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Abstract
A comparison of approaches to biculturalism in New Zealand and cultural diversity in the UK reveals that both countries use policy in ways that are aspirational and prescriptive rather than merely supportive of cultural practice. Hybrid culture, producing influential and acclaimed work in the field, is largely ignored in policy in favour of support for distinct minorities. The reasons for this are explored through a brief comparative survey of the history, development and current political purpose of cultural policy in both countries, and contrasts are made with current cultural practice and with the social and economic status of minorities in each country.
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Notes
1. This is not a unique example. Others include the Maori gateway that greets international arrivals in Auckland airport, and the adaptation of other Maori motifs as logos of Air New Zealand and the Arts Council of New Zealand.
2. In 1945, 20% of Maori lived in cities, by 1976 76% did so.
3. A total of 38,000 in Auckland by 1976.
4. The 1976 Notting Hill Carnival (London) ended in violence between police and black youths; 1977 saw a National Front march through London.
5. In New Zealand: 19.5%–39.0%; in the UK: 20.0%–40.0%.
6. In 1968, far‐right politician Enoch Powell gave his famous “rivers of blood” speech in the House of Commons, advocating mass deportation of immigrants. Martin Luther King was assassinated in the same year.
7. The Maori were described by army historian J. W. Fortescue as “the grandest native enemy he had ever encountered”; but between 1860 and 1892 they had lost or sold 17 million acres of land to white settlers (Sinclair & Dalziel Citation2000, Chapter 6).
8. “[T]he truth with which lines were drawn was surprising” (Banks Citation1962, Vol. 2, p. 24).
9. Almost every encounter of the Maori with the Endeavour was overtly hostile: at the first sighting of Maori (8 October 1769), “the pinnace came to (our) assistance, fird upon them and killd the chief”; at the second (the next day), “we thought it prudent to retreat till the marines were landed”; on 10 October: “we now despaired of making peace with men who were not be frightened by our small arms”, and so it continued.
10. Instructions to the first Governor of New Zealand, Hobson (1839) required him “to mitigate the process of war and spoliation, under which uncivilised tribes have invariably disappeared as often as they have been brought into the immediate vicinity of Emigrants from the Nations of Christendom” (quoted in Sinclair & Dalziel Citation2000, p. 69).
11. “It will express the bicultural nature of the country, recognising the mana and significance of each of the two mainstreams of tradition and cultural heritage, and providing the means for each to contribute effectively to a statement of the nation’s identity” (from A Concept for the Museum of NZTPW (Wellington Citation1989), quoted in Brown 2002).
