?[Viewscreens: Picture of a young female Eskimo.]
Jo
[presses buzzer, which plays a guitar chord]Jo
An "Inuit".Stephen
Oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear.[Forfeit: Klaxons sound. Viewscreens flash the word "INUIT".]
Stephen
We thought you'd fall for that one.Jo
And I did.Stephen
Yeah, you see, we have this idea that it's rather politically correct to call anything that lives sort of around about the Arctic Circle an "Inuit" rather than an "Eskimo", but she's a Yupik. Calling her an Inuit would really annoy her, because she would think, "Oh, there goes another Westerner thinking they're saying the right thing without asking me." -
Isn’t the real issue here the fact that there are sweets shaped like ... people??
I would have thought so, anyway. If someone developed a sweet that was based on Maori, and they called it "Maori", wouldn't that be weird?
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"Where else could you go in the world and the locals have actually two different names for everywhere?"
Have overhead a group of American tourists in Florence saying "what's this Firenzeeee that's all over the place?"
It's comforting to know that Lawhs has reached their level of worldly knowledge. Bro. -
Isn’t the real issue here the fact that there are sweets shaped like ... people??
My son is starting a campaign against Jelly Babies just as soon as his neural impulses develop the association.
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Wanganui mayor Michael Laws, who was holding a referendum to decide the most preferred name for his town, said the geographic board's decision was "crazy" and culturally biased.
"Where else could you go in the world and the locals have actually two different names for everywhere?"
Gee, Michael, I don't know. Wales, perhaps? Or Ireland? Or, you know, any number of places where two or more different groups of people speaking different languages have historically occupied the same ground? Like, you know, New Zealand?But no, it is clearly impossible in the whole history of language for any object to have two simultaneous names. There are no synonyms! There can be only one!
Maybe this is why it's understandable to call Michael Laws a Chunt.
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But then, haven't virtually all peoples inhabiting any nearly any place you care to name "evolved [t]here as a uniique response to the land and the generations of history that have passed...." to some degree or other?
Yes, and that's kind of the point. It's not an individual that is indigenous or not, but a culture.
Most of this comes from Michael King's "Being Pakeha", where he argues that "Pakeha" is also an indigenous culture of NZ. It exists only here, and it has evolved as a result of engagement with the unique conditions of living here: partly the land itself, but also contact with Maori, the lasting influences of Anglo/Celtic roots, the recent experience of being colonists and the sense of distance from Britain. All of that has gone towards shaping a new culture, one that may not have existed even a few generations ago when England was "Home" and white NZers thought that their membership of the British Empire was at least as important as being Nzers. I'd still suggest that "Pakeha"-ness as a culture or ethnicity is still nascent rather than fully evolved, but it's an interesting concept.
And BTW, I don't think that King was saying that the indigineity of Pakeha makes them Tangata Whenua. That's a whole 'nother kettle of Ika.
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Meanwhile there are many Pakeha who consider (erroneously) that the term is an insult and are therefore offended by it. I suspect that if it were discovered that caricature pakeha/palangi-shaped consumer goods were consumed across the Polynesia or other parts of the world there'd be a bit of a stink over it.
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I don't disagree with King's views there, except that it still seems to me that plenty of cultures (maybe all) are "indigenous" by that criteria.
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Ah, we return to the debate over ethnicity.
[hides behind desk]
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Maybe this is why it's understandable to call Michael Laws a Chunt.
That elicited an actual LOL, Steve. ;-)
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Most of this comes from Michael King's "Being Pakeha", where he argues that "Pakeha" is also an indigenous culture of NZ. It exists only here, and it has evolved as a result of engagement with the unique conditions of living here: partly the land itself, but also contact with Maori, the lasting influences of Anglo/Celtic roots, the recent experience of being colonists and the sense of distance from Britain.
Yeah. It's an important argument. I sometimes wonder if King hadn't died when he did, the whole post-Orewa thing might not have got so poisonous so quickly. We miss his voice in this country.
It's also important to say, however, that there are counter-arguments. For people like Stephen Turner and Patrick Evans, the whole cultural nationalist movement in New Zealand -- the idea that 'we' have a unique, shared culture -- is at best autocthon- or indigene-envy, and at worst a kind of apologetics for colonialism, a denial of its ugliness, its dispossessions. Here's Evans at his most scabrous:
If we add all this up, we get a New Zealand literature whose purpose is to deny the basis of the white settler presence in the country: the distance of its origins, its status as interloper, the unlawfulness of its conquest, and the violations colonial capitalism inflicted on the environment. In this argument, the kind of revulsion we saw in Baughan and especially in Mansfield is what all Pakeha conceal, ready to be triggered by any unconscious reminder of how it is that we have really got here.... [We get] a literature which urges towards the sublime but never quite gets there—which, instead, represses and denies, risking all those affective surpluses and returns that come with repression and denial.
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Gidday all - I'm enjoying PA and the Michael Lawhs invention, but also appreciate old-fashioned style. At random in Shorter Oxford English Dictionary today, I encountered this gem from the 16th century and felt the need to share it with yous, as another word so applicable to the Mayor of Wanganui -
mumpsimus /ˈmʌmpsɪməs/ noun. Now literary. M16. [ORIGIN Erroneously. for Latin sumpsimus in quod in ore sumpsimus ‘which we have taken into the mouth’ (in the Eucharist), in a story of an illiterate priest who, when corrected, replied ‘I will not change my old mumpsimus for your new sumpsimus’.]
1 An obstinate adherent of old ways, in spite of clear evidence of their error; an ignorant and bigoted opponent of reform. Formerly also loosely, an old fogey. M16.
2 A traditional custom or notion obstinately adhered to although shown to be unreasonable. M16 -
I adore both Coronation Street and Antiques Roadshow. Does this mean that I am an old soul?
I say you're not old until you start using words like 'nowadays'. Possibly in connection with TV1's Sunday night programming.
Nowadays my broadcast pleasure mainly come through the wireless - with the exceptions mentioned above.
Somewhat of a side track: can one still purchase Space Man candy sticks? You know, the ones which look somewhat like a rocket, but a lot more like a cigarette, but of course they were never intentionally sold as cigarette lookalikes,were they?
The charming Ben in Zeitgeist on Surrey Cres maintains a good stock - and on Friday mornings he does scones like your Nana used to make . -
I'd just like to stick up for babies everywhere who don't have a voice (or are still speaking gibberish anyway) and call for the immediate banning of these
these... -
Hi all,
Just back from tonight's recording. Report:
1. Ranginui Walker = mana. Every time I meet that man I'm just so impressed by his grace.
2. I met Emma Hart's mum! She's lovely.
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2. I met Emma Hart's mum! She's lovely.
Shut uuuuuup...
Don't believe a word she says. She's from Timaru.
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She's from Timaru.
So am I, apparently.
Athough my Wikipedia article now says I was born in Lower Hutt and "grew up in Timaru".
I suppose you could call it that ...
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"grew up in Timaru"
Aaah, the Peter Pan of South Canterbury?
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Are you hinting at a liberal definition of "grew up" there Russell?
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and "grew up in Timaru".
I suppose you could call it that ...
Would you prefer 'prematurely aged'?
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