Tackling Maori Masculinity: A Colonial Genealogy of Savagery and Sport

Abstract

The primary aim of this paper is to deconstruct one of the dominant discourses surrounding Maori men—a discourse that was constructed to limit, homogenize, and reproduce an acceptable and imagined Maori masculinity, and one that has also gained hegemonic consent from many tane. I use a genealogical approach to outline the historical underpinnings of the image of the Maori man as naturally physical, and the mechanisms, including the confiscation of land and a racist state education system, that served to propound and perpetuate this construction. The contemporary portrayal of the natural Maori sportsman has evolved from these historical roots in what has become a largely subconscious but no less insidious pattern of subjugation through positively framed sporting images.

Moving Masculinities: Memories and Bodies Across Oceania

“…Surfi ng is not just a sport that attracts the foreign tourist gaze but also an integral part of Hawaiian cultural resistance and renaissance. Echoing Tengan's and Walker's analyses, Hokowhitu sees the hegemonic model of the Mäori man as a hybrid created by colonialism, particularly through the colonial disciplines of education and sports like rugby, and not emasculated but hypermasculine (see also Hokowhitu 2004). As a Mäori man, a scholar whose doctorate was awarded in both Mäori studies and physical education, and a teacher in the School of Mäori, Pacifi c, and Indigenous Studies at the University of Otago in Dunedin, Hokowhitu fi nds his research closely connected to his embodied life experience.…”

‘Race’ and the Politics of Land Loss: Colonising Discourses for Patuheuheu and Ngāti Haka

“…It is within this context, Wall (1995Wall ( , 1997 advises, that the stereotype as a "key mechanism" transmits and replicates racialised discourse. The reproductive power of the stereotype subjects the Other to ideological domination through objectification and categorisation into taxonomies of racial difference (Bhabha, 1983(Bhabha, , 1994Hall, 1992aHall, , 1992bHall, , 1997Hokowhitu, 2001Hokowhitu, , 2003Hokowhitu, , 2004. Here, the power of the stereotype to maintain racialised discourse comes from its ambiguity and ambivalence, resulting in the transpiration of incongruous representations of the Other, which vacillate between mimicry and menace (Bhabha, 1994).…”

“…Thus, nineteenth century colonial ideas were inundated with a sense of imperial normalisation (Hokowhitu, 2004), meaning that the colonialists saw themselves as normal and therefore superior, giving them the license to oppress the native Other (Hokowhitu, 2004;Pihama, 2001;Smith, 1999).…”

“…So, it was believed that Māori people needed colonisation and industry (Mutu, 2000;Petrie, 1998Petrie, , 2006Simon, 1990;Smith, 1999) for their "spiritual and economic salvation" (Petrie, 1998, p. 9). The white man"s burden was to cleanse, assimilate and civilise the Other (Hall, 1997;Hokowhitu, 2003Hokowhitu, , 2004McClintock, 1995;Petrie, 1998Petrie, , 2006Simon, 1991), but the burden was "his" alone, for ostensibly, only white men had the strength and resilience, the intelligence and the aptitude to carry out the humanistic task of en-lightening the dark corners of the globe (Hokowhitu, 2004). According to Linda Smith (1997):…”

“…Here, the six categories of Māori as Other, explained by Hokowhitu (2001Hokowhitu ( , 2003Hokowhitu ( , 2004, is used here to organise the literature as a means to identify how these views provided the rationale used and developed by the colonists, to part Māori from their land.…”