Phillip OSullivan: Topics in Pacific Art ARTH335

Dr Peter Brunt

2011

A New Consideration of Colonial & Post Colonial concepts of Indigeneity in the Light of a Masculist and Capitaliste critique.

Writing this preamble at a time when the Pacific economy and its main investors and supporters have received credit downgrades and loses to currency values. While it has recovered ever so slightly new news tells of further serious European Bank credit downgrades. In the last 30 days or so the New Zealand dollar has lost 15% off total value. (A yearly rate of this would see NZ in Soviet Union meltdown territory by July 2012). If significant, which this writer believes it is, this can strongly effect the funding of various Pacific cultural institutions and culturally based ideologies now prevalent throughout the Pacific region. Amoung these would be notions of anti-colonializism, gender equalities and feminist initiatives, and the luxury of, or new initiatives for, economic independence for concepts of national or ethnic sovereignty, indigenous group support (finance and funding) further treaty rights, expanded human rights and other expensive proposals.

Attitudes to Pacifika, cultural funding generally, the relatively benign tolerance of these as ideologies, and such like general things not geared to direct and immediate economic outcomes, may well cease through lack of funding. We would instead be fighting for our economic lives. On this basis this essay wonders aloud whether there is not exactly half an argument missing within cultural debates, one part of which exactly deals with economic issues. I

do not mean the management, application or administration of Pacific postcolonial arts funding but the very cast and character of the Pacific cultural debate itself. For the sake of accuracy we must address this. The cultural debate on indigeneity, minority indigenous peoples, cultural rights and prerogatives and political standings is almost always cast in the mould of either feminism or Marxism: two very failed ideologies that have destroyed the civilizations in which they have most held sway. 1This mould does not contain the equivalent and counter availing shape of either a Pacific Island Masculism (An assertion at the ideological level of a cultural and fully self-cognisant patriarchy or of colonial positives, ie gratitude, and economic or capitalist innovation or finances). Yes, there is the issue of IMF inputs into the Pacific region that carry such stringencies that the Islands are subsequently more impoverished. Yet why is such colonizing funding sought in the first place? Such an economic scenario as above may abate, cease for a time, or, as surely return; either way the future outlook is grim. However, while we have not in recent history been quite here before, and it is scary, it too may pass. Let us hope so. These thoughts are the current reality we are faced with. While it may pass for now, it will return again some year soon. The western hegemony and its place as our Pacific sun may soon fade. Thus global indigeneity is the issue as the host economies face examination of their own European ethnic origins, homeland sovereignty, whakapapa and historical roots, and need to decide what to do for the future of these things. We need consequently to recast why, when,
1

It surprises many when I put together a very simple refutation of feminism on the basis of bulk economic losses to abortion; the defining feminist moment. With 400,000 since 1972 @ an average cost of $4million each from lost lifetime earnings amounts to $2.3 trillion dollars. Thats right, Two point three Trillion dollars. A massive sum, over seventy years (longevity), in lost economic activity; furthermore theyre wanted, as we imported 400,000 migrants in same period; surely better to have our own indigenous people. There is more than this too to add; making in all, the argument irrefutable. To this writer feminism creates statistical genocide. Consequently it is an appalling error, virtually destroying civilization.

where, how and with whom we do these things, continue these things and ask what we can learn for ourselves, for self application, what it is to respond to being colonized (as we may be by Asian economic forces; as we are being colonized by such means). We need reasons above all. We may need to discern across a whole range of options as to which ones we can afford or must expend ourselves to do. Thus the tools that have been fashioned as cultural critique may well serve usefully to aid host economies rebuild their own cultural consciousness. In that light Pacific concepts of colonialism, processes of cultural influence and example, indigeneity, sovereignty, cultural rights and copyrights, cultural treasures, pride and intellectual property, protocol, anthropology and traditional integrity; may well serve as instruments applicable to the global, universal and European experience. Of which then the Pacific Islands serve as example, case history, clinical trial, especially in being an entire encapsulated historical civilization. The context today is that Europe is in more than economic difficulty; cultural integrity and innovative national identity preservation also top the bill. Its history is over examined, much texted, documents and situations too abounding to be amenable to objective a study in an emergency examination. Pacifika studies can thus lend its supporting experience to one of its own past main supporters. So much contained in so little, complete and compact Pacific Island cultural adaptions can be our wider exemplar. All nations have been colonised from elsewhere in their deeper histories. All peoples are indigenous to the planet earth. All peoples have the right to a sovereign-and-forget attitude to their homeland. Insecurity on this point is the cause of all the cultural and ethnic conflicts worldwide. Enforced tolerations (U.N. style) are not an option; and have never worked in Northern Ireland, Tamil Sri Lanka, Kurdistan, Cyprus or Myanmars Karin State. When we travel to China we see Chinese people, India we see Indians, Mexico Mexicans, Japan Japanese.

Yet formerly liberal-white nations have deliberately opened their doors. This favour is hardly returned anywhere; try migrating as a European to Indonesia, Arabia, China or even India; it is virtually impossible. If the poor or adventurous of New Zealand wanted to migrate it is almost exclusively possible only to other formerly liberal nations. Our Eurocentric-ethnic-liberal-multi-cultural society open door entry policy, are not policies emulated anywhere else on the globe. Nations we receive migrants from do not receive equivalent status migrants in return. There is no Quid-pro-Quo. Poor nations do not handle the ideal multicultural mix well either; though some city-states like Singapore and Hong Kong do because of wealth and vastly increased opportunity. If host multicultural nations such as New Zealand become poorer, social and cultural stresses could abound in such impoverishment. Where then do we go? That is the primary question, having the greatest tension, as immigration, lower European birth rates, and high migrant birth-rates change forever what it was to have been a host-patron nation serving the worlds poor. We see these social envies, tensions, rivalries and conflict in Fiji, the Solomons (where many non-ethnic, nonindigenous peoples, such as Chinese business families became victims; shops burnt to the ground, beatings and murder) and in countries where wealth is in short supply. What is the Eurocentric place in the world when that world is no longer European. Being patron state, and a wealthy liberal political host in its later years to so many, means that Western civilization could by then afford the mea-culpa, hand wringing and guilty-white-liberal pose afforded by the luxury of hegemony and dominance. For in earlier days New Zealand ascendency over Polynesia had our military called the Junkers of the Pacific as we asserted national force projection, and had a jingoistic will, borrowed from our Imperial homeland, Great Britain. In its turn this corrective bias has overstepped all balance to the point

where the term racism for instance has become itself actually a racist term. In that in function and practice the idea acts as if meaning the underlying unwritten code for it is what white people do to black/brown/red/yellow, with the foremost party of mention is always the perpetrator: so used in praxis the term then is racist, dysfunctional, unfair, unjust and plainly badly misconceived. Stepping back from this to reassert actual dictionary definitions or state contrary examples2 is not to escape the dysfunctionality of the term as the habit immediately creeps back in. By default then the accusation racist, and its near cousins, insensitive, bigot, ignorant and so on works to silence debate and cut off qualifying questions. It is nearly always said with such fierce hatred, bigotry and fanaticism: remembering here in Wellington where some skin-heads were set upon and bloodied by a screaming, hate-filled liberal mob. Meanwhile workers who say shut up you black bastard invariably do so with a smile, sleep with Samoan girlfriends and drink with some Tongan buddies. Liberal layers in culture accept meanwhile the more middle-class Islander and seek careers for themselves serving the ideology of tolerance from a well defined professional distance. The deep irony was thus complete. These terms in the street of real intelligence have virtually no meaning whatever. The postmodern indigenous minorities philosophy has become Hitlerian: tell the selected terms lie often enough and it becomes the truth. A Professor Loyd Geering transvaluation-of-all-values situation, that boils down cultural value and ideas into so much intellectual sludge. It is a shock to realize people whose main quality is supposed to be tolerance can spit out such cold and cynical intolerance and hatred, while using the correct terms incorrectly. We must do better than

On the Muslim Barbary coast muslim raiders captured Europeans for the white slave trade in Northern Africa. These slaves numbered 1 million at a time when Europes population, including Russia, may have been less than twenty millions. So the proportion so enslaved is quite high, a fact not often included in the real liberal racists version of history.

that. Examining an entire society in miniature can help reorient ourselves, even if the dislodged cultural values, there too, need re-aligning correctly: for the complete field and its wider historical actions and arts can be more comprehensively surveyed. In New Zealand such artists as Peter Robinson have prospered when emphasizing their minority status as Islander or Maori; why is this? Is it a fashion just for a time in our cultural life where such aboriginal sentiments can be expressed? Has it passed? I would suggest by the recent harsh and retrospective measures the current Government has passed in Parliament over the Napalm Bomb incident in the Ureweras, and the National Governments continued fierce popularity despite this that indeed the fashion for hand wrung celebrations of our native artists and cultures has evaporated. A Maori academics remark, about selective white immigration being racist, inflamed many, and possibly incited some to unkind reprisals on our new immigrants. The rising new breed of South Africas ANC for instance seems to be following in the footsteps of Mugabe by granting precipitous indigenous land rights over European farmers land, thus encouraging new migrant outflows from the Cities. In two decades of fairly reasonable Mandela Government, one million whites left S.A.,leaving four million behind, a subsequent decade saw one million more go under more restrictive laws. About 3 million remain. At this point 24 hour power, a basic industrial and commercial requirement, is not maintained in S.A. cities (this is a serious breakdown in governance). The latest political situations could drive southern Africa into Mugabe-like territory: the critical-theory view in culture, politics and social comment ignores these events as discomforting to its half-baked Marxistfeminist utopia view of the world. This is a dangerous lapse; as it disallows certain uncomfortable questions. Could New Zealand be next along this path? The failing European economies and banks have alarmed many and

consequently patron/host individuals here who have supported this Pacifika emphasis have their own ultimate indigenous homelands to think about. Our strange accommodation to entrenched, incorporated and enlarged Treaty values gives our politics an Apartheid tinge of its own. For instance a Maori artist can be regarded so legally with only one sixteenth maori-blood, whatever that means. What does she do with the other fifteen sixteenths? Donate them to an enemic albino? The treaty claimants on that basis probably really have no claim at all. Dr Ranganui Walker quoted in Dr Peter Brunts article says the Treaty of Waitangi is our foundation document; I would dispute that utterly. It applies only to Iwi-identified Maori possibly, it is of no legal use to Islanders, Asians, Immigrants or to the host/patron peoples generally. It cannot promote, protect, defend, advance or encourage European, Foreign, Tourists, Migrants, Asians, African and, very many Maori too, residing or travelling through New Zealand. Approximately 80% of New Zealanders, travellers or visitors, while here do not have any legal cover from it at all it only guarantees some Maori, some limited Maori rights. It is a fairly limited and highly privileged contract that happens to be early. The elevation of a fibreglass copy of this fake document into the three story high wall at Te Papa, changes not one iota of its incredible uselessness. It is not today a friendly document, as it can be used against 80 percent of New Zealand residents: but never for them. Of the remainder only a few gain benefit from it and that, on other, and as dubious, grounds. Any art created in the light of it then is as false. When nations fight over an old treaty and hostilities cease a new treaty is created; where is our new treaty? Cutting down the flagpole of a treaty party is an act of war nullifying the treaty. The winner enforces the terms of new conditions. The beneficiaries, under the old treaty, being those tribes who continued support of the Crown, anything else encourages rebellion, which is what we are seeing now in New Zealand, hence the Urewera napalm bomb.

The Maori hold copyright over the Haka, it is not ours, ours being an appropriate counter military challenge on State occasions, representing then, in light of the above, approximately ninety percent of remaining New Zealanders. Perhaps a vigorous Present Arms! would suffice: and a suitable equivalent to the similarly military inspired Haka. Anything other than this is cant and hype having no basis in reality. Things that are false die a quick cultural death. May the myth in indigeneity be one of them. Minorities do not have more rights than the majority. Minority indigeneity is something, of inadvertent design, stemming from an accident of cultural ideology: the biased and half-representative Marxist feminist interpretation, arising from the Frankfurt School. The Frankfurt School being the foundation for the quasi-marxism and todays theoretical feminism that is behind literary theory, art theory and cultural studies: this basis is only half of what a fully conversant cultural critique could be, obviously lacking an answering capitalist (I prefer the term Capitaliste) cultural ideology and also a masculist cultural answer or social critique. These other halves of the story are almost entirely lacking. There may also be more viewpoints to consider: these ones here are the glaring ones. A half baked ideology can only lead the Pacific nations into a half baked future. For the full story we need the other side of the cultural inheritance of the Pacific Islands. This raw essay is but the barest sketch of such a possibility. The other half of the Post Colonial story is the continuing colonial one. Its basis is the good brought by Western powers to the Pacific region in the form of ideas, schools, teaching, reading, writing, mathematics and science. These are not sufficiently celebrated in biased post-modern, post-colonial readings of the cultural situation. Therefore an untrue or unreadable situation arises. How can we find our way in the story if its links are lies and deliberate mis-

representations? Europeans do not claim a cultural copyright over the good things. Transport, communication, postal and administrative systems were set up largely at no cost to the Pacific: contributing wages, viewpoints, vision and widened horizons for free. The Pacific Islands were freed from superstition, slavery, cannibalism, blood sacrifice and ignorance. Who would argue that the entire traditional package was better; though lovers of the ancient traditions need to be very selective in what is remembered or mentioned, the past becomes highly censored territory. 2700 words.