Thursday, 19 February 2009

Stop the monkey business...

...says kapa haka judge.

(For the culturally unaware, kapa haka is an essential component of our New Zealand school curriculum. Kapa haka is based on the Maori traditional challenge, and encompasses song and dance.)

A judge at the national kapa haka festival (contestants at left) is reported as saying... "...there are some people who don themselves in all sorts of regalia, short capes, and when they roam the stage they look more like monkeys than Maori. They go hu hu ha. That's not Maori. Charles Darwin would be a proud man - he was the one who said we came from apes."

We are indeed a wise, superior and tolerant society here in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Nod nod, wink wink. Such a publically aired comment elsewhere could be interpreted as an ethnic slur and mean public shaming, dismissal and ridicule...more, here...

2 comments:

Oswald Bastable said...

Does he realise they ALL look like the cast at the start of 2001?

MathewK said...

LOL

Seriously though, you're right, if that had been said by the wrong person (whitey), there'd be hell to pay, especially from the most tolerant amongst us.