[The Hierophant]

From what I have seen in our country, Maori are raised in European-style institutions whilst not recieving the whole-hearted acceptance of European cultural identity from the society which has in and of itself removed any viable alternative through law and legislation. Maori land and fishing rights are coveted in such a way as to exploit financial potential, whilst the traditional, pre-Pakeha settlement Maori lifestyle has been by and large neglected by the conventional New Zealand social system. Those of biological Maori descent are essentially 'paid off' in terms of small financial benefits intended as compensation for a complete sacrifice of cultural identity. The predominantly tribal nature of traditional Maori culture (consisting of independant tribes living in largely self-sufficient Pas and Maraes) is expected, nay demanded to fit itself into the largely corporate, centralized system of New Zealand government.
In Dunedin (Scholarcs and Downunda will know where Dunedin is [img]smile.gif[/img] ) there is a Marae out on the Peninsula (Otakau by name, hence the Anglicized version 'Otago') where the children are raised in traditional Maori culture in traditional Maori language, yet with European tools and technologies. The children raised there cannot speak English at primary-school age (we visited the marae in primary school when I was about 9 or 10, none of us white kids could communicate with the maori children there [img]smile.gif[/img] ) and the values of traditional maori are preserved. However, this seems to be a rare case of practical maori cultural endurance (allowed largely by the isolated geography of the Otago Peninsula), and on a wider scale indigenous people of our country do not have such a strong, tangible cultural foundation on which they can fall back. They are not totally accepted by the pakeha population, yet have no sense of community of their own.

And after all that, comes my point: The maori rugby team serves a valid purpose for providing maori with a sense of community pride that they cannot find in a predominatly white-controlled consumer society (as Yorick and Downunda have been saying for ages [img]smile.gif[/img] ). Whilst rugby is in and of itself a product of European sporting cultural values, the maori-exclusive team allows for a largely under-represented (culturally, not necessarily financially or legally) percentage of the New Zealand population to develope communal-contact, a sense of cultural identity, and a bit of athletic satisfaction. [img]smile.gif[/img]