
Te Aro Brewery should have known better.
As part of its new ‘Age of Discovery’ range of beers, the brewery named a beer after Kupe, the legendary Polynesian explorer, alongside other top-notch navigators like Ferdinand Magellan and Christopher Columbus.
Apparently, it never occurred to them that the Kupe craft beer might be offensive. “We never considered that including Kupe would stand out from the other famous historical explorers, much less become newsworthy.”
That, of course, was a Pacific-sized error.
In a joint submission, Turehou Māori Wardens ki Ōtara and Communities Against Alcohol Harm declared that the product “in associating the esteemed tupuna Kupe with the packaging and promotion of beer, exploits, degrades, denigrates, and demeans the mana of Kupe.”
Moreover, it does the same “to the persons, peoples, and places associated with Kupe, including all his descendants.”
That could mean a huge reduction in national mana, especially considering that the number of those descended from the legendary explorer is literally uncountable.
“This is appalling cultural appropriation,” the submission added, referring to the dastardly practice by which one culture willingly adopts practices it has learned from another because it finds them useful or enjoyable.
Cultural adviser Dr Karatiana Taiuru also weighed in, complaining that the brewery had used a Māori figure to promote a substance from which Māori suffer a disproportionate amount of harm.
Te Aro Brewery, whose racial insensitivity is clear even in its name, tried to defend itself, wondering whether the idea of a “problematic relationship between Māori and alcohol” wasn’t itself a “racial stereotype” (and therefore racist and bad).
That, of course, went down about as well as an oyster stout. The Advertising Standards Authoritarians (Surely ‘Authority’? – Ed.) righteously upheld the complaints, ordering the brewery to withdraw the product name and any associated packaging and advertising.
Who would dare dissent against this coup against Kupe? Certainly not this writer. In fact, I think the episode represents a blueprint for better management of cultural relations going forward.
Obviously, any Maori or Polynesian names currently borne by pubs, warships and parks with less-than-perfect reputations will have to be reviewed. Letters of apology should be sent to any descendants of mythical figures whose mana has been exploited, degraded, denigrated, and/or demeaned in the meantime.
Most importantly, though, we need to guillotine cultural appropriation once and for all. Pakeha New Zealanders trying to engage with Maori culture through waiata, waka ama and kapa haka – all of this will have to stop.
Only then will we have we have a society that truly embraces its Māori heritage.