Native Notes

The Free Trade Agreement between New Zealand and China (NZ-China FTA) was signed on the 7th of April 2008 in Beijing, bringing to the end a negotiation process that spanned fifteen rounds over three years. New Zealand is the first developed country to negotiate a free trade agreement with China.

Securing preferential access to China’s economy has the potential to deliver significant gains to New Zealand exporters. It is the fastest growing major economy, currently growing at 9.5 percent per annum. China is New Zealand’s fourth largest trading partner, taking over $1.6 billion of New Zealand’s merchandise exports and over $1 billion of services. China’s middle class is now estimated to be more than 100 million people and growing - which will fuel the demand for New Zealand’s agricultural products. Gains to New Zealand’s manufacturers and services operators are also anticipated.

However, acclaim for the NZ-China FTA is not universal. According to Aroha Mead, Maori Business Senior Lecturer at Victoria University and a former senior fellow of the International Institute for Indigenous Resource Management, Maori artists should be wary of the free trade agreement with China because they are about to be swamped by mass production. She says that despite recent gains in protecting intellectual property, there is huge risk inherent in the deal. Maori cultural products are at a real risk of getting swamped. She also believes that there is the chance that the “toi iho” trademark developed by the government agency, Creative New Zealand, to protect quality Maori arts and crafts would become devalued.

Because the creative Maori sector is a relatively new industry, no firm figures exist about its value to the economy. But Garry Nicholas, the general manager of Toi Maori, which promotes artists and their work, said it was likely to be significant - in 2003, during a week-long exhibition a Canadian gallery sold $1 million of Maori art. It now accounts for 22 per cent of that gallery’s business. While there were relevant concerns about intellectual property rights, he said, Toi Maori had developed strategies to enforce copyright.

My sense is that Maori artists who are producing high-quality and therefore high-value works of art will not be vulnerable to Chinese piracy. I think Ms. Mead’s concerns are well founded but I think the real risk lies in the misappropriation of Maori motifs and design elements for mass-produced crafts, clothing and household items such as blankets, rugs, and the ubiquitous mugs. I would think companies like Kia Kaha are probably the most vulnerable to Chinese piracy.  And I don’t see Aotearoa as the only market for these goods.

On Wednesday, November 7, 2007 at 7pm at the Lewis Sharp Auditorium, Denver Art Museum, the Douglas society, Alianza, the Denver Art Museum and the Alliance Française de Denver are hosting a lecture by Stéphane Martin on the new Parisian museum dedicated to non-western art and cultures - the Musée du Quai Branly.

According to the notice, Stéphane Martin will speak about the idea of an ethnographic museum in a country where the question of indigenous peoples isn’t discussed with as much intensity as it is in the United States. The Musée du Quai Branly assumed the duty of envisioning the specific way of displaying the artwork of these peoples, carrying on discourse about them and portraying their representatives’ voices.

Sounds good so far but this is the same Stéphane Martin, who has refused New Zealand’s request for the Quai Branly museum to send back the four tattooed Maori heads (mokomokai) in its collection.

The New York Times today reports that [s]ince 1875, the mummified, tattooed head of a Maori warrior has been part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Natural History at Rouen in Normandy.

But when Rouen’s mayor arranged recently to return it to New Zealand as an act of “atonement” for colonial-era trafficking in human remains, the national Ministry of Culture stepped in to block him.

The ministry contends that the head is a work of art that belongs to France and that its return could set an unfortunate precedent for a huge swath of the national museum collections — from Egyptian mummies in the Louvre to Asian treasures in the Musée Guimet and African and Oceanic artifacts in the Musée du Quai Branly.

Stéphane Martin, the director of the Quai Branly museum, agreed with the ministry that the head should stay in France.

“From my point of view, they are cultural artifacts that had a function in society,” he said. “Sending back these artifacts to New Zealand, and destroying them by burying them is a way of erasing a full page of history.”

Suffice it to say that we do not agree with Mr. Martin’s views. Our views are documented in an International Institute for Indigenous Resource Management paper, Mokomokai: Commercialization and Decsacralization by Christian Palmer and Mervyn L. Tano. That paper has been selected for inclusion in the New Zealand Electronic Text Centre. The Centre, part of Victoria University of Wellington, digitizes significant New Zealand and Pacific Island texts.

According to an article in the New Zealand Herald, Te Papa Museum officials appear to be dealing with the issue as they have previously done–quietly and under the radar. Paul Brewer, Te Papa marketing and communications director states: “It’s an issue between the museum and the French Government and they need to be comfortable that everything is being done according to their own systems.”

Mr Brewer said Te Papa would stand back from the issue while that happened.

He said repatriations of preserved Maori heads and body parts from foreign countries were ongoing and Te Papa would focus on other issues in the meantime.

The return of cultural items was a relatively new practice for the global museum community and it would take time for institutions to feel comfortable with it.

“The fact that a number have allowed us to repatriate human remains is fantastic, but we’re not going to be successful by shouting from the rooftops,” he said.

“The way we will be successful is just quietly maintaining cordial relations with the institutions.”

We, at the Institute, wonder, though, how the family and tribe feel about the characterization of the head as a work of art that belongs to France.

On October 15, 2007 New Zealand police raided what they called military-style training camps and private homes, seizing firearms and arresting 17 people from domestic groups on arms and possible terrorism offenses, authorities said.

More than 300 officers took part in the raids in several parts of North Island and in the southern city of Christchurch, which followed reports to police of camps being used to train people to use a variety of weapons.

The raids have been the object of much criticism and protest by Maori and civil liberties organizations. Rawiri Taonui characterized the arrests a sensationalised over-reaction by a dysfunctional police force, a power-seeking intelligence service and a government that has lost touch. The Peace Movement Aotearoa website has an extensive list of links to articles related to the arrests.

Probably the best overview of the raids is Moana Jackson’s Back in the Mists of Fear. A Primer on the Allegations of Terrorism Made During the Week of 15-19 October 2007.

In an October 18, 2007 article, Indianz.com reports that a federal appeals court dealt a setback to a coalition of tribes on Wednesday when it agreed to rehear a sacred site case.

In March, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals blocked a ski resort from
using treated sewage to make snow in the sacred San Francisco Peaks.  The ruling said the Bush administration violated the religious rights of tribes by approving the project.

But the victory is in doubt now that a full panel of the appeals court will hear the case all over again. The U.S. Forest Service and the Arizona Snowbowl resort asked for a rehearing, which was granted in a short order yesterday.

There are a couple of things we find bothersome about this case.

First of all, we didn’t like what appeared to us to be the wholesale buy-off of what to us was obviously the Arizona Snowbowl’s version of the Environmental Impact Statement.

To our way of thinking, there was nothing Forest Service-like, “quality land management under the sustainable multiple-use management concept” in the EIS’s Purpose and Need Statement.

The Purpose and Need Statement of the EIS does not even pay lip service to the sustainable multiple-use management concept.  Purpose #1 is [t]o ensure a consistent and reliable operating season, thereby maintaining the economic viability of the Snowbowl, and stabilizing employment levels and winter tourism within the local community. Purpose #2 is [t]o improve safety, skiing conditions, and recreational opportunities, bringing terrain and infrastructure into balance with current use levels.  We thought the whole effort was just as much about water and water reuse as it was about skiing.

Also, we thought the absence of any discussion of the long-term effects of climate change, including extended periods and increasing severity of drought, made for an incomplete basis for decision-making.

However, what we found most troubling is what appears to be the blanket rejection of water reuse by the tribes.  An extended and more severe drought will almost certainly require the federal government, states, municipalities and tribes to consider water reuse.  The EIS included a brief but useful summary of water treatment and a less useful discussion of water reuse.

This issue reminds me of a discussion on water quality standards I had several years back with Tikitu Tutua Nathan and his class at a marae in Whakatane in Aotearoa.  Tikitu, at that time, was a lecturer at the University of Waikato.  The issue being discussed was the “acceptable” level of fecal coliform for a water body when any such contamination would be considered spiritually unacceptable.

For Maori all water is tapu.  However, there are different levels and forms of tapu depending on the source of the water, its form and its level of sacredness. Whatever use is made of water, the proper state is one of balance, harmony and respect. But achieving that balance, harmony and respect also requires an understanding of how water relates to other elements or realms. To Maori, water is one strand in the environmental family and water and its characteristics, such as flow, colour and taste, must be woven together with the other strands (land, air, oceans, etc.) to understand the interconnectedness of each of the strands and to ensure that all processes work in harmony. See, Regional Fresh Water Plan for Taranaki.

An example of the use of treated waste water to restore harmony is taking place in Louisiana where officials plan to use millions of gallons of treated wastewater to restore the swamps around New Orleans. The treated water will push out saltwater that has drained into the swamp. This will allow the native cypress trees to again flourish and the swamps to again serve as a natural barrier to hurricanes. See, New Orleans Puts Its Faith in Recycled Water.

The water situation in the West is not good and will probably get worse. We are already experiencing a steady decrease in mountain snowpack, the source of most of the West’s water. Even the most optimistic climate models for the second half of this century suggest that 30 to 70 percent of the snowpack will disappear. For us, this case was always about balancing economics, science and religion to bring harmony and respect to water use and reuse in the West. This not a discussion federal, tribal, state, and municipal governments can avoid, at least not for long.

Perhaps the rehearing will encourage more thinking and more conversation about bringing balance, harmony and respect to water reuse in the West.

Between 115,000 and 125,000 or about one in seven Māori now live in Australia but the majority still regard New Zealand as the home they will return to live in.  Almost all Māori in New Zealand now have family in Australia. 

A recently released report, Māori in Australia, by Te Puni Kokiri surveyed the reasons Māori went to Australia and how they were doing.

According to the report, some Māori in Australia believed they were pushed out of New Zealand by perceived prejudice and negative experiences arising from social dysfunction, while they are pulled to Australia by family already living there, better weather and higher wages.  The report concludes that economic opportunities are the key determinant. States where the Maori population has grown most rapidly over the last 20 years are the booming ‘resource states’ of Queensland and Western Australia, which some Maori describe as a ‘blue collar paradise’.

Common vocations for Māori in Australia include construction, mining, security, driving, community services and various trades. Many report starting their own businesses after never feeling confident to do so in New Zealand.

Māori in Australia do not tend to send remittances back to New Zealand, but many do encourage their struggling whanaunga (relations) at home to capitalise on the opportunities Australia offers and come and stay until they get jobs.

The report said many believed it was easier to get ahead in Australia because it was “relatively free” of negative stereotyping of Māori, of obligations to whanau, and of limiting expectations which stopped Māori striving for success.

Implications for Tribal Governments

The reasons given by Māori for relocating to Australia echo those given by Indians when they move from reservations to urban centers.  Like Māori, urban Indians, in the main, view themselves as tribal members and view the reservation as home.  And like Māori, Indians want to participate in the renaissance of native art, language education, business and culture.

Several years back we spoke to a couple of graduate students who were interested in interning with the Institute about a project very similar to the TPK study.  We wanted them to look at the role Indian tribes were playing to integrate their off-reservation members into the cultural and social fabric of tribal society.  We also wanted them to look at the ways the tribes were integrating their off-reservation members into the tribal economy.  The students were not only disinterested in the project but were philosophically opposed to the assumptions upon which the project was based.  Namely, that Indian tribes bore some responsibility to off-reservation members.

The Te Puni Kokiri report recommends that the agency view Māori in Australia as part of the bigger picture of Māori realising their potential. It suggests that a policy of engagement with Māori in Australia, through the moderate extension of cultural benefits.  The author of the report believes that such support could potentially reap an ongoing economic benefit to Māori in New Zealand.  This is in keeping with the way many governments around the world–both rich and poor–engage with their diasporas because they see them as invaluable sources of development money, facilitators for home businesses entering the global market and vital contributors to the national image around the world.  Aside from suggesting options for engaging more with Māori in Australia, the report also recommends that further research be undertaken on certain matters that could not be covered on this occasion in the necessary depth, such as the health of the Māori language in Australia, the extent of Māori return migration, and the nature and extent of Māori remittances to New Zealand from Australia.

Other native peoples have recognized the need to include their overseas members. For Hawaiians, the inclusion by, among other means, the registration of the estimated 400,000 Hawaiians worldwide is the key to founding the Hawaiian Nation, or at least gaining federal recognition for Hawaii’s native people.

The Osage Nation, in a series of governmental changes designed to unite the Nation by including all Osage people led to the 2006 tripartite governmental system, which includes a Legislative, Executive, and Judicial branch. In his inaugural speech, Principal Chief Jim Gray expressed the need for full participation of all Osage citizens to assist the nascent government as it navigates toward an Osage-valued future.

We think all Indian tribes should critically examine the role their off-reservation members can play in developing and expanding the geographic reach of the economic and especially, the political influence of the tribe. Something similar to the Te Puni Kokiri report seems to be a good place to start.  Any graduate student interested in working with the Institute on such a project should contact Mervyn L. Tano at mervtano@iiirm.org.