What does it mean to be a Maori or Pacific person in today’s world? Does your skin complexion really matter? If you have been called a ‘White Maori’ or a ‘Plastic Samoan’ before, you might begin to understand the dilemma that SPASIFIK intern GELISE O’HARE confronts daily.
Why is it that we discriminate against our own people? It’s bad enough that racist remarks flood in from middle-class New Zealand about Maori and Pacific people. But nowadays we seem to be copping it from our own too. White Maori, Plastic Polynesian, since when did the colour of our skin make a difference to how ‘ethnic’ you are?
At first glance, not many people guess my cultural heritage correctly; it seems as though, with my red hair, fair skin and green eyes, I have inherited more traits from my Scottish-Irish side than from my Maori side. But this doesn’t make me any less Maori.
‘White Maori’, they call the fairer of us. So if we don’t look typically Maori, should we have the same claim to Maori culture as our brown brothers?
I often wonder what it means to be a Maori in today’s world; the answer isn’t written in black and white, or brown and white if you excuse the pun. There are no full-blooded Maori left in Aotearoa, so those of us who identify ourselves as Maori have some other cultural heritage thrown in the mix too. Some of us are one-quarter, or one-sixteenth, and our Maori heritage is concealed at face value by our mixed backgrounds.
I am a prime example of a ‘White Maori’, and sometimes face reverse discrimination from my own people who aren’t aware of my cultural background, making me, and many like me, feel more culturally isolated.
Growing up in Porirua, I was constantly surrounded by my cousins. I spent as much time as any other Maori kid, playing on the Marae. However, this began to change when I moved to Auckland with my mum at the end of primary school. Disconnected from my whanau in Wellington, I was more aware that I was ‘the little white girl’ in the kapa haka group. Living in a primarily white area of Auckland’s affluent North Shore, it became harder and harder to hold on to my roots; a dilemma faced by many of mixed heritage, the part-Maori and ‘White Maori’ of today.
These days it is all too easy to lose touch of your cultural heritage as we try harder to fit into a predominantly white man’s world, in the quest for a career or education. Urbanisation plays its part there too. Many of us are moving away from our hometowns and extended whanau and get caught up in the rat race.
And it’s not just Maori. New Zealand-raised Pacific Islanders are in the same boat. We all know the label ‘plastic’, usually given to someone because of their upbringing away from the islands, or because of their fair complexion. A Samoan woman I met was labeled a ‘fake Samoan’ for having been raised here in New Zealand. She spent her whole life identifying with Samoan her culture, had ‘full-blooded’ Samoa-raised parents, but was made to feel like an outsider all because of her lighter shade of brown.
We ‘White Maori’ and ‘Plastic Samoans’ are just as entitled to our claim on our Maori and Pacific heritage. It is not about the colour of your skin or where you were raised, but your own personal feeling of cultural identity. The key to personal fulfillment as well as a culturally vibrant society is feeling connected to your people and country.
So if I were to go back in time, I would tell the younger me – “Stop worrying about whether other people think it’s weird to see a little white girl on the kapa haka team, and go practice your pukana!”
Are Maori and Pacific people of fairer complexion unfairly discriminated against by their own people?
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