Practical Culture

Upon reading about the history of settlement in New Zealand there was one thing that struck me most. It was the remark, that knowledge about the moa bird was non-existent in the Maori population a couple of generations after their extinction, by the time european settlers arrived on the island.

What might not seem like a very remarkable fact, really shows a completely different type and understanding of culture than that which has been dominant in Europe for several thousand years. It is a feature which comes with oral tradition. Only survival-relevant information and stories, legends or myths which justifiy modern borders are passed along generations.

Europe, on the other hand, has always had the role model of the high cultures in the antiquity. This led to the preservation of information, to the emergence of historiographies and the transfer of culture which has been oral to a written format, throughout various times. Especially in the times when Europeans arrived in New Zealand the interest in the Antiquity was higher than ever before, manifested in the Renaissance. The goal of the orientation to the past was not to preserve knowledge of how to deal with present day challenges, although ancient philosophers and their concepts have always been considered als wise and helpful, but just the past in itself, the history of the human race as a sort of collective idendity of lineage and ancestry.

The moa bird was the basis of survival for the first Maori settlers, which granted their lives in New Zealand without having to rely on agriculture and their own cattle. In a European view, such a major factor for the establishment of a new people surely would have been considered worthy of handing down, as it was one condition under which the Maori culture was able to emerge.

On this example, one of the major differences between the world view of Europeans and Natives is illustrated. Basic concepts, that could not differ more from one another, clashed in the colonialization not only of New Zealand but of many other parts of the world too. Deduced from the differences, an idendity of “us” and “them” has formed and continues to live until the present day. It was a challenge to deal with the unknown, the foreign, which exists still today and is and will be a challenge for our generation and those after us, which can only be overcome by awareness and acceptance.