The Maori people of New Zealand are not what you would typically imagine when thinking of indigenous people. While they still hold up to their traditional values and the marae meeting houses to help create communities, as well as represent themselves culturally, the Maori people have normal jobs, drive cars, watch TV. Daniel Rosenblatt who wrote the article Indigenizing the city and the future of Maori culture explains how “the traditional Maori meeting houses adapted to urban areas [to] help create communities that are able to represent themselves as analogous to rural ones centered on descent” (Rosenblatt 2011; 411). He further explains how this sense of community that comes from the meeting houses can contribute to their need to uphold traditional
…show more content…
Maori today live fully immersed in a modern day area living along-side white New Zealand people. The Maori are fully integrated in their community. What is important in understanding the Maori community and the further globalization of indigenous cultures is the relationship between three things as noted by Rosenblatt: (1) ways of thinking and talking about community; (2) the institutions Maori have set up to help realize these ways of thinking and talking; and (3) the experience of participating in these institutions. (Rosenblatt 2011; 413) The institutions primarily being the marae, meeting houses previously described. The main reason behind the meeting houses and why they are so important amongst and urbanized community is that is allows for a “continued existence of a Maori cultural world [in] their ability to facilitate kin-like relationships among non-kin” (Rosenblatt 2011; 417). It is their meaning within the Maori world that determines their social and political effects in the larger world and this ability as it seems to be is derived from their symbolic properties from their culture. It’s evident that the Maori people would want to be able to hold on to their traditions, in thinking about how to live in the contemporary world as well, and in terms of kinship, also consciously create this sense of community to uphold their traditional values in westernized
Maori today live fully immersed in a modern day area living along-side white New Zealand people. The Maori are fully integrated in their community. What is important in understanding the Maori community and the further globalization of indigenous cultures is the relationship between three things as noted by Rosenblatt: (1) ways of thinking and talking about community; (2) the institutions Maori have set up to help realize these ways of thinking and talking; and (3) the experience of participating in these institutions. (Rosenblatt 2011; 413) The institutions primarily being the marae, meeting houses previously described. The main reason behind the meeting houses and why they are so important amongst and urbanized community is that is allows for a “continued existence of a Maori cultural world [in] their ability to facilitate kin-like relationships among non-kin” (Rosenblatt 2011; 417). It is their meaning within the Maori world that determines their social and political effects in the larger world and this ability as it seems to be is derived from their symbolic properties from their culture. It’s evident that the Maori people would want to be able to hold on to their traditions, in thinking about how to live in the contemporary world as well, and in terms of kinship, also consciously create this sense of community to uphold their traditional values in westernized