Welcome To Aotearoa? The Campaign To Decolonize New Zealand's Name (wsj.com) 238
The first European contact with indigenous Maori ended with four sailors killed and a hasty retreat. But it led to an identity for this South Pacific country: Nieuw Zeeland in Dutch, or New Zealand when it later became part of the British Empire. Now, some lawmakers want New Zealanders to drop a name that harks back to an era of colonization and adopt another -- Aotearoa, a Maori word referring to the clouds that indigenous oral history says helped early Polynesian navigators make their way here. From a report: Around the world, several countries are rethinking their identities to address resentment at their colonial past and forge a new future. In some cases, that involves changing the head of state, such as Barbados's severing of ties to the British monarchy. In others, it has meant changing its official name, as Eswatini did in 2018 when its absolute ruler decided it should no longer be known as Swaziland. Australia in recent years tweaked its national anthem because it didn't reflect its Aboriginal history. In New Zealand, the issue is coming to a head because a petition to rename the country Aotearoa -- pronounced 'au-te-a-ro-uh' -- garnered more than 70,000 signatures and will be considered by a parliamentary committee that could recommend a vote in Parliament, put it to a referendum or take no further action.
Are Maori proposing that? (Score:5, Insightful)
Or is this another bunch of whiteys falling over themselves to make like the past didn't happen, or something?
Re:Are Maori proposing that? (Score:5, Insightful)
Or is this another bunch of whiteys falling over themselves to make like the past didn't happen, or something?
Aotearoa (New Zealand) has been the locus of what is probably the world's best process to integrate a sizeable Indigenous population and a colonial/post-colonial population, integrating structural and cultural elements from both cultures. It's been the source of most of the best practices we have for things like decolonizing academic and museum fields.
From the outside, it looks like the cultural survival of a sizable Maori population has made possible something that is not possible in many places affected by colonialism. As someone who is both Indigenous and who absolutely can't stand the amount of virtue signaling done by colonial institutions and non-Indigenous folks with things like land acknowledgements, what's going on in Aotearoa seems like the real deal.
Re: (Score:2)
OK, if the Maori are backing the proposal, I don't care who suggested it. If it's legitimate in the eyes of those who matter on such questions, then it's legitimate.
Re: (Score:2)
Its legitimate if the population votes for it, and the right support that, however that is not what they want they just want to change it and every other place name in the country. Really we have much better things to spend our money on than changing a name and then advertising that to the rest of the world. Leaking pipes, failing education and health system, but what we really need is to change the name of the country that will make Maori feel better and be more successful /sarcasm. Thats the problem with
Re: (Score:2)
What the hell happened to New Zealand, and how do we make it happen elsewhere?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
a) vote women into power
b) vote young people into power
c) vote female young people into power
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah. Easier said than done unfortunately. Also, it needs to be the right women, the UK had two women PMs and they both made things worse.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah. Easier said than done unfortunately. Also, it needs to be the right women, the UK had two women PMs and they both made things worse.
Correction: It has to be the right person regardless of gender. Personally I feel the last male PM, Boris Johnson, has been a stain to the office and the UK. Making things worse is not a gender specific trait.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It's not about ignoring the past, it's about recognizing that mistakes were made and taking corrective action. This is more like tearing down confederate monuments. (Confederate monuments, if you didn't know, were erected in an effort to actually rewrite history [npr.org]. Every accusation is a confession with you people...) This is about recognizing our mistakes and trying to move beyond them.
This isn't the first time a place has been renamed, you know. As far as reasons for changing the name go, this is certainl
Re:Are Maori proposing that? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
That would require everyone moving to Africa.
Re: (Score:3)
If colonizing was a mistake, the only way to rectify it would be for the non-indigenous to leave the island. Everything else is virtue signaling.
Is that your opinion as an Indigenous person, in particular as a Maori person? If so, I absolutely understand why you would desire the exit of the colonial population and see their exit as the "only way to rectify" colonialism.
Indigenous people and nations make compromises with colonial/post-colonial powers all the time in order to better their lives and the lives of their descendants. Indigenous populations and communities also now include non-Indigenous members via family and other relationships of sig
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
There are definitely good aspects of colonization from the viewpoint of the colonizing powers. From the viewpoint of those being colonized it's most frequently "not being killed by the invaders" or some such. I don't know much about this specific example, but I'd guess that the Maori didn't gain much if anything from it.
That said, "decolonization" isn't feasible anywhere that the colony is more than a few decades old. This effort sounds like useless name magic. It's probably harmless, though. But I wou
Re:Are Maori proposing that? (Score:5, Funny)
Surely you can see some middle ground between mass deportation and doing nothing?
Sir, this is slashdot.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not about ignoring the past, it's about recognizing that mistakes were made and taking corrective action.
That's pretty much bullshit.
This is about asserting the dominance of the Maori's over the white colonizers, culturally. At least be honest and say it openly. What this all comes down to is "These are OUR islands, white man: GTFO. Oh, except when you have money. Then you can stay and spend it. But it's still our islands".
The facts are these: whites came, warred with the natives, and the natives lost, because they couldn't compete in technology, military tactics, and they didn't have the kind of advantages in
Re:Are Maori proposing that? (Score:5, Informative)
Having moved to NZ in recent years, a lot of things have become apparent in terms of the Maori population since I arrived here - these are things which aren't immediately obvious on the surface.
Maori tribes are rich.
Maori in general are poor.
Maori tribes are very outspoken in terms of issues.
Maori in general live day to day with little concern of issues.
Maori are actually quite separated from the non-Maori populace - they have their own voting rolls (Maori can switch between the Maori roll or the general roll once every few years, but can only appear on one or the other), their own healthcare (to a large degree), their own land with its own rules etc. Some of the aspects of the Covid pandemic showed this - while the non-Maori populace had generally good uptake on vaccines etc, Maori areas had very poor uptake. Special permission had to be requested to allow "white" healthcare professionals to run clinics in Maori tribal buildings, and some times this was not forthcoming - in addition, lots more outreach had to be done to encourage Maori to attend these clinics.
The feelings of anti-colonialism is still extremely high here, and there was a settlement agreed just a couple of days ago between two tribes and the Crown (the NZ government) around issues dating back 150 years, resulting in a payment of $6Million back to the tribes as well as land being handed back etc. These things are still very much going on today between the tribes and the Crown.
There are, of course, very vocal anti-white members of the Maori community who post to pretty much every government Facebook page regularly denouncing colonialism (for example, the long awaited bypassing of a major North Island city by the main state highway recently drew lots of posts denouncing it as a genocide against Maori...), and there are regular acts of legal protest such as one tribe demanding that rather than a local government selling land, it should be handed back to the tribe instead (this was in response to a local council selling parcels of land between a road and some houses back to the house owners, so like strips of land 2-3 foot by 30 foot between the road and the property boundary - the tribe wanted that land instead, and of course they would have sold it on to the property owners at huge mark up).
Situations created by Maori tribal rules are often blamed on the non-Maori populace for not accommodating them - for example, while home building here is a big thing, Maoris find it difficult to get funding from high street banks for building a home on tribal land. Because Maori tribal land is jointly owned by hundreds of people per acre, the banks cant repossess it, so they cant take on the risk, meaning Maoris have a lack of funding available for home building and have called on the government to resolve the issue.
NZ is a very divided country - but you do not get that impression from the outside, its only when you have lived here for a couple of years that you realise what the situation is.
I hope no one takes the above as racism on my part, its just observations from my 5 years here - when I arrived here, my first thought was "hey, the colonial aspect of this country has been solved, NZ doesnt have a problem with its indigenous population like Canada, Australia etc does" and it turned out that my first thought was very very wrong.
Re: Are Maori proposing that? (Score:2)
Memorials are typically built after the person they're memorializing has died. Wouldn't the 1910 period, where most of these seem to have been built, be about the time that most of the confederate soldiers, generals, politicians, etc, who didn't die during the war, began dying of old age?
Every other spike they point out seems to be a minor blip in comparison to that period, and their entire argument seems to be centered around the fact that they were built well after the war. The period that those people st
Re: (Score:2)
Confederate memorials were put up as part of a widespread effort to rewrite the Civil War. It's not coincidental that they started going up after many of those men had died. Some of them had reconciled with the loss and wanted the Civil War left in the past, with no monuments left. Robert E. Lee himself didn't want Civil War memorials of any kind, writing, "As regards the erection of such a monument as is contemplated, my conviction is, that however grateful it would be to the feelings of the South, the att
Re: (Score:3)
Even old New York was once New Amsterdam
Why they changed it I can't say
People just liked it better that way
Re: (Score:2)
Colonization was not a mistake, it had good and bad effects, The average Maori may have shorter life expediencies, and be poorer than the average New Zealander, but they have much longer lives, and much more stuff than pre-colonisation. If they truly think it was bad every one should leave, but also take medicine, motorized vehicles, internet and everything else western society has brought. What they want is all the benefits with none of the costs.
Re: (Score:3)
Yes, yes they are. And kiwis have been calling the place Aotearoa as long as i can remember already.
Re: (Score:3)
I've run across references to that name is stories, but I didn't know it was in common use. For a (non-story) example: https://cclblog.wordpress.com/... [wordpress.com]
Re:Are Maori proposing that? (Score:5, Informative)
I came to New Zealand in 1977 and found that it was an incredibly harmonous blend of cultures and races.
The population as a whole were "Kiwis" -- a distinct culture that embraced all races, creeds and beliefs.
Sadly, since then there have been a handful of people who have convinced certain parties that they're "owed" something by the rest as a result of history.
Today I find that the country is far more divided along race-lines than it was some 45 years ago. In my honest opinion, there have been huge steps backwards brought about by the fostering of a sense of entitlement on the part of some.
I'm all for righting the wrongs of the past but they ought not be used as a way of gifting one group of people special privilege and rights solely due to their race.
As a result of this we have state-mandated race-based privilege. In South Africa in the 1980s, race-baed special privilege was called it apartheid. In the 2020s New Zealand there is now race-based state-mandated privilege and we call it "progress"?
I do miss the New Zealand of the 1970s, when neither I nor anyone else I knew gave a moment's thought to the race of anyone else because everyone was a "Kiwi". Now race is an increasingly divisive factor in life and there are those who would make it even more so -- with plans for separate Maori justice systems, separate Maori health systems etc.
As for the name of the country I think we should acknowledge the blended society by calling it "Aotearoa New Zealand".
It is worth noting that Maori themselves were colonists, they just got here before Europeans and I understand that the first settlers were a race called the Moriori -- although that bit of history has apparently been re-written recently to appease the "entitled".
Apparently colonization and annexation are only bad when Europeans do it.
Re: (Score:3)
All the mammals!
(A quick search suggests that they were the first inhabitants, arriving about 700 years ago.)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The Moriori, well I don't think they killed to get New Zealand but they did commit genocide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]. But you know indigenous good, European bad. Really every culture has good and bad in their past, hopefully we can learn from the mistakes.
oh great, an endless IT Y2K project (Score:2)
just think of the complications, especially the hard coded ones
Re: (Score:2)
Anyone who has sat down to code something in the last 50+ years was well aware that countries change names. As a software developer I can make an educated guess on where the blame lies for any software problems arising from new country codes (NZ to what though. AO and AT are taken. AA seems acceptable though).
Re: (Score:2)
You are opening the way to an interesting idea.
Considering that the name of the country probably can not legally be changed easily (aka votes etc.) most likely it is kind of trivial to change the countries internet top level domain. Or have two of it.
Re: (Score:2)
Russia has two. It also controls the old .su (Soviet Union) TLD. Aotearoa would end up controlling two as well.
Re: (Score:2)
As I understand it, the general rule is the first letter and then the first letter after that which is not taken. .ao is Angola .at is Austria .ae is United Arab Emirates .aa is not in full use--it's apparently sort of created and assigned, but it is part of a handful that can be reassigned on request--and is the only real option without using other letters, as the other unique letter is R, which would be .ar, which is Argentina. Although if they go with Republic of Aotearoa, they could get .ra.
Odd to think
Re: (Score:2)
Whitewashing is never a good idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's say we scrubbed our history of all the slaveholders. No more Washington, Jefferson, or Jackson.
Because slavery was bad and we don't want to glorify its practioners.
Okay. Simple question: does that make us more moral, or more ignorant?
The first part of the question is easy: it does not make us more moral. It doesn't undo one iota of harm that slavery did to its victims, it doesn't make restitution to the people whose great grandfathers weren't allowed to learn to read or write and whose cultural capital was legally set to zero as recently as three or four generations ago. They'll still be poor and uneducated for the exact same reasons as they were when the Douglas Commonwealth was still named Washington, District of Columbia.
As for the second, yes it makes us more ignorant. For one thing, if you excise slavery from your history, you're left with unsatisfying answers for why some people are persistently behind the rest. All you can muster is "we're still actively racist and oppressing them" which is factually false and ripe for exploitation by rabble rousers and demagogues.
We have that now, but at least enough of us understand history enough to know that burning this particular scapegoat won't actually solve anyone's problems. If being evil now isn't what's causing the problem, burning the evil witch now won't solve the problem because the cause of the problem lies in the past and not in the present. And any solution must lie in long and diffucult work in the future, not a quick exorcism in the present.
So yeah: papering over history does not fix your problem and makes for angrier and crueler politics. What does that say about the forces pushing for papering over history?
We all know the answer. Either they're dumb or they're looking to exploit the chaos for themselves. There's a word for the latter.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
papering over history does not fix your problem
Changing the name doesn't change history. In fact, it draws attention to it.
and makes for angrier and crueler politics
Only because you right wing nut jobs crawl out of the woodwork like termites and get all angry about the defeat of colonialism.
Re: (Score:2)
It draws attention to it now. Until people forget about it and it's always been this way. If you want to draw attention to it, include both names and point out why both names exist.
They did something like that with the city signs around here, where a number of towns and villages now have two names, the "old" one and the one in the language of the minority that originally settled there. Happened a few decades ago and people coming here still ask why there are two names, and they gladly get that information.
Re: (Score:2)
If they want to put "(formerly known as New Zealand)" on the welcome sign, that's dandy. But they still are only going to have one official-est name, no matter what, unless they literally write all that every time.
Besides, it only needs to draw attention to it "now". It will draw attention as long as it seems weird, which it will as long as white people are in charge. When that's no longer true, it won't need to draw attention to it any more.
Re: (Score:2)
And there you have it. Assholes like Drinkypoo here, who boil everything down to race. Race matters more than ANYTHING else to them.
I'm sure that's how it looks from a white supremacist viewpoint.
71% of New Zealand's population is white, but they shouldn't be in charge?
That's not what I said. When you learn to read, come back and have a debate, not just you getting slapped around conversationally.
Re: (Score:2)
What? No it doesn't. The native population complaining about colonization did the exact same thing to the prior population, before Europeans were even in the area.
So how does changing the name change what happened in the past? At most, it acknowledges that this is what happened and maybe in the future we can not do that.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Let's say we scrubbed our history of all the slaveholders. No more Washington, Jefferson, or Jackson.
There will still be history books and museums where you can learn about the past. Taking down monuments orchanging names of schools, mountains, and countries, doesn't really erase history. It just removes the romanticized version from the popular conscious. (and ultimately that's why conservatives have such a hard time with these changes. they love their hero myths)
Re: (Score:2)
Most of those Confederate statues and monuments are anti-history, they're distorting the facts. They were put up to glorify the alternative history of the South, where the Daughters of the Confederacy lobbied to change textbooks to make the south look like the vicitims, and the claims to about losing their glorious heritage. They were also put up explicitly as reminders that reconstruction was over and the rebels were back in charge of those state governments, and no freed slaves or their descendants shou
Re: (Score:2)
Rather consider Jefferson a hero then George Floyd. One helped found an amazing country that continues to be a desirable place for everyone in the world to travel to. People are literally risking death to come live here.
Then we have George Floyd. A drug addict, repeated criminal with an incredible wrap sheet that has contributed absolutely nothing of value to society. Did he deserve to die by police brutality? Of course not, but just because he did die to police brutality doesn't make him a hero.
Not whitewashing. (Score:2)
These initiatives are driven by the aboriginal population. But don't let that stop your rant.
Re: (Score:2)
Noting they never actually had a name for what is currently called New Zealand, so are making one up now in 2022. Fair enough if there was some native peoples language name for the place then use it. But in this case there isn't so the current name is not a problem unless frankly you are some sort of fanatic.
Re: Not whitewashing. (Score:2)
That's good. They don't get to dictate terms unless they change minds. And when they try to change minds, they must be open to the possibility of counter-arguments and prospect that their idea isn't as great when said out loud as it was inside their heads.
Being "aboriginal" ought not provide any special privilege in a society that lives by the rule of law and not by the rule of men.
Re: (Score:2)
Let's say we scrubbed our history of all the slaveholders.
Is that what you imagine the liberal position is? Get a clue.
We don't want history erased, we want it revealed. Your side is the one who wants a watered-down white-washed version of history with all the parts that you don't like erased. (Every accusation is a confession... it's uncanny.)
Washington, Jefferson, and Jackson were not demigods. They were flawed human beings, just like the rest of us.
You want a comic book superhero to idolize. We want actual history. That means we stop worshiping these hist
Re: (Score:2)
If you forget about your history, you're doomed to repeat it.
Humanity doesn't really change a lot. We try to pretend that we are civilized and humane and everything, but in the end we find out again and again that this is but a thin veneer over over a being that would have to work hard to earn being called an animal.
If we forget what we had tried in the past and have dumped for good reason because it didn't work or because it ruined the life of people, it will happen again because someone will have that bri
Re: (Score:2)
You failed to explain what a blackface is.
So: what is a blackface, except dynamite blown into the face of a cartoon character?
Re: (Score:2)
To me the "black face" when someones head was blown up was simply because of soot, I had absolutely no idea it related to black face in the slightest. It may have been or it may have been just related to soot it really up to how you choose to interpret it, if you are looking for something to be offended by you will find it. Its just like portrayal of Apu from the Simpsons, is apparently racist to me he was portrayed as one of the most hard working, decent men in the show (He did cheat once). Definitely much
Re: (Score:2)
Let's say we scrubbed our history of all the slaveholders. No more Washington, Jefferson, or Jackson.
Because slavery was bad and we don't want to glorify its practioners.
Okay. Simple question: does that make us more moral, or more ignorant?
Well an important nuance is those people aren't glorified for being slaveholders. So I do think it is possible to glorify them without glorifying slavery. Now the name of a country formed through colonization is a different case, it's hard to justify the conquest but the name will have built its own history aside from the foundation.
As for the second, yes it makes us more ignorant. For one thing, if you excise slavery from your history, you're left with unsatisfying answers for why some people are persistently behind the rest.
How does "not glorifying" make us more ignorant? If anything it makes us less ignorant.
For instance, there's few thing in American history glorified as much as the Battle of the [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Whitewashing is never a good idea (Score:3)
This is idiotic. It really is. I started elementary school 30 years ago and in those 30 years, the fact that Washington and the like owned slaves while championing individual liberty was *always* brought up at all levels of education from 2nd grade history on up.
To say that we are venerating them blindly is a lie.
To say we are papering over their misdeeds is also a lie.
As far as I have been aware, at least in the past 30 years that I have had personal visibility into the matter, we've been teaching that the
Re: (Score:2)
Well, we were taught on thing in schools, but in society in general it's all "Washington and Jefferson were divinely inspired, and this is the greatest country that has every exist in the entire universe so don't you dare say anything bad!"
Those statues being torn down aren't really historical; many were put up less than 100 years ago to celebrate the rebels and white supremacy; their middle finger to the rest of the country. Some of those rebels who were lauded were actually extremely bad at their militar
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe you should be more upset that when the North won, they decided to let the South continue to run itself. Had the North actually finished the job in the first place, things may of gone differently.
Instead, they tried to build bridges instead of holding the people in charge accountable. Most of the southern generals and politicians should of been hung for treason when the war ended. They were and in many cases continued to hold office and run the show.
Worse, we still trade with countries that have modern
Re: Whitewashing is never a good idea (Score:3)
That's nice. Also mostly irrelevant and sometimes wrongheaded.
People *are* trying to cancel Washington and Jefferson up to and including wanting their statues to come down. Don't misdirect by conflating that with confederate monuments.
My own personal opinion is that Ft Bragg should stay Ft Bragg and Ft Hood should stay Ft Hood. Whatever baggage their names carry, they've acquired history over the past century that isn't about the Confederacy and that history would be erased a little if the place is renamed.
Re: (Score:3)
Because if you have the truth out there it raises tricky questions like "why are we venerating slaveholders", or "why am I lauding a slaveholder as a champion of freedom" and "is it actually good that these people fought two wars for the right to to keep slaves". You don't want that.
So you people are going to cancel Thomas Jefferson, robbing history of his magnificent accomplishments, because he owned slaves like everyone else at that time? Will your own heroes be canceled by future generations because they smoked or because they drive IC cars?
Re: (Score:2)
It's not about "cancelling" anyone. It's about providing a more complete, more accurate depiction of history. Jefferson was a founder of the country, a great writer and philosopher, an inventor, the author of one of the country's founding documents, and much more. No one questions that and no one is trying to change it. He also owned slaves, like many of his contemporaries but unlike many other contemporaries who opposed slavery and were already campaigning against it back then.
Real people are complicat
Significant issues with this concept (Score:3)
1) Impression. The name New Zealand gives the impression of a successful, modern UK descended country. America, Canada, Australia, etc. Many people do not know that New Zealand was the land of the Maori and the Hakka Dance. You change it and it loses that connection, giving an impression only of the Maori people, which, unfortunately will not be as positive for most . It will instead be associated with all the negative, prejudiced views of Maori as savages (they are not savages, they are intelligent, educated people).
2) Alphabet.Those 26 letters are English alphabet, why are you not using the English name if you are using it. You want to use a Maori name, use a Maori alphabet, ideally one invented by them. At least throw in the Accents and Diacriticals used when they started writing Maori based on the English alphabet.
3) Dumb people (not just Americans), will not know where you are talking about.
Turkey had good reasons to change their name to Turkiye, to get away from the bird at the very least. But it is close enough that people still knew what you were talking about, the impression is the same (faded successor to the Ottoman empire), they used their accent/diacritical alphabet (though I did not)
Re: (Score:2)
There is no "original" Mori alphabet and never was. The alphabet they use today was created by missionaries but eagerly adopted and spread by the Mori themselves.
FWIW it's also a bit reductionist to call it "the English alphabet". There are numerous languages that use characters that resemble what is used in English because they all derive from the ancient Latin alphabet.
The name Aotearoa is in fact the correct spelling. Macrons in Mori indicate long vowels and of course not all words use long vowels.
Re: (Score:2)
It is dual naming, not even the first time, in fact the renaming of famous places is as old as time itself, and for the same reason as New Zealand even has a modern history.
Keep calling it what you want out of stubbornness or inability to adjust. It doesn't matter. What's important is a future generation knowing the "correct" name. Just like there's an entire generation of Australians who have never known the famous tourist destination Ularu to be known as Ayers Rock, the world will gradually adjust to what
Re: (Score:2)
William McKinley: Nope, I am going to name it after me.
Re: (Score:2)
"New Zealand" isn't even its original colonized name, so your argument already strands on your very first point.
Re: (Score:2)
1) That's sort of the point of renaming it - it's not just a modern UK-descended country. The indigenous population plays a major role in its culture and governance. I see no reason why a name change would change people's view of the country as a whole.
2) I assume in a case like this that the sound of the name is what matters. The phonetic spelling in the English alphabet would be for convenience. Likewise the Japanese would spell it with their characters. I will say that it's not clear to me why Japan
Re: (Score:2)
I will say that it's not clear to me why Japan is not Nippon, as that is how the Japanese refer to their country (any one out there know why?).
That is actually a very interesting question.
Considering in German we call it also Japan, but pronounce it obvioulsy in the German way.
Re: (Score:2)
Iran (previously Persia)
It was called Persia from the outside, for what ever reason, even in antique times.
However the country was always the "Land of the Ayrans and non Ayrans" under hegemony. Hence the modern spelling Iran.
No idea what sucks more for German right wing radicals, that Arier(s) are actually Ayrans, aka Iranian people, or not even knowing it :P
Re: (Score:2)
There is no english alphabet.
It is called LATIN alphabet, for simpletons like you, we could call it Roman alphabet if that suits you.
(and don't let me get into english digits)
The old tribes in England did not leave much which we would consider "writing", so no idea if they even had an alphabet. Most likely they had, but nothing survived history.
Re: (Score:2)
Do the Maori have a written language? I know many native populations did not read and write but instead passed down history through oration. I imagine over the centuries the history changes because language evolves and every time you retell a story, if it is not word for word, it gets changed ever so slightly.
You can test this out with a group of students. Have the teacher tell one student something and then pass it on. By the time the last student reports back to the teacher what was original said, you are
Re: (Score:2)
2) Alphabet.Those 26 letters are English alphabet, why are you not using the English name if you are using it. You want to use a Maori name, use a Maori alphabet, ideally one invented by them. At least throw in the Accents and Diacriticals used when they started writing Maori based on the English alphabet.
The Maori did not have a written language before the Europeans come, so their written language is a subset of the English language.
Re: (Score:2)
3) Dumb people (not just Americans), will not know where you are talking about.
Is your argument that people who cannot/will not learn new facts should dictate how another country decides to name itself? By your logic, Serbians, Slovenians, Macedonians, Croatians, Bosnians, should have just stayed one country so people do not have to learn new countries now exist.
I don't get a vote (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
"What do the actual islanders think?"
In NZ, the term islander is racist. It refers to someone from some other pacific island (like Tonga, Fiji, or Samoa.
Even though I left the country 20 years ago, I still think of my 'race' as New Zealand Pakeha
Reasonable Compromise (Score:3)
We'll call it Aotearoa McAotearoaface.
Whatever they do... (Score:3)
I just hope that they will spell the new name correctly ...
New Zealand got that name from the Dutch province of Zeeland/a>, not from the Danish island of [wikipedia.org]Zealand [wikipedia.org].
In almost every European language other than English, the latter part of the name is spelled the same as Zeeland is spelled in that language: usually in the Dutch way: with a double-E.
Re: (Score:2)
To add to the confusion, though, the double-e in Dutch is not pronounced like it is in English. In Dutch, "ee" sounds more like a long "a" as in "straight", rather than a long "e" as in "street". But even that isn't quite right.
For instance, here is a spoken pronunciation of "Zeeland" [wikimedia.org] from Wikimedia. Here is "sea" i [google.com]
Re: (Score:2)
But they aren't Dutch they are New Zealanders. The correct spelling of the country is decided only by that country and no one else.
Decolonize Everything! (Score:3, Funny)
And I thought BB&T changing to Truist was bad (Score:2)
Some men just want to watch the world burn
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It is just a name (Score:2)
I'm ethnically Dutch, so it is fun trivia just to be able to say "my people named that", but it is just a name. If the people living there want to change it, then they should be able to change it. At least out west we have renamed a bunch of things because they were offensive to the indigenous people in our area, once I found that out I was more sad we didn't change them sooner.
Again, it is just a name.
So that's where all the leftover vowels from Kyrgy (Score:2)
The Land of the Long White Cloud (Score:5, Interesting)
I flew a paraglider for a decade ('95-'05), during which I would plan my vacations around paragliding. One such planned (but not taken) trip was to NZ, where the folks I communicated with in the local pilot community always insisted on using the aboriginal names for everything, from locations to the weather. Of course, I played along, as it was their club I was hoping to fly with, and I wanted to play by their rules.
When I asked about it, they said they intentionally chose to view themselves as guests on "their" islands, wanting to shift focus away from colonial names to the names used by the original caretakers. In one sense it mirrored the Australian efforts to acknowledge their land's aboriginal ancestry, but to me it felt like it went further, to update their culture to make this part of everyday life.
Years later I met a Mori pilot and asked him about it. From what I understood, he said everyone on the islands was Mori, but some hadn't realized it yet. It wasn't about history or restitution for past crimes, but instead about working today to "close the gap" between all inhabitants and the land. I asked about examples beyond just changing the words used, and he suggested I watch videos of hakas performed by the Mori All Blacks rugby team. The "Mori heart" was there for everyone, independent of ancestry. All they needed to do was pick it up.
Here's the haka video I share most: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHY7zvBDaCU
To be fair, apply this in Europe too (Score:2)
If archaeologists can figure out which cave wall pictographs meant "our land" in places like Lascaux in each country, let's have the academic CRT theorists try to get countries like France to shed their colonialist names rendered in versions of Imperial Rome's alphabet and replace them with the proper Neandertal symbol, as performer Prince once did. Bonus points if they can discover what plausible pronunciations might have been.
Ignoring colonial history (Score:4, Insightful)
There's a reason why New Zealand is New Zealand and not something else: a bunch of overwrought tribes of stinking, primitive, hut-dwelling Indo-European nobodies figured out how to build a bunch of stuff (for whatever reason) and used that know-how to stage a competition to see who could kick the crap out of the most tribes of people elsewhere in the world to bring home their spoils and wage wars among themselves.
That ought to count for something.
The only thing you accomplish by cooking up some fictional Maori name to apply to an entire country is to try to prove the point that it doesn't. That in no way, shape, or form should any of the Maori be the least-bit embarrassed that they got skunked by people that are really no better or smarter than anyone else (and who were, until very recently on the human time scale, complete primitives).
Colonization was a two-way street. It did require that the colonizers be amoral douchebags, which they broadly were. But it also required that the colonized be incapable of defending themselves or their land. Which they also were. That is how you get a "game over" when playing Civ.
Do the people of New Zealand want to change their name from "we are a colony of former jackholes" to "we lost because we sucked"?
Tappan Zee (Score:2)
This post got me thinking of a place name we have in the US, Tappan Zee [wikipedia.org] where the Hudson River widens north of NYC. It's a combination of a Native American tribe name "Tappan" and "Zee," a Dutch word for sea. I wonder if the New Zealanders might think of some word combination that reflects their shared history.
In any case, they should get their act together before Andrew Cuomo names their island for his dad.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
why are they getting so much press coverage?
The internet: The great equalizer, or is it just the great squeaky wheel amplifier?
Re: (Score:2)
Please don't let the woke colonize Slashdot.
Way too late on that.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
isnt she the argumentative one!
To whom are you referring?
, get a political viewpoint that isnt the same as millions of other peoples.
Being contrarian for its own sake isn't a sign of intelligence.
Re: (Score:2)
To whom are you referring?
To you of course. You must be an argumentative female according to his world view. Also he has to respond with a few ad hominem attacks and not contribute to the discussion with anything of substance.
Re: (Score:2)
Your right, lefties have killed WAY more people in the past 120 years then righties did...
I mean, do I pick Hitler or Stalin or Mao? Hilter was child's play compared to Stalin. Mao makes Stalin look nice in comparison.
So really, both sides ARE in fact pretty fucking horrid and it doesn't seem like human suffering is any less with regards to politics.
But keep assuming YOUR party is the pure one.
Re: (Score:2)
and civil liberties for everyone...
Wait. Wasn't it the Democrats that issued edicts that anyone who objected to forced vaccinations be fired from their jobs? Isn't it the Democrats who are passing legislation restricting gun rights despite firearms being explicitly enumerated in the US Constitution? Wasn't it Democrats in California who passed legislation making it illegal to refer to someone by a pronoun they disliked despite freedom of speech being a civil liberty named in the US Constitution?
Democrats are all for civil liberties the
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Do you think this is nerdy? Can you explain how this could be considered nerdy? Caring about world politics seems to be the opposite of nerdy to me, nerdy is becoming hyper-involved in a technical topic.
Yes. Discussing history and etymology seems nerdy to me. But since it is not "technical" for you, no one should ever discuss subjects you have no interest. I hate to tell you that not everything is about you.
nerd, noun: a person devoted to intellectual, academic, or technical pursuits or interests
Read your definition again: intellectual, academic, or . . .. Those are key words. You do know that history nerds exists right? Political nerds. Heck, etymology nerds. In thread, people have discussed the history of New Zealand as a country and the role of indigenous Maori. In the summary, the origin o
Re: (Score:2)
Will changing the name do anything except make those pushing the effort feel better about themselves?
Why don't you ask The Netherlands if they "feel better" about themselves? Another country's identity seems like a trivial to you; I think they would disagree. Was it for their "feelings" or do you think that they had their reasons. The main reason is that "Holland" is merely one area of The Netherlands, and the new name reflects all of the country and not one region. That's the same reason, the United Kingdom represents 4 countries and is not just called "England".
Why not use that to improve the quality of life for those still living?
Why is your default position that this is a
Re: (Score:2)
When that part of the world mattered , Holland was in charge, had all the money and all the naval power. That is why the name lives on. The dutch can call themselves what they like now, no one cares.
Re: (Score:2)
When that part of the world mattered , Holland was in charge, had all the money and all the naval power. That is why the name lives on. The dutch can call themselves what they like now, no one cares.
Again the same reason it is the United Kingdom and not England as the UK has 4 countries in it these days.
Re: (Score:2)
You might as well complain that people call the USA "America". It might not be accurate but no one except pedants like you gives a shit.
Re: (Score:2)
Great. You can carry on those old names until the day you die. Future generations won't need to be burdened by your sentiments and can put whatever name they damn well please on their maps.