If you can recall more than one champion you have done better than me. Ten individuals or teams brought home gold. By contrast, for older readers, who won two gold medals for swimming at the 1996 games in Atlanta?
I’m asking this question as I sit at a café in the Korean city of Jeonju. Or more precisely, the South Korean city. Korea is one nation divided by history but still, I think, a single nation, in the same way Germany was divided but not irreparably so.
Time may change that, as the two populations drift in language, culture, and sense of their identity. Perhaps, after eighty years, it already has.
Korea is one of the most homogeneous places on earth, at least from the perspective of a tourist. Almost everyone is ethnically Korean. Divergence on issues like religion and politics must exist, but they are not obvious to someone gliding from hotel to hotel; although the recent turmoil in Seoul indicates not all is well.
New Zealand is not a nation based on race. To be Korean, Japanese, or Swedish, has a connotation beyond citizenship. That is not true of post-colonial societies like ours. To be a kiwi is to be a citizen of those islands under the sovereignty of Wellington. But what is a New Zealander?
There was a time when we were a bi-cultural state; and I am old enough to recall that society. We knew our history, we understood our identity as Māori or Pakeha, but these were subservient to being part of something larger.
When we disagreed, over the Springboks, land rights or Rogernomics, we were arguing between ourselves. We were a single nation on a collective journey. We may have debated about where we should be going, but in a land without Facebook we enjoyed greater isolation and consequently sense of identity than we do in this more connected world.
Today we are a multi-cultural society and we are both looking internally and externally for identity beyond the accident of residence.
Domestically we are segregating ourselves by bloodlines into Tangata Whenua and Tangata Tiriti. Those who claim by descent the rights of Māori under the treaty and those whose presence here is, some maintain, permitted by that treaty.
It has become common for individuals to mention iwi as part of their introduction; a development that is instructive because it is a window into how younger kiwis see their relationship with New Zealand; as having an identity separate from the nation. This is consistent with many new immigrants who, thanks to the internet and affordability of travel, are able to retain links and connections to their home nations that were impossible for those who arrived by ship, or worse, DC10.
New Zealand is where we live. Not who we are.
This is not without precedent. For many religion is more powerful than citizenship as a source of identity and surely it is rational to emphasis your ancestry ahead of the accidental location of your birth, but here lies a divergence that can take some resolving. For many New Zealanders our ancestry belongs to the marshlands of Cornwall, or similar, so for us the identity of kiwi has a different resonance and one that is challenged by being told we are merely Tangata Tiriti.
It implies that our right to be here is conditional and our place as citizens is subject to renegotiation; which appears to be occurring. Given the history of these islands, some might say this is the counter-weight to that experienced by the indigenous population
The consequence is that, for all of us, what it means to be kiwi is evolving, and I suspect that for many our relationship with the country becoming merely transactional. If it works for us we can stay. If not Australia, or back overseas for the thirty percent of us who were born offshore.
The Kennedy speech; ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country, has little currency in Aotearoa New Zealand because we are collectively less emotionally invested in belonging to New Zealand.
Danyon Loader won his medals at a time when we internalised sporting success. We felt joy when the All Blacks won and retained pride at Sir Edmund Hillary. Recall the euphoria when Sir Peter Blake won the America’s Cup or, as recently as 2011, when Richie McCaw wrestled the Webb Ellis cup from the grim hands of the French.
Could anything bring us together like that? It seems those days are gone....The full article is published HERE
Damien Grant is an Auckland business owner, a member of the Taxpayers’ Union and a regular opinion contributor for Stuff, writing from a libertarian perspective
Korea is one of the most homogeneous places on earth, at least from the perspective of a tourist. Almost everyone is ethnically Korean. Divergence on issues like religion and politics must exist, but they are not obvious to someone gliding from hotel to hotel; although the recent turmoil in Seoul indicates not all is well.
New Zealand is not a nation based on race. To be Korean, Japanese, or Swedish, has a connotation beyond citizenship. That is not true of post-colonial societies like ours. To be a kiwi is to be a citizen of those islands under the sovereignty of Wellington. But what is a New Zealander?
There was a time when we were a bi-cultural state; and I am old enough to recall that society. We knew our history, we understood our identity as Māori or Pakeha, but these were subservient to being part of something larger.
When we disagreed, over the Springboks, land rights or Rogernomics, we were arguing between ourselves. We were a single nation on a collective journey. We may have debated about where we should be going, but in a land without Facebook we enjoyed greater isolation and consequently sense of identity than we do in this more connected world.
Today we are a multi-cultural society and we are both looking internally and externally for identity beyond the accident of residence.
Domestically we are segregating ourselves by bloodlines into Tangata Whenua and Tangata Tiriti. Those who claim by descent the rights of Māori under the treaty and those whose presence here is, some maintain, permitted by that treaty.
It has become common for individuals to mention iwi as part of their introduction; a development that is instructive because it is a window into how younger kiwis see their relationship with New Zealand; as having an identity separate from the nation. This is consistent with many new immigrants who, thanks to the internet and affordability of travel, are able to retain links and connections to their home nations that were impossible for those who arrived by ship, or worse, DC10.
New Zealand is where we live. Not who we are.
This is not without precedent. For many religion is more powerful than citizenship as a source of identity and surely it is rational to emphasis your ancestry ahead of the accidental location of your birth, but here lies a divergence that can take some resolving. For many New Zealanders our ancestry belongs to the marshlands of Cornwall, or similar, so for us the identity of kiwi has a different resonance and one that is challenged by being told we are merely Tangata Tiriti.
It implies that our right to be here is conditional and our place as citizens is subject to renegotiation; which appears to be occurring. Given the history of these islands, some might say this is the counter-weight to that experienced by the indigenous population
The consequence is that, for all of us, what it means to be kiwi is evolving, and I suspect that for many our relationship with the country becoming merely transactional. If it works for us we can stay. If not Australia, or back overseas for the thirty percent of us who were born offshore.
The Kennedy speech; ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country, has little currency in Aotearoa New Zealand because we are collectively less emotionally invested in belonging to New Zealand.
Danyon Loader won his medals at a time when we internalised sporting success. We felt joy when the All Blacks won and retained pride at Sir Edmund Hillary. Recall the euphoria when Sir Peter Blake won the America’s Cup or, as recently as 2011, when Richie McCaw wrestled the Webb Ellis cup from the grim hands of the French.
Could anything bring us together like that? It seems those days are gone....The full article is published HERE
Damien Grant is an Auckland business owner, a member of the Taxpayers’ Union and a regular opinion contributor for Stuff, writing from a libertarian perspective
3 comments:
I am a New Zealander.
New Zealanders were the people who built this country and enjoyed the results of our forebears hard work .
Being a multi cultural country seems to a situation that calls for an award or pat on the back.
No. I want New Zealand to be one people .Those immigrants arriving in recent years are merely interested in financial gain and not being part of what this country is all about.
New Zealand has been ruined by PC politicians ,immigration and pandering to marxist bodies like the UN.
I used to be a New Zealander. Now I just live in New Zealand. I’m fortunate enough to have both a Kiwi and a Pom passport. I’ll stay in New Zealand as long as it suits me.
Gone is the pride I used to feel as a Kiwi. I was proud of our sensible and reasonable approach to issues. Proud to be part of a good spirited and hard working people. But that’s been destroyed in recent years. Destroyed by destructive race based policies that elevate one group of part-Maori people to some superior status with exceptional rights over mine. And the basis for this is derived from a concocted, dishonest and nonsense reinterpretation of an ancient, half baked document called the Treaty of Waitangi.
What saddens me most is that so many Maori buy into the nonsense and have no shame in the distortion and clear lies that form the basis of this movement. And the mass of deluded wet, woke, Whitie w**kers who, filled with wholesome virtue, abandon their common sense and blindly follow.
Sad! Maybe we should merge with Australia which is clearly a more sensible and prosperous country. Maybe Trump will buy us instead of Greenland. Anything is better than what New Zealand has now become…
Damien, you are completely wrong! I am a New Zealander and I live in New Zealand. I do NOT live in some mythical country called Aotearoa or some variation of that. My ethnicity is one-sixteenth maori and the remainder a mix of european including French, German and Dutch. However those ethnicities do NOT define me. My country of birth and citizenship defines me. I am neither neither Tangata Whenua nor Tangata Tiriti. My ancestors have been New Zealanders for over nine generations.
New Zealand is where i live and New Zealander is who I am!
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