MASCULINIDANS-18

2 June 2011

Conversation over Skype between Brendan Hokowhitu in his office at the University of Otaga, New Zealand and Sam McKegney at his home in Kingston, Ontario.

BRENDAN HOKOWHITU is Māori of the Pukenga people. Having gained his doctorate from the University of Otago, Aotearoa/New Zealand in 2002, Hokowhitu became associate professor and programme coordinator of the Master of Indigenous Studies at Otago before accepting his current position as dean and professor of the Faculty of Native Studies at the University of Alberta, Canada. He has published extensively on the subject of Māori and popular culture—including masculinity, sport, and film—with articles in such international journals as The Contemporary Pacific, Cultural Studies Review, International Journal of the History of Sport, Sociology of Sport Journal, and Journal of Sport and Social Issues. He is lead editor of two edited collections and is working on an Indigenous masculinities manuscript. Hokowhitu is a leading expert on Indigenous masculinities internationally.

SAM MCKEGNEY: I’d like to begin by asking about the critical value of comparative Indigenous studies, particularly in relation to Indigenous masculinities. What are the potential strengths of comparative Indigenous masculinity studies and what are the dangers?

BRENDAN HOKOWHITU: Firstly, it begins to create—what you’re doing and what I’ve been doing—begins to create dialogue, to start with. That would be the first strength, is that we start talking about things. Contexts are different, but there are also similarities. We’ve been colonized, and I think the settler/invader histories that were paved have similarities based on discourse more than historical reality. So, the discourse would be authenticity and tradition, and those kinds of things that specifically masculinity is involved with. So I think unpacking ideas of tradition and authenticity is pretty important, comparatively, looking at how those things differ across contexts. It’s just like any comparative framework: the differences contain a lot and the similarities contain a lot.

I am currently on sabbatical, and I’m working on an Indigenous masculinities book. I thought about calling it Māori Masculinities or Indigenous Masculinities, and I guess I want to write a couple of chapters at least that talk to a broader audience. But there are obviously problematics around that—around calling it Indigenous Masculinities. It kind of lumps everything in together. The obvious problems or problematics around the idea of Indigenous masculinities comparatively are that we lose context.

SM: Bringing up discourse on traditionalism and authenticity, I’ve always been impressed at the way that you have resisted in your critical work the draw towards origins, or the specious notion that the only masculinities of value are the masculinities that somehow pre-date corruption by colonialism. I’m wondering if you could just expand on how ideas of authentic masculinity—authentic Māori masculinity—can be problematic, and maybe how they could be useful?

BH: Indigenous peoples have been fooled into believing that we are “traditional” in the unmoving, static, “pre-modern” or anti-modern sense. This is particularly the case for Indigenous masculinity, which is conceived of as patriarchal, backward, sexist, anti-change, et cetera, et cetera. I guess Indigenous masculine formations have been useful in the sense that they have at least built a base—the traditional masculinities have built a base—where communities can understand what it means to be an Indigenous man. Meaning in a strategic essentialist way, where cultural formations can now be used in the postcolonial context to resist. But I think the problems far outweigh the benefits. It has now come to that point where Indigenous communities have to decide what cultural formations are holding us back, and what are still relevant in terms of fighting neo-colonialism.

SM: What technologies of colonialism have been used in the New Zealand context to socially engineer Māori men? What are the real tools of that social engineering process as you’ve seen them?

BH: Probably the education system, primarily. I think one of the key things was creating an elite Māori masculinity in private boys schools for young men who would go back into their communities and become leaders—an elite Māori masculinity that was very much modelled on a Victorian notion of masculinity, I reckon. So there was kind of a disciplinary function, in the Foucauldian sense, because this process actually involved these guys enacting what it meant to be a modern masculine leader. So I think the education system would be the primary technology in disciplining modern masculinity.

SM: Is the creation of that kind of elite leadership strictly a means of social control insofar as that elite then becomes an authority within individual communities? Or is there a sense that this is a capitalist venture that creates a consumer culture through the fostering of hierarchies within the community? Am I reading into that?

BH: Well, I’m not sure about in your context, but in our context no, I wouldn’t think so historically. I’m thinking about the 1930s. See, in New Zealand, and it might be similar in Canada, but in New Zealand those communities were really rurally based, so the hierarchies were less dependent upon capitalism and more dependent upon an amalgam of Indigenous ways of knowing and new formations. However, in more recent times I would agree that some cultural formations are based around a neo-tribal elite, who are typically men, and who have power from brokering deals with, for instance, the state.

SM: In the Canadian context, particularly with the creation of the band council system through the Indian Act, part of that process from a colonial perspective was to displace women’s ownership over property, and communal ownership of property and resources, and thereby to create patriarchal, nuclear family households that would then function in the capitalist system.

THE STATE ENVISIONS INDIGENOUS LEADERSHIP TO BE MALE AND, LIKE IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD, THAT IS WHO THEY WANT TO DO BUSINESS WITH. THAT IS THEIR PARTNER.

BH: Prior to the 1970s in New Zealand, it was all about creating this model of the Māori family, moving Māori into the cities and creating nuclear families. But after the 1970s, the New Zealand government tried to figure out, well, if Māori culture is not going to go away, how are we going to work with it? And what they ended up doing was working with Māori masculine elite, basically—the heads of various tribes. The way they tried to interact together was an old-boys network, basically. So, that’s how the government state saw itself operating with Māori, was through this kind of elite masculinity, which really cuts a lot of other people out. The state envisions Indigenous leadership to be male and, like in the colonial period, that is who they want to do business with. That is their partner. And, that’s financial as well because the monies being dispersed from the Treaty of Waitangi in New Zealand are going to a masculine elite, and they decide where it goes basically.

SM: In terms of the behavioural consequences of creating an elite where a certain type of performed masculinity is valued and validated, do those models permeate throughout the broader community? Or is there a different type of expectation for those who are not within the elite?

BH: I don’t think aspiration would be the right word. It’s more genealogy-based. It would depend on who you are and where you are. You can rise if you’re not genealogically superior, but it’s a lot easier if you have genealogical clout, I guess. So, it’s very hard to aspire. It’s not like a Western (supposed) meritocracy where individual traits lead to prosperity.

SM: Hybridity often gets mobilized in critical discourse on Indigenous issues as a unidirectional adaptation, where Indigenous communities and individuals take on certain characteristics of colonial societies and therefore become read as hybrid entities. Your work, on the contrary, foregrounds a very dynamic and interactive understanding of hybridity in which codes of masculinity emerge from historically specific cultural interactions between colonizing and Indigenous populations. What is at stake in retaining awareness of adaptation and exchange while thinking of Indigenous masculinities?

BH: It’s definitely an interactive process. I think about how rugby developed in New Zealand, and how it’s portrayed now by white New Zealanders as—“we came and created this game and you guys joined us”—when in reality it was Māori men who picked up and were real developers of the game in New Zealand, and who ultimately changed the game internationally. These Māori players were very much aware of the way that they were being represented at the time as barbaric savages. So they were thinking about those images, or portrayals, and trying to counteract them by employing a certain amount of mimicry—mimicking English gentlemen. But nonetheless, there was subversion in there as well. It wasn’t just, “We’re going to copy you guys.” It was more, “We’re not savages. We’re onto it.” I think that that rugby example shows how things were, in a broader sense.

BY THEN THE DAMAGE HAD REALLY BEEN DONE. MĀORI HAD ALREADY BEGUN TO THINK OF THEMSELVES AS PHYSICAL BEINGS, ESPECIALLY WITH RELATION TO MĀORI MASCULINITY.

SM: Do you see a role for higher education, and education more broadly, in counteracting the kind of social engineering that you critique in your work?

BH: It’s probably not related to masculinity, but I think one of the important things is that we’re teaching, we’re getting various ideas across to rich white kids, you know? So, I think an important part of the decolonizing project is to re-educate non-Indigenous people. And obviously there are problematics about being in an education system that has created what it has created, but, I guess it’s about—and I don’t want to sound simplistic—taking tools back and trying to use them, trying to work with them. For Indigenous peoples, higher education can help achieve mimicry or it can offer a critical lens to review their histories so that we are more cognizant of what has transpired and hopefully can be more aware of the antecedents of social issues and neo-colonial tactics.

SM: Are you optimistic about what the current education system in New Zealand is offering to Māori youth compared to some of the earlier times that you’ve analyzed in your work?

BH: By 1969, Native schools in New Zealand were all closed down and Māori were moved into mainstream areas. But by then the damage had really been done. Māori had already begun to think of themselves as physical beings, especially with relation to Māori masculinity. Māori men, in particular, had really begun to think of themselves in the physical arena, whether that be sport or manual labour. And then, like all over the world, when the various economic crises happened, it was always Māori who were going to be the worst hit because they were the least educated. So I don’t think the education system is doing a good job at all of educating Māori, to be honest. The stats will continue to pathologize Māori. As far as epistemology goes, or teaching different epistemologies goes, you’ve probably heard of the Kura Kaupapa movement, which is a total Māori immersion system. It is really great, but even then, the education system got ahold of it and has since forced it to align with various education department criteria. So, even there I think the education system has started to control Kura Kaupapa, which is really problematic as far as epistemology goes. So, in answer to your question: no, not really. There are good things happening at universities in relation to ensuring Māori success, but there are a lot of Māori kids who will never make it to university because they essentially come from generations of poverty.

SM: In addition to education as a primary technology of social engineering, I wonder also about popular cultural representations, particularly with relation to Indigenous or Māori masculinities. You’ve discussed films like Whale Rider and Once Were Warriors in your writing. How significant are those filmic representations to Māori senses of self?

BH: Especially with Once Were Warriors, Māori had never seen themselves on film before, so those representations were really, really key for Māori to begin to talk about dysfunction. The Māori who were in those films were in the centre, as opposed to being on the periphery. This affected not only white New Zealanders, but also non-New Zealanders, and it even affected how Māori themselves began to think about Māori culture and Māori society. So, Once Were Warriors was a particularly important film for how Māori began to understand themselves and criticize themselves. Māori critics have really hit it hard for its portrayals, but I think in reality it was a very good, important film, and it brought a lot of the social and political conditions to public light. I grew up in an area where it was very much like Once Were Warriors, so seeing that on film I thought was cool and very significant. Although there were certain aspects of the film that were absolutely horrible, like the alignment of violence with Māori culture and that kind of thing.

Whale Rider was more problematic for me because it was a feel-good story which was really a ruse that suggested the plight of Māori in New Zealand society was because of their backward culture, centred on a backward patriarchal system. Now, yes, patriarchy is a problem, but does this stem from “traditional” Māori culture, no. Whale Rider was about Māori needing to go through a Western enlightenment, which is pretty sick considering the history of colonization in New Zealand.

SM: Are representations like these working against entrenched stereotypes that have been built up in other films? I’m not really as familiar with the New Zealand context, but in North America in the last fifteen years, films by Indigenous filmmakers have made a big impact, because they’re really fighting against a century of very stereotypical and negative Hollywood representations of Indigenous people. Is it a similar scenario in New Zealand? Or are films like Whale Rider and Once Were Warriors actually addressing more of a vacuum of representation?

BH: I would say a vacuum. Once Were Warriors was made by an Indigenous filmmaker—Lee Tamahori—but, of course, Whale Rider wasn’t. And you would have heard of Taika Waititi. He’s kind of the big thing in New Zealand film at the moment. He made the film called Boy, which is about Māori—it’s a Māori context. It would be a vacuum more than anything else. I certainly don’t think Whale Rider and Once Were Warriors were fighting against stereotypes or anything like that; they were building upon them.

SM: Turning to sport, your work demonstrates how sport has been used in colonial contexts to contain and limit the discourse on Māori masculinity, but also how Māori men have capitalized on the agency offered by sport to struggle against those limitations. Can you speak a bit about the interplay between those two forces: sport as opportunity and sport as colonial tool?

BH: I think in the early days there were lots of opportunities, and I think Māori men were really creative back then. I don’t think there are too many opportunities now; it’s more about discipline. So, yeah, different historical times. It’s become an adage in New Zealand that these Māori guys you see in sport are these great role models and blah blah blah blah blah, but they’re not really. They’re just reinforcing various stereotypes, I think now. But, historically, there was a subversive aspect to it. Māori men were really trying to demonstrate to the world various things: their creativity, their leadership, and all those kinds of things. Things have changed, definitely. There is still the possibility for subversion in sport, but the days of the impact of Ali, Viv Richards, the black power salute in Mexico are gone. Everything, even resistance, seems to be so quickly commodified and turned in on itself.

SM: Have these changes occurred because of the way that sport has become professionalized? What has caused that shift?

BH: Well, I think professionalization has something to do with it, but we’re talking about the 1890s when the Natives toured Europe through until now, so it’s like 120 years. So, over that time what sport has done, the way that Māori view sport, and the way that sport uses Māori, have radically changed from that earlier time until now. I don’t think it’s been just about professionalization. I mean, by the 1990s when rugby became professional—I’ve been talking about rugby in particular—Māori had been disciplined through sport, and sport was very much a way of assimilating Māori into the dominant society. I think that would have been the case from the 1960s onwards. I can’t impress upon you the significance Māori men put on the game of rugby. If you were a good rugby player, you were kind of a god in Māori contexts. I think it’s sad because rugby was the one arena where Māori men were given a fair shot, an even playing field, as opposed to an education system that was heavily oppressive. So Māori men gave it a lot of credence.

SM: Is that same kind of esteem available to strong rugby players all throughout their maturation process? Does this apply to youth or is it when one moves to a certain level in the game of rugby that there is that much pride or social esteem attached to it?

BH: Again, I think things have changed. Let’s take a period: so from the 1940s through to the 1980s, what I just said would have been very much the case. When you talk about professionalization, I think professionalization has really broken that esteem down. Now you’re just a young rugby player. But, back when Māori were predominantly in rural communities, and the game centred on then rural communities, one hapu or sub-tribe would go play another sub-tribe in a big game, right? And these players would maybe make their provincial teams, and those players were kind of gods. But now, with the professionalization of the game and the changes in society with most Māori moving into urban areas, that kind of esteem is broken down. It’s nothing like it used to be. I don’t know about the maturation process, specifically. I think rugby is still really important in New Zealand, but I don’t think it’s really as esteemed anymore because of the breakdown of the social structure that professionalization, and urbanization, and the modernization of society has created. I wrote a paper with Jay Scherer in Sociology of Sport which demonstrates how the professionalization of rugby—and of the Māori All Blacks in particular—is endemic of how things have happened.1

SM: In the period where you are discussing esteem in the local rugby pitch, and success in that arena, how does that translate into expectation off the rugby pitch? So, someone who is esteemed in his community as an exceptional rugby player, is he expected to behave any differently off the pitch from those who are not great rugby players?

BH: Yeah, I would say so.

SM: And, is that in terms of greater responsibility, or perhaps a sense of greater—the word that comes to mind because I’m thinking of hockey in the Canadian context is—entitlement. There is a certain degree of, I think, entitlement that exceptional hockey players are encouraged to feel in Canadian communities, that they can do what other people can’t do, which can translate into presumptions of deserving greater access to and control over women in the community and things like that. So, I’m wondering, what are the expectations that are attached to that rugby prowess?

BH: Now? I wouldn’t say it’s community based. Most successful Māori rugby players would go and play for a school—a respected Māori school, or a respected boys school, or a respected private school. They would just go through grades, and it wouldn’t involve much community action. All the Māori players that I see nowadays go back to their communities every now and again, but very seldom so. But, back in the day, back in the time period I was talking about, I’m not sure if it would be different. I don’t know about the woman aspect of things, but there would be different kinds of privileges.

SM: I was thinking about the way in which sports writing—on Māori rugby, specifically—has created this idea of the Māori rugby player as “natural athletic body” without the discipline that Euro/colonial, white rugby players might bring or white coaches might bring to the game. How much of that discourse is internalized by Māori men who play rugby, as seeing themselves in terms of their bodies, as opposed to seeing themselves as intellectual, creative individuals who can use their bodies imaginatively in sport.

THAT IS THE DISCOURSE THAT IS BEING PORTRAYED ABOUT MĀORI RUGBY, I THINK. FLAIR CENTRES ON THE IDEA OF PHYSICAL INDISCIPLINE. THEY’VE GOT NATURAL FLAIR, SO IT’S NOT LIKE CREATIVE FLAIR, IT’S INHERENT FLAIR.

BH: You know there are again these conflations. The discourse that is most coming to mind is this idea of flair. The Māori All Blacks are quite key to understanding all of this, because when the Māori All Blacks play, they’re not just some team that doesn’t get any coverage. They get a lot coverage; the news follows them and follows the way they play, and covers their “culture” also, including playing the guitar. When they get on the field they supposedly play like family, and they play with a certain amount of flair. So they do things in a very undisciplined nature, or at least that is the discourse that is being portrayed about Māori rugby, I think. Flair centres on the idea of physical indiscipline. They’ve got natural flair, so it’s not like creative flair, it’s inherent flair. The historical genealogy of flair indicates subversion, where Māori men valued the aesthetics of the game, which was counter to the win at all costs of New Zealand rugby. Yet, the idea of “flair” came to subsume this subversion by casting the love of “play” as “indiscipline.” Which of course plays into every binary stereotype in the book about the Indigenous savage versus the rational white man.

SM: What about the—etymology is not the right word—but the historical trajectory relating to how the education system sought to create Māori men as physical beings: physical beings in sport, physical beings for the labour force, et cetera? Has that carried on in the discourse of rugby and sport today? Does that conflation of Māori men as predominantly physical—as opposed to intellectual, spiritual, and other facets of human experience—persist?

BH: Yeah, very much so. It’s still very present today. I’m thinking about a team that plays rugby league, the New Zealand Warriors, they’re called. They play in the Australian league, which is the best in the world. And when I watch their games I listen to the Australian commentators, or the New Zealand commentators; it’s very much around their physical presence or their natural physical affinity. It has very little to do with their game plan or anything like that. The white guys who are scattered throughout, amongst the team, they give the team structure, et cetera. It’s very much so continued on to today.

SM: It makes me think a little bit about your critique, in various places, of Cartesian dualism, of the mind-body split in which the mind is endorsed as primary and treated as the purview of the “civilized.” Can sport enable conditions where mind and body become endorsed as integral or inseparable? Are there ways in which, on the rugby pitch, one cannot sever the intellectual from the physical?

BH: Yeah, I mean obviously, yes. But, given the predominant discourses, I would say no. I don’t think they challenge that at all. Not in capitalist societies that commodify sport. But it has that potential. And various other sports that are more about aesthetics like skateboarding, or surfing, or other sports that Māori guys have gotten into, or Native guys have gotten into, that are less about winning and more about aesthetics.

SM: The discourse around rugby probably appeals to martial or military themes at times, I imagine, given that it is played on a pitch in a somewhat violent manner with each team trying to invade the other’s territory. Is that a fair statement?

BH: Absolutely.

SM: And, you just mentioned a team whose name is the Warriors, right? So, how is the discourse around warriorhood then taken up by the players themselves? Forgetting about the media surrounding the game, how does that become a means of understanding one’s place in the game?

BH: I don’t know how much it’s taken up, but I’m thinking of the nuclear family and the way that Māori guys talk about rugby as an extension of fighting for their communities: “I’m doing this for my community.” So, in a way, they position themselves at the front. I think there are interplays there. They don’t necessarily say, “Oh, I’m a warrior” or “I’m going to fight that fight” or whatever—they don’t use that kind of language. But they see themselves on the sporting field as fighting for their families and communities, and as representing their communities. So it’s kind of like war in the sense that the dominant portrayals of war are about going out and then returning, saying, “I did it for my country or my family.” So there are links there, I think.

SM: And there’s certainly the threat of physical trauma, right? In a sport like rugby you can actually, in various ways, sacrifice your body.

BH: Let me ask you a question: are there many Native guys who play in the NHL?

SM: There is a small handful of Indigenous identified players—Jordin Tootoo, Jordan Nolan, Carey Price, and a few others. So, it’s very few, comparatively speaking. I think that’s likely to change in the next twenty years or so, just because access to equipment and to travel and things like that is becoming more available for remote communities and Indigenous populations are becoming increasingly urbanized. But it certainly hasn’t been commensurate to population statistics, right? Approximately 4 percent of the population is Indigenous, and there’s certainly not 4 percent of NHL players who are Native guys.

BH: From what I’ve been saying and from what you’ve read in my work, I get the sense that Māori’s prominence in sport in New Zealand is just so different.

SM: I think it is. But also, I think the population difference is quite stark. What percentage of the New Zealand population is Māori?

BH: I think in the last census it was something like 13 percent. I would hazard a guess that it’s way, way more than that. I think there are a lot of people who don’t identify as Māori. So, probably more like 15 percent, and if you include all Pacific Islanders, the number is more like 20 percent.

SM: I think one of the other main factors is the difference between the sports. Hockey requires a lot of equipment, and people who don’t have access to resources, they can’t play it. Even though the popular mythos has it that hockey is a rural, working-class game, it is increasingly becoming the sport of a wealthy urban elite. And, for a lot of Indigenous communities there’s no indoor rink and, as winters become increasingly unpredictable, players can’t rely on the outdoor rinks to hone their skills.

BH: So, in New Zealand, back probably from 1900 through to the 1970s, there was a real community element to rugby, especially. You know, one community would travel to another community, and they play a game, and then the communities would mix. Is it the same with Native communities in Canada?

SM: I think there is that intertribal socialization and community building that occurs with Indigenous hockey tournaments these days. Michael Robidoux discusses that in Stickhandling through the Margins and it features prominently in Richard Wagamese’s recent book Indian Horse. That was also the case with lacrosse, historically. As I understand it, lacrosse would often be played over several days, in which two different nations would come together. And, actually, I believe lacrosse was often used as a means of diplomacy. So, the actual game would have consequences in terms of land and fishing rights, and things like that.

Before I let you go, as the leading expert on Indigenous masculinity theory, I wonder if you have any advice for me as I pursue this work?

BH: Well, first I want you to tell me more about your projects. So you’re doing this collection of interviews, and you’re also writing a critical book, right?

SM: Yeah, the book project is tentatively titled Carrying the Burden of Peace: Imagining Indigenous Masculinities through Story, and what I’m examining is how stories by Indigenous authors both analyze the difficulties of Indigenous male subjectivities in contemporary Canada and simultaneously re-imagine and indeed create male roles and responsibilities that can be fruitful in nation-specific settings, in urban settings, and elsewhere. So, how does literature analyze the conditions and the history, how does it work through many of the difficulties and many of the crises, and how does it offer and model various forms of productive and healthy masculinity that can be incorporated and adapted by readers and communities?

THAT WOULD BE MY ONLY ADVICE—LOOK FOR COMPLEXITY...THE THING TO KEEP IN OUR MINDS IS THE RISK OF PATHOLOGIZING INDIGENOUS MASCULINITY.

There’s a lot that can be said about colonialism’s coercive work to alienate Indigenous men from what might be construed as traditional roles and responsibilities. I think tracking that is important, but that’s not the only concern. Throughout that whole process there have been different ways in which Indigenous men have enacted and lived their masculinity that haven’t conformed to what the social engineering has sought to create, right? So, I want to be aware of, and be able to speak about, those processes of social engineering, but then also be very aware throughout the work of the ways in which those models aren’t the only models. There are always other things going on. I think literature allows that. In literature you can always see the alternatives, the imaginings otherwise. So, I’m trying to be attentive to that.

BH: Your questions demonstrate to me that you’re very much in line with my thinking about how things are complex. You’ve got the social engineering aspect, but you’ve also got agency and imagination. Everything’s very complex. That would be my only advice—look for complexity, like you’re already doing, as opposed to the simplistic answers. The thing to keep in our minds is the risk of pathologizing Indigenous masculinity. It is easy to pick holes at—thinking it’s history and we’re just the products of that history—but we also need to look for those moments where Māori men, or Indigenous men, are interacting with those discourses and either challenging them or using them for their own purposes. It becomes a much more complex idea than one of dominance or pathology.

1. Brendan Hokowhitu and Jay Scherer, “The Māori All Blacks and the Decentering of the White Subject: Hyperrace, Sport, and the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism,” Sociology of Sport Journal 25 (2008): 243–62.