Politics of Palatablity

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Massey University

The Politics ofPalatability

Carolyn Morris

ON THE ABSENCE OF MA-ORI RESTAURANTS

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01 Morris 13.1:04FCS10.3/Karaou 7/12/09 13:47 Page 5

ABSTRACT

: :This paper seeks to explain the absence of Ma-ori food in the public culinascape.

Drawing on the work of Heldke and Hage, I develop an analysis in terms of a politics of

palatability.There are few Ma-ori restaurants because there is not a clientele.There is a

limited Ma-ori clientele because Ma-ori as a group lack the economic resources to

support restaurants and, unlike migrant ethnic groups, have many other sites of

community.There is a limited Pa-keha- clientele because Pa-keha- do not enjoy Ma-ori food.

This dislike of Ma-ori food is, I argue, a social taste, that can be understood in a context

where Ma-ori demands for rights on the basis of their indigenous status have disturbed

the ways in which Pa-keha- belong to the nation. Following Harbottle, I argue that Ma-ori

have a “spoiled identity” for Pa-keha-, and that this can be read both as a sign of Ma-ori

subordination and as a sign of Ma-ori power.What this analysis suggests is that the public

culinascape can be read as a map of the field of race relations in Aotearoa New

Zealand.

Keywords: restaurants, Ma-ori, ethnicity

Introduction: :

On Friday nights, after a hard week of academic toil, we adjourn to our staffclub for a few collegial drinks. Some evenings, if the conversation and wineare flowing, we then decide to go out to dinner. Usually, because it’s cheapand there’s no need to book, we choose an “ethnic” restaurant. We canchoose Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Vietnamese, Thai, Korean, Italian,Greek, Spanish, Middle Eastern, Mexican, Moroccan and Burmese. Wecannot, however, choose Ma-ori: there are no restaurants serving the food ofthe indigenous people of Aotearoa New Zealand. This generally unremarkedstate of affairs is what this paper seeks to explain: the absence of Ma-ori foodin the public culinascape.1 There are a number of Ma-ori cultural experienceventures which combine storytelling, dance and food whose market isinternational tourists, but few restaurants whose imagined clientele is theNew Zealand public.

“Tell me what you eat: I will tell you what you are” (Brillat-Savarin 1994[1825]: 13) has become a cliché because it succinctly expresses the centraltenet of the social science of food—that the food we eat and the way we eatit are diagnostic of wider social and cultural processes. I suggest that whatwe do not eat may be equally revealing of who we are. I explore a number ofexplanations for the absence of Ma-ori restaurants: the lack of a Ma-oricusine, the lack of a Ma-ori clientele on account of economic status and the

6 :: Carolyn Morris DOI: 10.2752/175174410X12549021367983

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&Society


http://dx.doi.org/10.2752/175174410X12549021367983

http://dx.doi.org/10.2752/175174410X12549021367983

availability of culturally marked food in other venues, and the lack of aPa-keha- clientele because of the perceived unpalatability of Ma-ori food. Iargue that this unpalatability reflects the spoiling (Harbottle 2000) of Ma-oriidentity for Pa-keha-, the result of recent decades of political action designedto challenge Pa-keha- cultural and political dominance. Hage (1998) andHeldke (2001) argue that majorities’ appreciation of the food of ethnicminorities constitutes a relation of domination in which the Other ispositioned as consumable, as assimilable. I draw on their insights to considerthe situation of an indigenous people. I argue that the position of Ma-ori astangata whenua,2 as the indigenous people of Aotearoa New Zealand, makesthem ultimately unassimilable, and it is this cultural and politicalunconsumability that makes their food unpalatable.

Restaurants and Identity: :

The premise of the social science literature on public eating is thatrestaurants are about more than simply consuming food, they are “total socialphenomena” (Beriss and Sutton 2007: 1)—sites for the reproduction andtransformation of individual and group identities along dominant axes ofsocial division: class, gender and ethnicity. A recent survey of theethnographic literature on restaurants (Beriss and Sutton 2007) shows thatwhile earlier analyses concentrated on the social relations and dynamicsinternal to restaurants, more recent studies “push the analysis beyond thedoors of the restaurant to look at the wider sociocultural landscape in whichrestaurants are set” (Beriss and Sutton 2007: 7). The focus of much of thiswork has been on ethnicity, on how different ethnic groups are positioned andoperate in the restaurant industry (e.g. Lovell-Troy 1990; Harbottle 2000)and on how place identities are produced through these restaurants (e.g.Girardelli 2004; Zukin 1995). There is a smaller body of literature onrestaurants and “public ethnicity” (Lu and Fine 1995: 536), how ethnicidentities are constituted through interactions in the public spaces ofrestaurants (e.g. Davis 2002; Ferrero 2002). Lu and Fine argue that ethnicidentity is the product of “interactions with other groups” (Lu and Fine 1995:535), and that “the survival and modification of ethnic culture in public lifeis made possible largely through the continuity of ethnic food in restaurantsand fast-food establishments” (Lu and Fine 1995: 539; see also Abarca 2004;Davis 2002). This paper considers the relationship between restaurants andethnic identities, but focuses on a group whose food does not appear in thepublic culinascape. The situation I explore differs from other analyses ofethnic restaurants in that Ma-ori are not a migrant group, but are indigenous,and I will argue that it is this status that accounts for the absence of their foodin the public culinascape, and what makes this absence significant.

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Ma-ori Food in the Public Culinascape: :

When people ask me what I am working on, and I tell them “the absence ofMa-ori restaurants,” responses are of a kind. People say, “yeah, now that youmention it…,” then advance their own theory of why this might be. Thecommon argument is that Ma-ori have little distinctive food, and what theydo have is not “nice”; therefore there is no basis for a restaurant. A Pa-keha-

man articulated this position: “There are no Ma-ori restaurants becauseMa-ori don’t have any food. They’d eaten the moas3 and most of themorioris,4 and if the Brits hadn’t arrived when they did, they would havestarved to death.” He admitted that ha-ngı-5 was Ma-ori food, but, he said,“most of the food that goes into ha-ngı- isn’t Ma-ori.” New Zealand has (andhad) no native land mammals bar a few small bats, and so the commonha-ngı- meats of beef and pork, and introduced vegetables such as pumpkinand potatoes were not considered by him to be Ma-ori. A middle class friend,who considers herself liberal, said in somewhat hesitant tones, “well, Ma-orifood, ha-ngı- and that, its just not very nice food, is it? Its not healthy, it’s fatty,and it’s boring. You wouldn’t go to a restaurant to eat that.”

From an anthropological perspective, the explanation that there are noMa-ori restaurants because Ma-ori food is not nice does not stack up. We knowfrom all of the writings on food that what tastes good to a particular person orgroup has little to do with either individual preference or the food itself, andthat what we like to eat is instead a fundamentally social and cultural matter,deeply intertwined with other aspects of the social order. The perceived not-niceness of Ma-ori food is a social, not a physiological, taste.

The explanation of the lack of restaurants in terms of the absence of thebasis for a Ma-ori cuisine is also inadequate. Ma-ori cuisine could be based ona number of things. First, indigenous food, foods that are native to NewZealand, that were eaten by Ma-ori before colonization, and, possibly, are notavailable anywhere else in the world. This includes a wide range of plantsand vegetables, berries, seafood, fish and marine mammals, and birds. Fuller(1978) and Riley (1988) list many foods eaten by Ma-ori in the past that arenot widely eaten today. Their list includes plants such as fernroot, tı- orcabbage tree, nikau palm, raupo (bulrush) a wide range of fungi, types oforchid, gourd, and a range of nuts and berries. Lizards, rats and insects suchas huhu grubs6 are not widely eaten nor are many of the birds such as kereru-

(wood pigeon) that would have been eaten in pre-colonial times. Someindigenous foods that are still eaten are generally regarded as Ma-ori food andare eaten mainly by Ma-ori. These include shellfish such as pupu and pipi,kina (sea eggs), tuna (eel), tı-tı- (muttonbirds), and vegetables such as pu-ha-

(sowthistle), pikopiko (fern shoots) and karengo (seaweed). Other foodssuch as pa-ua (abalone), kuku (green lipped mussels), toheroa (a shellfish),whitebait, ko-ura (crayfish) and ku-mara (sweet potato) have been

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incorporated into the Pa-keha- diet and have come to be understood as NewZealand rather than Ma-ori food. This is also the case for New Zealand fish.However, these foods could be classified as Ma-ori food. There are also foodsthat have been introduced by Europeans and incorporated by Ma-ori intotheir diet. These include wheat, pork, beef, mutton, chicken, potatoes, cornand pumpkin. What makes such food Ma-ori is the way in which it iscombined with other foods, or the way in which it is cooked, so that methodssuch as ha-ngı-, boil-up, or processes of fermentation like that used to makekanga wai (fermented corn) can also transform non-indigenous food intoMa-ori food. Beaton, describing accounts of Ma-ori food from the writings ofearly European settlers through to contemporary cookbooks, has demon-strated the “existence of a distinct Ma-ori culinary tradition in contemporaryNew Zealand” (Beaton 2007: 131), “a continuous and evolving tradition[dating] back to first contact with Europeans” (Beaton 2007: 75). Thus,there is the basis for a Ma-ori cuisine. Despite this, Ma-ori food as Ma-ori foodhas not entered the New Zealand public culinascape to any great extent.7

The Presence of Ma-ori Restaurants: :

What would make a restaurant a Ma-ori restaurant? The answer to this is arestaurant that serves Ma-ori food, does things in the restaurant in a “Ma-ori”way (whatever that might mean), and explicitly advertises itself as a Ma-orirestaurant. There are, and have been, as far as I can ascertain, fewrestaurants that meet these criteria. Those that have existed range fromtakeaways (generally serving ha-ngı-) to fine-dining restaurants. In this sectionI consider three Ma-ori restaurants, none of which still operates: Kai in theCity, Te Ao Kohatu and Te Waka a Maui. An examination of theserestaurants illustrates the ways in which Ma-ori food is currentlyincorporated into public cuisine and provides the basis for a consideration ofwhy there are so few of them.

KAI IN THE CITY

: :Kai in the City8 was established in Wellington, New Zealand’s capital city, in2003. Its website outlines the restaurant’s aim—to make Ma-ori food, andthrough food Ma-ori culture, available to the public:

KAI in the City is a whare kai (café/wine bar) that provides a realNew Zealand dining experience based on traditional Ma-ori values.Our food, wine, and décor all have enlightening stories about thetangata whenua, their lands and their seas.




The food at KAI in the City aims to promote the best qualities ofmodern cuisine with the traditional foods and flavours of Ma-ori. Ourfood is best described as being “Fine New Zealand Cuisine.” Fromtime to time KAI in the City will host events to promote food,occasions or people important to Ma-ori, events that will givemembers of the public access to specific Ma-ori foods or people. Onesuch event held monthly, is the Tepu Rangatira where the public canshare a meal and conversation with a well known Rangatira or leader.The concept is based on a famous whakatauaki [proverb], “Ko te kaia te rangatira he korero” meaning “The food of leaders is discussion.”(www.kaicity.co.nz)

According to a review of Kai in the Bay in Cuisine magazine (Burton 2003),the restaurant attracted “middle-class Pa-keha- liberals” and “the capital’sMa-ori Elite.” Customer reviews of the restaurant on the Dineout website(www.dineout.co.nz) note its “warm and welcoming” atmosphere where thestaff “make everyone feel like family.” The website of Kai in the Cityemphasizes that this service reflects Ma-ori cultural values:

Our service is based on Manaakitanga [hospitality]: the best ofservice provided on our marae—friendly, efficient and comfortable.We were taught to enjoy look after manuhiri [guests], especially theolder ones, and going the extra mile to make them feel special.(www.kaicity.co.nz)

This Ma-ori atmosphere is created by the host who “cheerfully takes amoment to greet all” and by the music. On the night I dined there, the ownersang in Ma-ori while we ate, and when some friends went they were asked tojoin in with the singing of “Pokarekare Ana.”9 The group singing wasmentioned in several Dineout reviews. Some comments were positive: “Ourfavourite part is when the owner (we think) came out and sang songs on hisguitar!!! We are not sing along types but this was great. The whole restaurantwas singing… He was genuinely interested in us.” Others were moreambivalent, the critique softened by humor and the use of an emoticon:“The singing and story telling was good, but I think it would be more suitedfor tourists as when I recieved [sic] my food all I wanted to do was eat it, notsing to it :).” Dineout reviewers understood that the restaurant offered morethan just food—Ma-ori culture was on the menu as well: “It was really coolto learn so much about Maori culture” and “definitely a place to impress youroverseas visitors but also good to take your kiwi friends to celebrate just alittle bit of Maori culture.” One reviewer, however, also noted that it waspossible not to experience the restaurant in this way: “A great evening outwhere you are made really welcome, can join in or not as you wish, and ifyou want to can go away well fed and still as monocultural as you like.”

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http://www.kaicity.co.nz

http://www.kaicity.co.nz

http://www.dineout.co.nz

The menu at Kai in the City exemplifies one of the ways in which Ma-orifood appears in the public culinascape. When I ate there we wereencouraged to order our food in Ma-ori, and there were cards on the tableswhich contained the phrases necessary for this. The meal is structured byEuro-American culinary codes: entrée, main, dessert, cheese and coffee,served with wine; yet it is Ma-ori food because it is made of indigenousingredients, contains Ma-ori herbs, or is cooked in a traditional Ma-ori way, asillustrated by examples from the menu:

• Kuku Mamoa: gently steamed mussels in a creamy kawakawa (Ma-oripepper, or bush basil) broth

• Tuna: Hangi and oven-baked eel fillet on a hangi vegetable crush with abasil, lemon and caper dressing

• Titi: Roasted mutton bird with kowhitiwhiti (watercress) stuffing servedon herb roasted taewa (Ma-ori potato) with a red wine jus

• Hangi: Manuka infused reme (lamb) cutlets and heihei (chicken) onhangi veges with a thyme and red wine jus

• Kaanga Reka: Fermented corn with manuka honey and cream.

Dineout reviewers commented favorably on the food: “My ‘hangi’ (lambcutlets with hangi vegetables/chicken) with a tasty sauce would haveimpressed in any restaurant. Nga Tihi (cheeses) came properly aged,garnished, and in generous proportions.” Kai in the City’s food wascontrasted favorably with other Ma-ori food they had eaten: “The food isexcellent—I had the hangi and this bore absolutely no resemblance to mylast hangi from the earth in Ohariu Valley some decades ago—smokedcabbage and chicken and rather burnt spuds is my recollection. The hangiat Kai in City is far removed from this memory.” However, because of thefood’s quality its authenticity was questioned—note the quote marks in thefollowing statement: “Nice tasty food with pacific rim influence as well as‘authentic’ Maori food. Puddings not authentic but adapted ones such astiramisu (converted into a Maori name) but delicious. Wine10 made byMaori group also good value.”

Te Ao Kohatu: :

For a short period in 1999, a Ma-ori restaurant called Te Ao Kohatu11

operated in central Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand’s largest city. Therestaurant was billed as “the only Pakeha-style Maori restaurant in thecountry” (www.travelocity.com), indicating that like Kai in the City it was afine-dining restaurant. Te Ao Kohatu was partly owned by Tame Iti, a well-




http://www.travelocity.com

known Ma-ori activist.12 A review in The Dominion newspaper described therestaurant:

Te Ao Kotahu, in inner-city Auckland’s Karangahape Rd, servesdishes such as muttonbird on a bed of steamed watercress, pauasausage in a cream sauce, kanga pirau (a dessert of fermented corn),roroi (caramelized kumara) and wai kouka (a drink made from theheart of the cabbage tree) … Its style is fine white crockery andwaitresses in starched white shirts and long black aprons. Tables aremade of rough-sawn tawa13 slabs rescued from the Waimana Rivernear Mr Iti’s Tuhoe home of Taneatua. Prices range from $15 forentrees to $26 for main courses. Mr Iti, who is one partner in theventure, explains that the restaurant incurs high costs paying thosewho gather the berries and wild plants in its recipes … The café,which incorporates an art gallery, including several of Mr Iti’s ownworks, is alcohol-free and smoke-free. Those two “filthy colonialhabits” have done no good for Ma-oris, he says. (The Dominion 1999)

I have not been able to discover exactly how long Te Ao Kohatu lasted, butit was not for long. I lived in central Auckland during this period and recalltalking about the restaurant. My friends and I ate at a lot of different kindsof restaurants, and though we talked about Te Ao Kohatu, we did not go. Iremember comments that the food was not “proper Ma-ori food” as itcontained what we considered to be non-Ma-ori ingredients such as cream—it wasn’t authentic. Besides, the no-alcohol status wasn’t attractive.However, I now think the reason behind our avoidance of the restaurant wasan anxious sense that we would not feel comfortable there. Tame Iti is not acomfortable figure for many Pa-keha- because of his political activism, andthis association did not promise the kind of “friendly atmosphere” Dineoutcustomers encountered at Kai in the City.

TE WAKA A MAUI

: :In 2005, The Christchurch Star published an article in about this research,generating a number of phone calls from both Ma-ori and Pa-keha-, who toldme about a Ma-ori restaurant that had operated in Christchurch in the mid-1980s called Te Waka a Maui.

A Pa-keha- woman, Janet, told me that she went to Te Waka a Maui with agroup because one of the women “was married to a Ma-ori guy.”14 When theyarrived they were served an entrée—“Ma-ori bread, and pa-ua or kina incream, yuk.” The ha-ngı-, she said, “was lovely, really really nice.” As it wascooked in a gas ha-ngı-, she said, the food was “nicer” as “it didn’t have thatsmoked taste,” i.e. it tasted like a roast, not a ha-ngı-. There was another


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element that made the restaurant Ma-ori—each table had to do “an item”‘—her table sang the inevitable Pokarekare Ana. It was this, she said, whichmade the evening so much fun, it was “like you were at a party.” Margaret,whose family went to the restaurant because it was “somewhere different,”also talked about having to sing. She said that she thought that what therestaurant was trying to do was to create a Ma-ori atmosphere. Among Ma-ori,she said, meals were “a communal thing, a shared thing,” and the ownerswere trying to make the restaurant like a “Ma-ori home” rather than abusiness.

I asked a Ma-ori woman, Mary, why she thought Pa-keha- went to therestaurant. She told me that the owners were aiming at the tourist marketand were “surprised by a lot of local interest.” Lots of Pa-keha- went, she said,and they “loved it.” They loved it “for more than the food,” although the foodwas “very good,” they liked the “sense of fun.” She said that in Christchurchthere “aren’t opportunities to mix with Ma-ori” and so the restaurant provided“a window into a Ma-ori world, it melded between two worlds.” Therestaurant provided safe and accessible access to this world: “steam ha-ngı- isgood for beginners to ha-ngı-, it’s not too strong.” Moreover, the restaurantserved steaks and seafood as well, so it was “manageable to all comers.” Shesaid that people in Christchurch were “hungry for such experience,” becausein Christchurch there are not many Ma-ori people and opportunities forMa-ori experience are limited. People went to Te Waka a Maui, she said,because of an “underlying desire to have a cross-cultural experience.” It wasan “upper middle class client group who enjoyed Ma-ori culture.”

WHY DID THE RESTAURANTS NOT SURVIVE?: :

Elements common to the three restaurants give some indication as to whythey have not survived. First, is the difficulty Ma-ori restaurants face insuccessfully presenting a distinctive and authentic cuisine because of theways in which local food is classified as Ma-ori or not Ma-ori. For Pa-keha-,Ma-ori food is not sophisticated food, and the culinary sophistication of thethree restaurants challenged this understanding. As discussed above, muchfood that could be classified as Ma-ori food is not classified in this way.Modified versions of the kind of food served at Kai in the City have foundtheir way onto the menus of many restaurants serving contemporary cuisine.In these restaurants, however, foods tend not to be labeled Ma-ori but arecalled “Kiwi” or “New Zealand” food. In the last two decades there has beena concerted effort to create a New Zealand cuisine, a cuisine that isdistinctive because it is local, but also universal in that it is constructedwithin international codes for producing fusion food. In this code, the fuseris located in and works from the dominant Anglo-American culinary




tradition (and is often a member of the dominant culture), while the cuisinethat is fused is subordinate (and subordinated by the very process of fusion).“Kiwi” cuisine is structured by Franco-Euro-American culinary codes, andlocal foods simply function as points of culinary difference. For example,consider this review of CinCin (www.cincin.co.nz), a well-establishedAuckland restaurant that serves “modern European cuisine combined withNew Zealand’s finest products”:

It could be any international restaurant with its ritzy décor, set onthe harbour’s edge with ferries constantly pulling in and outalongside, but the menu with choices of “hot and sour seafood brothwith scallops, Greenshell mussels, hapuku15 and karengo16 linguini”or “warm tartlet of forest mushrooms, horopito,17 feta crumble andasparagus essence” unashamedly suggests to the visitor this is NewZealand. Chef Keith McPhee’s menu at Cin Cin in Auckland isdriven by the fashionable influences and techniques of Pacific,Eastern and Mediterranean cooking, but takes advantage of localproduce like Greenshell mussels, hapuku and “hot new” ingredientssuch as karengo and horopito to present a cuisine that’s unique toNew Zealand. (Jacobs 2004: 1)

Here, in contrast to Kai in the City, indigenous ingredients make Kiwi orNew Zealand food, not Ma-ori food. In this context it is difficult for Ma-orirestaurateurs to create a distinct cuisine, as its basis has been appropriated.

A second explanation for the lack of Ma-ori restaurants is to do with thekind of “Ma-ori experience” on offer. Kai in the City and Te Waka a Maui,both of which survived for several years, provided an experience of Ma-oriculture that was comfortable for Pa-keha-, emphasizing cultural practicessuch as collective singing and hospitality rather than the potentiallydisturbing confrontation with an uneasy colonial history suggested byTame Iti’s Te Ao Kohatu. However, that something of this anxiety may havebeen present in the minds of customers at Kai in the City is illustrated bythe number of reviewers who emphasize how they were made welcomeand the friendliness of the staff, and my friends and I made similar(relieved?) comments about how nice they were to us after our visit. I donot think that we would make comments like this after visits to otherethnic restaurants—indeed, we continue to patronize a Chinese restaurantwhere the owner can only be described as rude. However, her unfriend-liness does not disturb our comfort in the way that the imaginedunfriendliness of Tame Iti did.

A third explanation is to do with clientele. People who phoned about TeWaka a Maui explained the restaurant’s failure in terms of the lack of aclientele, both Ma-ori and Pa-keha-. Alice, a Ma-ori woman, suggested thatMa-ori should have supported the restaurant, but the problem was that


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http://www.cincin.co.nz

the Ma-ori community in Christchurch was small. Furthermore, Mary said,the restaurant was “not cheap,” it was “a posh night out.” The ha-ngı- costaround $25 per person—an expensive meal in the mid-1980s. As a result,Ma-ori did not go. Ma-ori, she said, were used to paying $5 for a ha-ngı- at afundraiser, and if they wanted “a posh night out,” they wouldn’t eat ha-ngı-. AsLucille said: “the domestic market can do it at home,” meaning thatMa-ori do not need restaurants to access Ma-ori food (whatever they considerthat to be). Furthermore, she said, “lots of Ma-ori don’t have disposableincome” and the restaurant “wasn’t cheap,” so the Ma-ori market waslimited.18

The explanation offered for the lack of a Pa-keha- clientele was the lowstatus of Ma-ori among Pa-keha-. Keith, who went to Te Waka a Mauibecause he had “Ma-ori friends at the time,” said that he has always “beeninterested in Ma-ori food.” In fact, he told me he was having an eel forlunch on the day he rang: “Ma-ori food appeals to me a hell of a lot … Mostkiwis turn their noses up at Ma-ori meals, if you know what I mean.” Kenwas blunter: “The most compelling reason for the lack of Ma-ori restaurantsis there is no demand. Ma-ori amongst the local population [i.e. Pa-keha-] issynonymous with shoddy, and people don’t want poor service or bad foodwhen dining.”

The clientele of Kai in the City and Te Waka a Maui were from the middleclasses, where people who Heldke (2003) calls “food adventurers” are to befound. Food adventurers seek out “the new, the obscure and the exotic,”desiring “authentic experiences of authentic cultures” (Heldke 2003: 2).Abarca suggests that when cultural insiders deploy authenticity it can beread as “an act of cultural resistance against mainstream hegemonization”(Abarca 2004: 5), and that even “pseudo-ethnic” food, food modified to meetthe tastes of cultural outsiders, can be interpreted “as a subversive act toprevent cultural appropriation” (Abarca 2004: 9) through the retention of“authentic” food for the community itself. However, when outsiders deployauthenticity, the situation is different. Food adventurers regard with disdainand reject food that they consider has been modified to meet the tastes ofcultural outsiders,19 defining such food as inauthentic. However, while foodadventurers seek the exotic and the authentic, there are limits to this desire.Lu and Fine (1995; see also Davis 2002) note that in order to be successful,Chinese restaurants must present food and dining experiences that are“simultaneously exotic and familiar” (Lu and Fine 1995: 536) and provide acomfortable experience of the Other. This is a fine line to tread for ethnicrestaurateurs, because the category of the desirable exotic constantly shiftsas food adventurers, pursuing novelty as a strategy for the accrual of culturalcapital, define cuisines as fashionable or not.

Food adventurers certainly exist in New Zealand, and I confess I am onemyself. However, eating Ma-ori food does not appear to provide a cultural




capital boost among New Zealand food adventurers.20 Why not? First, inAotearoa New Zealand Ma-ori are not exotic, they are indigenous. I suspectthat one of the reasons that Te Waka a Maui worked in Christchurch is thelack of actual Ma-ori in Christchurch—Ma-ori are more exotic inChristchurch than places like Auckland as they are not so actually present.Second, is the issue of authenticity. Friends who went to Kai in the Citye-mailed me about their experience:

The food was very, very good. John’s mutton bird was cookedextremely well, according to our friend who had eaten it before whenit was prepared more “traditionally.” I can’t say that there wasanything especially Ma-ori about my snapper—except that it wasserved on a bed of kumara and other vegetables. It was sophisticatedfood that anyone familiar with Euro-American cuisine would haveenjoyed.

This illustrates the dilemma Ma-ori restaurants face. In the Pa-keha-

imagination, there is little authentic Ma-ori food, and, what does exist, isregarded as unpalatable. If the food is cooked “traditionally,” if it isauthentic, it will not be so nice and so it is likely to be rejected. However,“sophisticated” food is not “especially Ma-ori,” not authentic, and so there isno particular reason to eat at that restaurant. Discourses of authenticityimply “the existence of a ‘pure’ cultural essence, from which any departureis a debasement” (Jackson 1999: 101), and serve to keep groups “within well-defined cultural, social and economic boundaries” (Abarca 2003: 19). Thedemand that foods (and cultures) meet the criteria of exoticness/authenticityis one of the practices through which the ethnic other is kept firmly in theirculinary and cultural place.

What these appearances tell us is that Ma-ori restaurants do not prosperbecause of the difficulty of carving out a distinctive cuisine, and becausethere is a limited clientele. Ma-ori clientele are limited because they lack theeconomic resources to support restaurants, and because, unlike migrantgroups, they do not need such places as cultural resources. Pa-keha- clienteleare limited because many do not find Ma-ori food desirable.

Eating Ethnic Food: :

The literature on what it means for people constructed as unmarked byethnic difference, i.e. those constructed as white, to consume food markedas ethnic shines further light on the issue of the undesirability of Ma-ori food.Two threads unite the literature: first, that in consuming ethnic food theeater absorbs that culture in a symbolic sense; second, eating the food of theOther is connected with the identity project of the eater. What consumers


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are doing in this eating is expressing a particular self, as “dining out isidentity work” (Lu and Fine 1995: 547). In settler societies, those sectionsof the dominant culture who value cultural diversity “demonstrate to[them]selves and others that [they] are cosmopolitan and tolerant “ (Lu andFine 1995: 539) by enjoying ethnic food. This “celebration of variety,” Wardeet al. argue, is a central element in the expression of social distinction by themiddle classes, where enjoying a wide variety of foods is a sign ofcosmopolitan sophistication (Warde et al. 1999: 111). Through this practicesuch eaters distinguish themselves from those other members of societywho, only being willing to consume their own food, they consider to be lesstolerant.

One implication of this is that the consumption of an ethnic foodway bythe dominant group indicates their acceptance of that ethnic group. Writingabout Chinese in America in the 1950s and 1960s, Inness (2006) noted thatthey were socially marginalized and subject to racism. However, she argues,it was through food, in this case cookbooks, that Chinese people becomemore accepted by American society:

For mainstream America, accepting a culture is closely connectedwith eating its foods, so much was at stake when Chinese-Americanwomen wrote cookbooks. These books served as conduits to bringtwo cultures together, leading to a greater tolerance and acceptanceof Chinese people… (Inness 2006: 41)

In support of this position she notes the correlation between liking afoodway, and liking those people, so that Italian food is well regarded andItalian people are accepted, while Korean and Chinese food, and Korean andChinese people, are not to the same extent (Inness 2006: 60): “how differentfoods are accepted in the United States is intimately intertwined with howpeople have or have not been accepted” (Inness 2006: 60).

What this suggests that it is possible to map a particular field of ethnicityand the location of different groups within that field (from the position ofthe dominant group) by considering how the foods of different groups areregarded. From this perspective, the absence of Ma-ori restaurants indicatesthat Ma-ori are not accepted by Pa-keha-.

The Unpalatable and the Inedible: Who Is Not Eaten?: :

This leads to the question of culinary absence more generally. Ma-ori cuisineis not the only cuisine largely absent from the New Zealand publicculinascape—so is the food of the Pacific Islands. Despite the presence of asignificant Pacific Islands population (Auckland has the largest Polynesianpopulation of any city in the world), there is a notable absence of overtly




Pacific restaurants. Levenstein, referring to the spread of Chinese food inAmerica, argues that “the adoption of new food tastes is probably facilitatedby an absence of low-status people from whose homelands they originate”(Levenstein 1993: 216), and I suggest that it is possible to account for theabsence of Pacific restaurants in the same way. Like Ma-ori, Pacific Islandershave low economic status and low social status among Pa-keha-, and so doestheir food. A consideration of cultures that do not appear as food, and whythis might be, provides further insight into the absence of Ma-ori restaurants.

Harbottle’s (2000) work on Iranians in Britain considers a cuisine that isnot eaten. Though Iranians were deeply involved in the food trade, they didnot participate as Iranians, by selling food in either restaurants or take-outbars that they called Iranian food. For example, kebabs were considered tobe Iranian food by Iranians, but they were sold to the British public asTurkish or Middle Eastern, as they perceived that the British public wouldnot eat Iranian food (Harbottle 2000: 87). Iranian identity, Harbottle argued,had been spoiled by political events outside of their control, namely theIslamic revolution of 1979. Tarnished with the brush of Islamicfundamentalism Iran and Iranian people were no longer considered nice inBritain, and in turn their food became unpalatable. A similar processoccurred in the United States after 9/11 and the subsequent war in Iraq:sales of all kinds of Middle Eastern food declined and restaurants wereattacked (Heldke 2003: 58). Similarly, when France refused to be nice andjoin the coalition of nations invading Iraq, “French fries” became “freedomfries” in the food outlets of the House of Representatives, among otherplaces (see, for example, www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_fries). It seemsthat when a society is not nice, neither is their food.

The second category of the non-eaten is the Western superpowers,particularly the United States and, until recently, Britain. Harbottle suggeststhat British cuisine has “fail[ed] to impact significantly at an internationallevel” (Harbottle 2000: 142), but I disagree. Food based on the Franco-British tradition, what has come to be called Euro-American food,dominates the global culinascape, from structuring the proper meal at thecountless restaurants that serve “contemporary cuisine” to fast food such asMcDonald’s. Moreover, and despite its pervasiveness, much of this food isdisparaged, denigrated as bland and boring or reviled as chemical-ladenjunk, considered not very palatable (particularly by food adventurers whodistinguish themselves from their lower class compatriots by rejecting thefood associated with them). However, though widely consumed, this food isnot eaten as American or as British food— we in New Zealand do not say“let’s have American tonight.” Just as British and American whites areunmarked ethnically, so is their food. Euro-American food is “culinarilyneutral” (Heldke 2003: 2), not hyphenated, not qualified, just food fromwhich all other food differs to a greater or lesser extent. This culinary code,


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http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_fries

Hage argues, “operate[s] as a form of symbolic violence, setting theparameters of what constitutes food” (Hage 1997: 123-124). The powerfulare the eaters, not the eaten, and as such dominant groups are notrepresented through, or as, food.21

Globally, there is a considerable degree of ambivalence about andantipathy towards America, an antagonism regularly expressed in attacks onMcDonald’s outlets. The food of the dominant is not nice because, from theposition of the subordinate, the dominant are not nice. Denigration of thefood of the dominant is connected with resentment at and resistance to theirpower—American identity is spoiled because America is powerful.Unpalatability, then, can signify both powerlessness and powerfulness.

The third category whose food is rarely eaten is indigenous people. Fromdiscussions with American and Australian colleagues, I understand that thesituation with Native Americans and Australian Aborigines is similar to thatof Ma-ori, in that few if any restaurants sell their cuisine. Instead, someelements are appropriated for building a national cuisine and the rest isregarded as barely edible.

To understand the unpalatability of the indigenous it is useful to return tothe question of what being eaten as a culture might signify. While Inness’s(2006) analysis implies that culinary palatability equates with culturalpalatability, other analysts provide a different reading, suggesting insteadthat culinary palatability signifies cultural subordination. Such writerscontest the notion that the consumption of a culture’s food signals theacceptance of the people of that culture, noting that the enjoyment of afoodway can go in hand with “treating that minority as second-class citizens,and preventing them from obtaining equal access to social, educational, orpolitical life” (Abarca 2005: 7). As Uma Narayan notes, while Indian foodhas been adopted to the extent that curry has almost become British, actualIndian people have not been made so welcome (cited in Abarca 2005: 7).

Moreover, writers such as Heldke (2003) and Hage (1998) are critical ofthe assumption that underlies the work of writers such as Inness, that theconsumption of ethnic food by the majority is essentially benign. Theirgeneral argument is that in “‘eating the Other’ … consumers assert theirpower and privilege over those whose cultures are consumed” (Jackson1999: 100). Heldke coined the term “food adventurer” (Heldke 2003: 2) todescribe her enjoyment of “the foods of economically dominated or ‘thirdworld’ cultures” (Heldke 2003: xv), coming to understand her quest for theexotic and authentic as “cultural food colonialism,” as appropriation (Heldke2003: xv). Food adventurers treat other cultures “not as genuine cultures,but as resources for raw materials that serve their own interests” (Heldke2003: 2). It is this, Heldke argues, that marks the continuity between eatingthe food of dominated cultures and other modes of colonial, and neo-colonial economic and political domination (Heldke 2003: xviii).




Heldke distinguishes between cultural imperialism, which refers to “theimposition of cultural practices by an economic or political power,” andcultural colonialism, “the appropriation of such practices by a power”(Heldke 2003: xviii; author’s emphasis). Cultural colonialism implies thatthe dominant power may value some aspects of the dominated culture, but,Heldke argues, such valuing is not benign because it constitutes the Other,and their cuisine, as an object whose sole purpose is to enhance the lives ofthe dominant (Heldke 2003: 21).

Australian anthropologist Ghassan Hage makes a similar argument aroundwhat he calls “culinary cosmo-multiculturalism” (Hage 1997: 119), a culturalimaginary in which “ethnic cultures are not only not perceived negatively, butactively valued. Embracing such cultures … [is] seen as ‘enriching’ (Hage 1997:136). Paralleling Heldke, he argues that “enjoying cultural diversity” and“appreciating” ethnic food is a form of cultural capital, through which the whitemiddle classes distinguish themselves from lower class whites (Hage 1997:125). This imaginary is produced through what Hage calls a “multiculturalismof availability” (Hage 1997: 132), where multiculturalism has less to do with theexistence of “different cultural subjects” than “with what multiculturalcommodities are available on its markets and who has the capacity to appreciatethem” (Hage 1997: 132). Like Heldke, Hage argues that in the cosmo-multiculturalist discourse of cultural enrichment the ethnic other appears as“an object of experience rather than an experiential subject” with “ no raisond’etre other than to enrich the Anglo subject” (Hage 1997: 136).

These discourses of valuing, enrichment and tolerance, which lie at theheart of multiculturalism and which seem at first glance to be positive, arerevealed as masking a practice through which cultural domination isperpetuated, “a form of symbolic violence in which a mode of domination ispresented as a form of egalitarianism” (Hage 1998: 87). What unites thesediscourses is a divide between the subject and object, between tolerator andtolerated, valuer and valued, enriched and enricher:

Valuing requires someone to do the valuing and something to beevaluated. The discourse of enrichment operates by establishing abreak between valuing negatively and valuing positively similar tothe break which the discourse of tolerance establishes betweentolerance and intolerance. In much the same way, however, as thetolerance/intolerance divide mystifies the more important dividebetween holding the power to tolerate and not holding it, thedistinction between valuing negatively/valuing positively mystifies thedeeper division between holding the power to value (negatively orpositively) and not holding it. (Hage 1998: 121; emphasis added)

In multicultural settler societies, to position oneself as the enjoyer or thevaluer of the Other, the subject who is the enriched by multiculturalism, is


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to enact “governmental belonging” (Hage 1998: 45). Hage distinguishesbetween “passive belonging” to the nation, in which a person considers theybelong “in the sense of being part of it … to have the right to benefit fromthe Nation’s resources, to ‘fit into it’ or ‘feel at home’ within it,” and“governmental belonging” which “involves the belief in one’s possession ofthe right to contribute … to its management such that it remains ‘one’shome’” (Hage 1998: 45–6). Governmental belonging is the property of thosewho have

the power to have a legitimate view concerning the positioning ofothers in the nation … the power to have a legitimate view regardingwho should “feel at home” in the nation and how, and who shouldbe in and who should be out, as well as what constitutes “too many.”(Hage 1998: 46)

Migrants, Hage argues, have passive belonging. Positions of governmentalbelonging are taken up by whites, who in this fantasy imagine themselves ashaving the ability to manage and position ethnic others according to theirwill, to eat the other, or not. It is governmental belonging which is expressedthrough the discourses of enrichment, valuing and tolerance whichconstitute multiculturalism. In this imaginary, Anglo subjects are theappreciators, the ethnic other is firmly positioned as the object ofappreciation (or rejection). Hage notes that this governmental fantasy isbeing disturbed as migrants increasingly assert governmental subjectivity,“wanting to be enriched themselves” (Hage 1998: 118). Indigenous peopledisrupt this managerial fantasy at an even more fundamental level.

The Politics of Indigeneity in Aotearoa New Zealand: :

In recent decades, Ma-ori have challenged their previously subordinate placein the nation, demanding that the terms of the Treaty of Waitangi,22 underwhich British colonization of Aotearoa New Zealand took place, behonoured.23 This is not only a claim for redress of particular violations, suchas illegal land confiscations, but a claim for Tino Rangatiratanga, a claim forsovereignty. The multiple strategies employed, including public protest,parliamentary politics and the resort to law, are animated by a politics ofindigeneity, a “society-bending” politics (Maaka and Fleras 2005: 11) whichseeks a way for the peoples of Aotearoa New Zealand to live together“differently” (Maaka and Fleras 2005: 12). This is a radical demand thatlooks to “remake the rules that govern conduct, define status andrecognition, and share power” (Maaka and Fleras 2005: 10).

The Ma-ori assertion of their right to make this demand is based on theirindigenous status, on “the grounds of historical continuity, cultural




autonomy, original occupancy, and territorial grounding” (Maaka and Fleras2005: 11). As tangata whenua, Ma-ori have a “constitutional status that isdistinctive (as original occupants) and distinguishing (as the only minoritieswith territorial claims)” (Maaka and Fleras 2005: 18).

Since the mid-1980s, there has been a fundamental reordering of therelationship between the state and Ma-ori, a transformation from a kinshipmode to a contract mode, from paternalism to a partnership betweenputative equals. Ma-ori are no longer positioned as under the care and controlof a Pa-keha- dominated state, as “a historically disadvantaged minority withneeds or problems requiring government solutions” (Maaka and Fleras 2005:17), but as an equal partner in a bicultural nation with rights.24 Pa-keha- havebeen dislodged from their position as sole possessors of governmentalbelonging in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Ma-ori politics can be read as a claim to governmental belonging. This isnot an “us too” claim that seeks a place for Ma-ori in the multiculturalsmorgasbord as one among many, but a claim for governmental partnershipwith Pa-keha-. Bo!ic-Vrbancic (2008) analyses the ways in which belonging tothe nation is represented at The Museum of New Zealand Te PapaTongarewa,25 showing how contemporary Aotearoa New Zealand issimultaneously imagined as bicultural and multicultural, as “One Nation,Two Peoples, Many Cultures” (Bo!ic-Vrbancic 2008: 210). The peoples areMa-ori and Pa-keha-, united through their positioning as those who will beenriched by the many (Bo!ic-Vrbancic 2008: 214). However, though Ma-oriand Pa-keha- are united in governmental belonging, the basis of thatbelonging is not the same. Tangata whenua “belong to the land by right offirst discovery”; tangata tiriti “belong to the land by right of the Treaty”(Museum of New Zealand 1989: 4–5, cited in Bo!ic-Vrbancic 2008: 211):Ma-ori belong as tangata whenua, all others as tangata tiriti (and treaties canbe broken, as Ma-ori know well). In this imaginary, Ma-ori belongingpotentially supersedes that of Pa-keha-—Pa-keha- are reduced to one of theMany, just one more (however dominant and powerful) migrant group. Aplacard displayed during a 2004 Ma-ori protest march read “Go Back toEngland.” In the Ma-ori governmental imagination it is possible to think ofsending Pa-keha- home. Pa-keha- cannot imagine the reverse: Ma-ori, as theindigenous people, are home, and home in a way that Pa-keha- can never be.Ma-ori claims for rights based on their status as tangata whenua have beenread as having a greater claim to New Zealand than Pa-keha-. This hasprofoundly disturbed the Pa-keha- sense of the nation as the place where theyare comfortably at home as paterfamilias, resulting in both rethinkings of thebasis of Pa-keha- identity, as in historian Michael King’s Being Pa-keha- series(King 1988, 1991, 1999) and reassertions of Pa-keha- dominance, as in Scott’sTravesty books (Scott 1995, 1996). These reactions can be understood as areaction to a reality that many Pa-keha- find unpalatable—the loss of the


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power to be appreciative or non-appreciative of Ma-ori. Ma-ori exist in NewZealand as subjects in their own right, not as objects of Pa-keha- experience—they are no longer available as a resource for Pa-keha- cultural enrichment;they are not available for valuing. Whether or not Pa-keha- enjoy Ma-ori islargely irrelevant.

I have argued above that to consume the Other through their food is anact of domination. This mode of domination works through the assimilationof the Other, at both individual and cultural levels. This act of assimilationdemonstrates that the incorporated Other presents no threat, either to selfor culture. The ability to enact such cultural consumption requires theOther to be consumable, to be an object, and a safe object at that. As Hagewrites, “it is fundamentally this sense of safety, the sense that the ‘nativeswon’t (and can’t) spear you’, that underlies the cosmo-multiculturalistcapacity for ‘daring’ and ‘appreciation’” (Hage 1997: 141). Cosmo-multiculturalists and food adventurers do not want to experience the culturalequivalent of food poisoning, and so they avoid the unpalatable food of thosewith spoiled identities. Further, in the governmental fantasy that underpinsmulticulturalism, if the Other becomes too unpalatable, one can imaginesending them back, just as a restaurant dish that does not meet expectationsmay be returned to the kitchen to be remedied, or exchanged for somethingmore pleasing.

But the indigenous are not just unpalatable—they have proven to beinedible. Strategies of culinary assimilation continue to be pursued throughpractices of fusion cooking, a code in which Pa-keha- assert culinarygovernance and Ma-ori are reduced to an interesting, but not critical,ingredient. However, we see signs that this discourse is being challenged,with restaurants like Kai in the City and cookbook writers like Peter Peetiadopting the fuser subject position, asserting the centrality of Ma-ori food,and assimilating aspects of Anglo-American cooking into their cuisine.

Pa-keha- have not been able to incorporate Ma-ori, who remain irresolutelyinassimilable. Ma-ori are the fishbone in the Pa-keha- national throat, and haveimproved impossible to dislodge, despite multiple cultural and politicalHeimlich maneuvers. They may no longer please, but they cannot be sentback. Not only are Ma-ori no longer under Pa-keha- control, the fear is that thesituation may be reversed and Ma-ori will consume Pa-keha-: alarmingly,protest signs read “trespassers will be eaten.” And of course, in the past, theyhave (Moon 2008).

Conclusion: Accounting for the Absence of Ma-ori Restaurants: :

In this paper I have argued that the public culinascape of Aotearoa NewZealand can be used to map the field of multiculturalism, and in turn, a




reading of that field provides a series of answers to the question of theabsence of Ma-ori restaurants. There is the basis for a Ma-ori cuisine, and thisfood is served in the few Ma-ori restaurants that have appeared. However,more commonly indigenous foods are classified as New Zealand or Kiwi foodand are used as a point of distinction in the creation of a national cuisine.

There is a limited Ma-ori clientele for several reasons. The low economicstatus of Ma-ori as a group means they do not have the money to eat at fine-dining restaurants regularly, and, if they are to eat out, they may not chooseMa-ori food, as this is everyday food rather than treat food. Furthermore,Ma-ori do not share with migrant groups the need to have restaurants ascultural centers—there are many other sites for Ma-ori community life andcultural reproduction.

There is also a limited Pa-keha- clientele. Ma-ori food is marked as ethnicfood in the Pa-keha- culinascape, and as such, in theory, should appeal to thefood adventurers whose identities as liberal multiculturalists are formed andexpressed through the eating and enjoyment of the food and culture ofethnic others. However, what food adventurers seek is the exotic and theauthentic. Ma-ori are not exotic and therefore there is limited social cachetin knowing their culture or enjoying their food. Furthermore, “authentic”Ma-ori food is indigenous food that Pa-keha- find unpalatable. To be classifiedas Ma-ori, a restaurant must serve authentic food, but what is authentic is notmarketable to Pa-keha-. Pa-keha- call the things they like New Zealand food,and the things they don’t like Ma-ori food—and then do not eat it.

Pa-keha- comfort in migrant restaurants and discomfort around Ma-orirestaurants is revealing of the state of the projects of biculturalism andmulticulturalism in Aotearoa New Zealand. If we only eat the others weenjoy, then this lack of taste for Ma-ori food signals a lack of Pa-keha- taste forMa-ori themselves, indicating that Ma-ori have a spoilt identity. Ma-ori identityis spoilt in two ways. The low status of Ma-ori among Pa-keha- means that theyare not considered good enough to eat. However, unlike Iranians in Britain,Ma-ori identity has not been spoiled by external forces. Instead Ma-ori havespoiled their identity for Pa-keha- by not being nice, by refusing to beassimilated, refusing to be consumed. If the desire to eat an Other, and theability to be at ease in that eating, is a sign of domination, then the lack ofdesire to eat an Other, and the inability to be comfortable in that eating, is,perhaps, a sign of the eater’s waning dominance. The second food cliché isthat attributed to Claude Lèvi-Strauss: food is good to think before it is goodto eat. Ma-ori are not good to think for Pa-keha-, and therefore, cannot be goodto eat.


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Notes

: :1 The term culinascape derives from Appadurai’s notion of “scapes” (ethnoscapes,

finanscapes, mediascapes, ideoscapes, technoscapes): “I use the terms with the commonsuffix scape to indicate first of all that these are not objectively given relations which lookthe same from every angle of vision, but rather that they are deeply perspectival constructs,inflected very much by the historical, linguistic and political situatedness of different sortsof actors” (Appadurai 2002: 50).

2 Tangata whenua literally means “people of the land,” and refers to Ma-ori as the indigenouspeople of Aotearoa New Zealand.

3 Moa are a very large, flightless bird, now extinct.

3 Moriori are the Ma-ori of the Chatham Islands, a group of islands off the coast of AotearoaNew Zealand. In some Pa-keha- discourse, Moriori are considered to have been the originalinhabitants of Aotearoa New Zealand, who were exterminated by Ma-ori. This discourse isdeployed to justify and naturalise Pa-keha- colonization. See King (1989).

5 Ha-ngı- is a traditional Ma-ori method of cooking, in which meat and vegetables are cookedover heated stones in an earth oven.

6 Huhu grubs (prionoplus reticularis) are found in decaying wood.

7 That what counts as Ma-ori food is a matter of classification is illustrated by two recentcookbooks, Kai Time: Tasty Modern Ma-ori Food (Peeti 2008) and Go Wild: Monteith’s WildFoods Cookbook (Monteiths Brewing Co. 2007). The two books contain recipes with similaringredients and similar kinds of dishes, but in Kai Time these are classified as Ma-ori dishes,whereas in Go Wild they are classified as wild New Zealand food.

8 The restaurant was initially located in the suburb of Island Bay and was called Kai in theBay. It moved to central Wellington in 2005 and changed its name to Kai in the City. Therestaurant was tiny, with just half a dozen tables. Kai in the City closed in August 2008.According to the owner, Bill Hamilton, “he’s proved it’s possible to make a Maori-themedrestaurant a success, but his day job and his tribal work mean he does not have the time todevote to the business” (Radio New Zealand 2008).

9 “Pokarekare Ana” is a Ma-ori song that is known by many Pa-keha-.

10 Kai in the City serves Tohu wine because the vineyard is owned by Ma-ori.

11 There is very little information about this restaurant. The Dominion review calls it Te AoKotahu, but in other places it is named Te Ao Kohatu. Kohatu means stone or rock, whereasthe word kotahu does not appear in Ma-ori dictionaries. Therefore it is likely that therestaurant’s name is Te Ao Kohatu.

12 Iti’s public profile is demonstrated by the fact that he has a Wikipedia entry: “the publicarguably know Iti best for his moko [full facial tattoo] and for his habit of performingwhakapohane (baring his buttocks) at protests” (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tame_Iti).

13 Tawa (Beilchmiedia tawa) is a native New Zealand tree.

14 In this section of the paper words in quotation marks are comments from callers.

15 Ha-puku is a fish, also known as groper or grouper.

16 Karengo (Porphyra columbina) is an edible seaweed.

17 Horopito (Pseudowintera axillaries and Pseudowintera colorata) is a pepper tree. Its leavesare used as a herb.

18 Though there is considerable diversity among Ma-ori, their low economic status as a groupcan be illustrated by the usual statistics. In 2007 the Ma-ori unemployment rate was 7.6percent compared to the economy-wide rate of 3.7 percent (Department of Labour 2007:1), and as the recession takes hold in early 2009, while the general rate of unemploymentis 4.6 percent, the Ma-ori rate is 9.2 percent (Department of Labour 2009: 3). Moreover,“Ma-ori remain over-represented in the lower skilled occupations and under-represented inthe higher skilled occupations” (Department of Labour 2007: 5), meaning that Ma-oriincome is lower than average. In the five years to June 2007, the average Ma-ori wage rose




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tame_Iti

from NZ$14.33 to NZ$17.88 per hour in contrast to the economy-wide rise of NZ$16.71to NZ$21.41 per hour (Department of Labour 2007: 6). This means that Ma-ori are lesslikely to have money to spend dining out.

19 By contrast, when Anglo cooks incorporate new methods and new ingredients into theircuisine, this fusion food is hailed as innovative and signifies inventiveness. Only thedominant can fuse food: similar practices in dominated foodways are regarded asdegradation. As such, the ability to fuse, rather than to be fused, can be read as a sign ofculinary and cultural power.

20 In Wellington, the seat of government, facility with Ma-ori language and culture has morecapital than in other places in New Zealand, which helps explain Kai in the City’s success.

21 Following this argument, the recent revival of English/British food signals a decline inEnglish/British power.

22 The Treaty of Waitangi, signed in 1840 between some, but not all, Ma-ori chiefs and theBritish Crown, paved the way for the colonization of Aotearoa New Zealand and eventuatedin a settler society. English and Ma-ori versions of the treaty differ. In the English version,the first article of the treaty cedes sovereignty to the Queen. In the Ma-ori version,kawanatanga, translated as governorship, is ceded in the first article. This was a new wordin Ma-ori at the time. In the second article, however, Ma-ori retain rangatiratanga, literallychieftainship, but seemingly understood by Ma-ori to mean sovereignty. There is debate asto whether Ma-ori would have signed the treaty had they been asked to cede rangatiratanga.In contemporary use, the demand for Tino Rangatiratanga is a demand for sovereignty.Though the treaty was never ratified, it has substance in New Zealand law, most notablythrough The State Owned Enterprises Act 1987, which introduced the notion of thenecessity of adherence to the “principles of the Treaty of Waitangi” into law (see Orange1992; The Waitangi Tribunal, www.waitangi-tribunal.govt.nz).

23 These challenges have been on a variety of fronts and have employed a variety of strategies(for a history of Aotearoa from a Ma-ori perspective see Walker 2004). On protest politicsmore specifically, see Harris (2004) and Poata-Smith (1996). On indigenous politics andthe state, see Sharp (1990) and Maaka and Fleras (2005). On cultural politics moregenerally, see Fleras and Spoonley (1999).

24 The bicultural state was confirmed by the State Services Act 1988, which enshrined in statestructures and government policy the “Treaty principles of partnership, participation,responsiveness and protection” (Maaka and Fleras 2005: 141).

25 Te Papa Tongarewa, known as Te Papa, opened in 1998 as Aotearoa New Zealand’s nationalmuseum.

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