between kiwis and kangaroos- know your natives

Heritage

The two countries do stand differentiated regarding native heritage. Future Australians crossed a series of land bridges in a single, large migration to arrive from Southeast Asia somewhere between 40,000 and 120,000 years ago. These people must have annoyed the crap out of each other en route because geographic dispersion on arrival resulted in hundreds of individual colonies and 250-300 different languages. Colonies developed unique cultures, but all retained facets present prior to divergence, most notably the metaphysical concept of "Dreamtime." Dreamtime refers to a parallel, cyclical plane of existence that transcends perceived reality. Occurrences in this sea of souls shape and govern a tribe's social values. Of course, some are more capable of tapping into this spiritual realm than others. Religion often serves to stratify the masses, and Aboriginal dogma is no exception.

The association of music with The Dreaming led to the development of "song lines," melodies synonymous with certain emotions or feelings. Historians hotly debate which came next: accompanying instrumentation, or the first season of Aboriginal Idol. Many tribes began using clapping sticks (banging two sticks together) to accompany their song lines. The first didgeridoo was fashioned shortly thereafter, probably in an attempt to drown out the incessant percussion of clapping sticks. The two were found to sound quite nice together and became staples of ceremonial rites.



New Zealand was void of mankind until Polynesian settlers arrived around 1280. A small group of people boarded an even smaller group of oceangoing canoes and paddled over a thousand miles to an empty island. And nobody knows why. I've plumbed the pipes of the internets and used the google, and all I've unearthed are rather pedestrian hypotheses about food shortages and tribal disputes. I have my own theory that these people were discontent with their customs and, quite frankly, considered everybody else a bunch of weirdos. That would explain why they left and dubbed themselves Maori, meaning normal, upon colonization. Researchers insist that the name implies acknowledgment and humble disassociation from the divine, but I like my explanation better.

One of the most interesting and atypical things about the Maori is their cultural influence in New Zealand. Since America has either eradicated or marginalized its natives, this influence, to me, is incredibly pronounced. In 1840, New Zealand was composed of 100,000 Maori and 2,000 Europeans. In 1896, those numbers had changed just slightly: 42,113 Maori to over 700,000 Europeans. Sociologists assumed a distinct culture was untenable due to integration with the West, but the Maori countered by assimilating some Western elements while differentiating and exposing their own. The result has been several prominent Maori politicians and the addition of Maori to New Zealand's list of official languages (joining English and sign language) in 1987. Government offices, schools, and most business list names in both languages. Apparently there were petitions to add sign language as well, but no one showed up at the hearings. Several star players on the national rugby team are Maori, and the team performs an iconic war dance, the Haka, before every match. You can see from the Youtube video that "Haka," roughly translated, means "Woman, where's my dinner?" As a minority subgroup, they're still socioeconomically depressed, but I can't help but feel like mainstream cultural prominence is a strong road to equality.