Here is one more entry here about my recent visit down under. I spent two weeks in Australia and a third week in New Zealand. My original goal was simply to break up my return trip to Ann Arbor, but my goodness: New Zealand proved much more that a pit stop.
Is the scenery there beautiful? Oh yes. Imagine the Swiss Alps with an ocean.
Are New Zealanders (Kiwis, as they seem to call themselves with pride) an interesting bunch of people? Oh yes. I know I am exaggerating, but they all seemed to be busy all the time with physical activity. I don't mean the grim walking on a treadmill that many of us in the United States force ourselves to do three times a week. I mean swimming, biking, and running; climbing and rappelling; bungee jumping and hang-gliding.
In Christchurch, I signed up for an afternoon tour and "nature hike" and got more than I bargained for. I envisioned a stroll through beautiful places. The beautiful places part was correct. The stroll part was incorrect. The path was steep and rocky and in places dangerous. The tour guide was wonderful, though, and he made sure that I was safe and sound and that I felt part of the group, even though my fitness level left much to be desired.
But what I found most interesting about New Zealand were the Māori, the people who lived in New Zealand (and still do) before the English and other Europeans arrived in the 1800s.
Pleading a great deal of ignorance about this part of the world, I admit that I knew little about the Māori except for the haka, the Maori dance performed by the All Blacks, the New Zealand national rugby union team, before their matches.
I thought - incorrectly - that the Māori were to New Zealand as the aboriginal people were to Australia: there essentially forever until being all but decimated by English settlers.
It turns out that the Māori came to New Zealand from southwestern Polynesia in the relatively recent historical past: around 1300. They came in several waves, in large canoes, settled, and developed their own culture. There is no credible evidence that any other people predated the Māori in New Zealand.
The word Māori means "normal," an etymological fact that excited this positive psychologist until I learned that this meaning simply distinguishes the mortal Māori from deities and spirits. So, in this blog entry, I cannot write about a culture that would be of great interest to positive psychology and its emphasis on normal people doing well.
That said, I am writing about people who I think have done well, at least in comparison to other indigenous groups around the world in the wake of European settlement.
I don't want to gloss over the troubled and troubling history of the Māori people after the English arrived. Diseases and firearms took an incredible toll, as did sporadic battles, as did treaties and legal agreements about land that meant very different things to the Māori and to the English. In 1840, New Zealand had a Māori population of about 100,000. Fifty years later, these numbers had declined by more than half. During this period, the Māori "lost" 95% of their land.
In more recent years, the Māori people have increased in number, and a still-continuing cultural revival began. Still, in terms of health, education, employment, and political power, the Māori as a group continue to lag the non-Māori people. Racism no doubt exists in some quarters.
But against the backdrop of this history as I understand it, I still ask why the Māori survived as well as they have when so many other indigenous people have not? I don't really know, but this question is a good one. Perhaps the common language spoke by all Māori at the time of English colonization made them seem a formidable group (although they lived in some 1500 tribes). Perhaps the English decided to take a different tack than they had elsewhere, waging "war" with legal agreements rather than guns. Perhaps the more recent financial redress, which has allowed the Māori to achieve some success in the fishing and forestry industries, has helped. I don't really know.
I do know that every New Zealander - Māori and non-Māori - to whom I spoke knew a great deal about the Māori. They all expressed pride in Māori history and culture. Many spoke at least some words of the Māori language.
The Māori Affairs Amendment Act of 1974 changed the legal definition of "Māori" to one of cultural self-identification, which may explain why so many people I met in New Zealand described themselves as being "somewhat" Māori.
Let me move to firmer ground, at least for me. None of what I have described, if I am in the ballpark of being accurate, sounds much like the contemporary United States. "White" people (those of European ancestry) often know very little about the other people who live in the United States, express little pride in the histories and cultures of their neighbors, speak no language other than the American version of English, and certainly do not self-identify with "other" people.
Sigh.
One of my most vivid memories from New Zealand was the Aukland Lantern Festival, which celebrates the end of Chinese New Year. Thousands of lanterns hung from trees in a city park, and as the sun set, what resulted was visual magic. In a corner of the park, there was a stage on which a series of performers sung or danced. Among them was a group of children wearing traditional Chinese costumes and performing traditional folk dances. This dance troupe was as racially diverse as the world. And no one - other than me with my American mindset - seemed to think that was unusual.
Given where I grew up and reside, I did think it unusual ... and very cool.
