This piece began as a reflection inspired by Jolisa Gracewood's humourous yet insightful blog post "Is that a pounamu in your pocket...", and morphed into a mini-investigation into the true significance of the hei tiki.

How can one describe culture? According to Edward Halealoha Ayau (1992, as cited in Tsosie, 2002, p. 309), “for Native people, culture is an inseparable aspect of their daily existence,” something tangible and permanent; yet for those in the cultural majority, culture is “abstract”, “something that can be easily separated from everyday life.”

During my time at high school, I was privileged enough to go on an exchange. Not long before departing, my father presented me with a pounamu necklace. I understood the sentiment behind this gift, but something didn’t sit right - this object wasn’t part of my everyday life as a Pākehā.

The blog post by Jolisa Gracewood (2004) resonated with me because of this experience. To my father, the pounamu was a representation - a reminder - of my identity as a New Zealander. As Gracewood (2004) remarks, it would let everyone else know where I was from; an icon which, true to that notion of biculturalism, we as Pākehā have “swiped”. After all, biculturalism is just an excuse for Pākehā to share the credit for Māori concepts and (mis)use them as we please, right? That would be the argument of supporters of cosmopolitanism, to whom “the very nature of contemporary ‘multicultural’ societies implies the liberty of citizens to appropriate aspects of various cultures in constructing their contemporary identities” (Tsosie, 2002, p. 343). Others, however, would see this as cultural appropriation.

As evidenced by Gracewood’s (2004) blog post, my father’s gift was by no means novel - indeed, the past version of Air New Zealand would dish out a plastic tiki to every passenger, as if they would ward off bad luck (Shand, 2002). On that note, what exactly is the meaning of the tiki? Who is this figure that appears everywhere, from whiskey bottles to The Warehouse tote bags (Taiuru, 2019)?

According to Dr Karaitiana Taiuru (2017), “hei tiki” is the proper name for the representation of Tiki, a fertility deity worshipped throughout Polynesia. Because of Tiki’s role, hei tiki were originally worn to improve the fertility of the wearer or of those around them (Taiuru, 2017). Therefore, Taiuru reasons in another post, when BP includes a hei tiki in its coffee advertisements it ought to clarify that the coffee does not improve fertility, otherwise that constitutes false advertising (2019).

The fact that I wasn’t fully aware of the hei tiki’s significance prior to this - as it seems the marketers of Air New Zealand, The Warehouse, BP and so on are also unaware - really sums up cultural appropriation. Wanting to celebrate New Zealand’s bicultural heritage is one thing; taking a concept from that heritage just because it’s ‘iconic’, without understanding what it really is, is problematic. Continuing to misconstrue aspects of minority cultures in this way only serves to disrespect them and cheapen those aspects. Once upon a time, “tiki were rare and highly prized heirlooms that were often handed down from generation to generation”, informs Taiuru (2017). That is, until greedy Europeans appropriated them into mass-produced plastic throw-aways.

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