MAORI CULTURE
USED WITHOUT
PERMISSION
New Zealand food and beverage manufacturers and promoters are culturally
appropriating Māori culture without permission in the marketing of their products
and should be respectful enough to ask iwi for their blessing.
Māori trademarks advisor and
PhD student at Awanuiarangi
Karaitiana Taiuru believes
that cultural appropriation of
Māori imagery and names has become
normalised over multiple generations by
New Zealand businesses.
“We cannot directly blame the businesses,
but we need to learn from these
experiences and deploy better protection
mechanisms and new partnerships to
stop appropriation,” Taiuru says. “Firstly,
it starts with a business wanting to be a
good corporate citizen in New Zealand.”
Taiuru has identified a number of businesses
using Māori culture in their brands,
names and marketing, and says many
companies remove the offending items
when they are made aware of it. “But with
the larger companies, it is often difficult to
be listened to or contact someone with
decision making responsibilities,” he says.
• Kapiti Cheese, a brand owned by
Fonterra, has named a cheese after
a famous Māori ancestor of the Kapiti
area Tuteremoana. According to kaumatua
Ross Himona, Tuteremoana was
the most famous descendant of Tara,
eponymous ancestor of the Ngai Tara
tribe. He lived 19 or 20 generations ago.
Taiuru assumes Kapiti Cheese used the
name as it is also a popular landmark,
but that landmark is named after the
same ancestor - a personification. One
mother had expressed hurt that her children
who are descendants of Tuteremoana
are worried they may be eating their
ancestor. “It is not difficult to fact check
names in New Zealand, and businesses
should be doing this as a part of their Q
and A,” he says.
• Some BP petrol stations are offering
organic coffee and advertising coffee
branded with the Māori deity of fertility -
Tiki. Taiuru says this should be labelled
as false advertising, as the coffee does
not make anyone fertile, “and if it does
then a disclaimer needs to accompany
the coffee.”
• A Titoki Whiskey bottle represents the
god of fertility as well. Titoki claims to be
a traditional Māori alcohol that used traditional
Māori medicines and was used
by ancient spirits, “despite the fact that
European settlers introduced alcohol
and there was no traditional alcohol,”
Taiuru says.
• The Warehouse are showing television
adverts with the Māori god of fertility Tiki
on shopping bags, Taiuru says. “There
is no relevance to the products available
at The Warehouse. “The god of fertility
Tiki has been appropriated for so many
years that he has become a national
identity by non-Māori to represent
Māori.
"We can’t stop the past wrongs, but we
can stop future appropriation. It is never
too late to right the wrongs of the past.”