PLASTIC TIKI and other nasty things (Broadsheet June 1983)

When members of the "Auckland Committee on Racism and Discrimination began taking the Te Hapua flax kits round local souvenir shops, they were appalled at what they saw: a racist travesty of Maori culture served up on everything from tea towels to musical boxes. ACORD began collecting the souvenirs and in late May and early June put on a display at Outreach Art Gallery in Auckland.

Many of the souvenirs are also sexist. The Maori women depicted on postcards, dusters and aprons are given the same sort of "tits and bums" treatment seen in the souvenir shops of English seaside resorts. A Maori "Maiden" wiggles her poi and her hips inside a cheap musical box.

Broadsheet asked Atareta Poananga to comment on some of the souvenirs.

"The candles (of a Maori man's head and of "Pania of the Reef") are the worst of the souvenirs. To light the top of the head is defiling the most sacred part of the body, the head, which is tapu. A candle in the shape of a human body or head should never be placed on a table to be used for eating food. The head is sacred, but food is common, or noa. The candle of Pania is both sexist and racist; it exploits both the woman and race.

The head on the candle is copied from a real person. You should never demean an image by burning it away, or washing it away, as you would with the tiki soap. The tiki is a fertility symbol. A lot of Maori people would not wear one, it is so sacred, let alone wash it away.

The tea towel showing King Tawhaio's portrait surrounded by common things like pots and pans lowers the mana of someone highly respected in Maori society. You never put a Maori head on a tea towel and wipe things on it. How many Pakeha would like the Queen or Jesus Christ on a tea towel? It is a racist insult.

To blow your nose on a handkerchief with a tiki or Maori head is like blowing your nose on something sacred.

You would never sit on someone's head (this refers to a velvet cushion with a Maori head on it). In some tribes you would never step over someone's head or body. You would never pass food over someone's head. The head is a sacred part, and food the most common thing. You would never put your bottom on something to do with the kitchen. You would never use kitchen things in the bathroom, or rub a tea towel on a table. Everything is kept separate.

What they're doing with these objects, especially the kitchen things, is trivialising objects that are respected in everyday life, making our symbols common. Translating anything Maori for a Pakeha purpose demeans it.

The sexy dance being done by the girl in the musical box is in no way related to Maori dancing. She jiggles up and down, more like the hula than our rather staid and formal post European dance. Her costume emphasises the breasts, whereas the Maori bodice is as flat chested as possible.

The postcards (a series of a bare-breasted Maori woman in a piupiu sitting beside a stream show an image of Maori people that doesn't exist in reality. It's a sexist put down because Maori women don't behave like that. We are presented as an ethnic curiosity reinforcing tourists' ideas that we are a backward culture.

All these souvenirs show the Maori in assimilated ways, they depict Maori culture, not as it really is, but through Pakeha eyes. This has been going on from the beginning of European contact when photographs were sold of Maori women with the cloak draped so one breast was exposed.

Maori culture is seen as a thing to be exploited with no regard to its value to us. The whole tourist industry is racist. There is not two-way consultation about our needs. We are the ethnic icing on a Pakeha cake."

The ACORD exhibition will open at Outreach In Ponsonby Road, Auckland, at 7.30 pm on Thursday, June 2 [1983] and will continue until Sunday, June 5 [1983].

Broadsheet. June 1983. p41.

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