October 15, 2013 • 36 mins
It's a familiar theme, an indigenous group's culture falls apart when exposed to European ideals, weapons and disease. For the Maori of New Zealand, however, a determined effort to preserve and revive its ancient identity has started to pay off. Join Josh and Chuck as they explore the complexities of Maori culture.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the all New Toyota Corolla. Welcome
to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's
Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry's over there. So this
(00:21):
is stuff you should know the podcast. Jerry with her
face tattoos, fipster Maory wanna be Mariya thoughts Maori Maori? Yeah,
we just looked at the pronunciation. I was sure Chuck
was right because he picked this article. But it looks
like mayori. It seems like that should be an acceptable
pronunciation as well. I know, and you know we have
(00:43):
lots of quiet fans. They're in New Zealand. Hey, everybody,
and so this is for you. And if you're not
from New Zealand all the other ones, you shouldn't be
listening to just this one. Uh, if you're not from
New Zealand, then I think you'll enjoyed anyway, because um,
indigenous tribes are interesting. Plus those of you outside New
Zealand won't know how much stuff we got wrong. That's right. Yeah,
(01:05):
So chuckers, yes, were you familiar with the Maori ahead
of time? Did you know most of this stuff from
this article. No, I had seen the movie Once We're Warriors,
and that was my introduction to them. Is that right
many years ago? Yeah, that was the one that won
a bunch of Academy awards, right, or I'm thinking a
Whale Rider, You're thinking a Whale Rider? But um, yeah,
Once We're Warriors is not I feel good movie. Is
(01:27):
it a documentary, No, it's a it's um just a
regular narrative feature. But it's uh, it shows sort of
the dark side of the modern Maori, with like propensities
for violence and crime and alcoholism. So basically it's like,
I guess anyone who hears the story in the US
will be like this sounds familiar. An indigenous group pushed
(01:49):
around and completely obliterated by uh Europeans. Yeah, and then
later on perhaps suffering from alcoholism and and further marginalization,
trying to hang onto a culture that is not well,
it exists. But I don't want to spoil anything. Well,
I think, okay, So my my, uh, the extent that
(02:12):
I came to figure out my awareness of the Maori
um culture, it's my familiarity with Mike Tyson's face tattoo
and Um, the fact that there's such a thing as
tribal tattoos and that those are mostly rooted in Maori
uh tattooing. And in fact, the Maori they didn't necessarily
(02:32):
come up with tattooing. They're directly descended from the people
who did. But they had a specific kind of tattoo,
a specific method of tattooing. I should say that kind
of um gains them the status of the toughest tattoo
people around, and that they used not needles but chisels
to do their tattoos, which are called the tomoco. Yeah,
(02:57):
tom moko two words I think so, No, I mean
it's two words of moco is the face tattoo specifically,
I think right. Um, there's another type of tattoo that's
not quite as um spiritual as well, we'll find out,
called kiri two hey and um that's kind of more
like the tribal bands you see around people's arms and
(03:18):
things like that. Yeah. Like, if you're a hipster with
mocho face tattoos and you're from um, Michigan, then you're
gonna be frowned upon by real Maori people because you
shouldn't have a moco on your face. No, you should
have the other one because that's not as sacred, right,
(03:39):
you know what I'm saying. I know what you're saying.
And the question is do the people who have these
face tattoos know what you're saying. I don't know. I've
seen these white dudes with it, and I'm just like,
you know you're not Maori. Well I was. When I
was looking up like Mike Tyson Maori face tattoo, Like,
a whole slew of articles came up about how he was.
His visa was canceled before a trip to New Zealand.
(03:59):
It was like, and was it because he had faced tattoo?
No criminal past? Which makes sense? Yeah? And I don't his.
I don't think his is amoco. I think it's just
a face tattoo. Okay, let's get into it, man, because
there's much more to it than face statoos. Yeah. So
the Maori are credited as being the first um settlers
of New Zealand. The thing is, there's a lot of
(04:22):
controversy around this. I should say in academic circles, it's
um typically accepted, widely accepted, and that it's been proven
that the Maori were the original settlers of New Zealand. Um,
there are other circles that are like, no, there's there's
there's evidence that they're not the Maori zone. Oral history
says that there are people there before them. There's evidence
(04:43):
here there. But for the most part, if you believe
that in academic circles, you are considered fringe dweller. Right,
So for the most part that the generally accepted ideas
that the Maori settled New Zealand from Polynesia somewhere between
uh twelve eighty and fourteen fifty. Yeah, and they came
(05:04):
over on canoes, on ocean canoes that they still used today.
And um, they supposedly came from a mythical land called Hawaiki.
But um, these days scholars will say, what that probably
is is a combo of some real places. Um, Tahiti,
Samoa in the Cook Islands. Yeah, it's made of tomato exactly.
(05:24):
But they got to New Zealand and they named it
uh uh Otowa And there's a lot of pronunciations in here.
We might not get exactly right by the way, I
think that might be right. Actually, Oh to Rowa, I'm
gonna say the a is silent. I don't think so
it's capitalized even that means land of the long white cloud,
right and in other words, it's the Maori name for
(05:47):
New Zealand. Yeah. Um, And we should say that when
the Maori arrived, they arrived as they didn't describe themselves
or self describe as Maori until the Europeans came. Before then,
it was just desparate tribes that were familiar with one another.
But they settled. Uh. It's believed either in close together
waves or like pretty much all at once heading out
(06:10):
from Polynesia, arriving and saying okay, let's go to war.
Pretty much. The name means ordinary or common. And they
were and are tough people, right. And the reason Maori
means ordinary or common is they're referring to themselves in
comparison to white Europeans who, right, and their knickers in
(06:30):
their fancy hats with feathers and the muskets. Yeah, so
that's not very ordinary, especially compared to Maori. Um. And
they had a name for them, uh pakeha. Yes, those
are white Europeans who came colon settlers. Anybody who wasn't
Maori ordinary? Very true? Um. And like we said, they
(06:52):
were tough, they were very fierce. Um. When they battled
one of the trophies that they would and you know
a lot of tribes you'll see do this that we'll
put the old head on the steak as a trophy.
Very tough. Um. And then something else we'll get into
in a minute is very important to them called mana,
which is a power or prestige, and uh, there was
(07:13):
a lot of fighting going on when the mana was
challenged or disrupted basically sort of like, um, you insult me,
so we're gonna go to go to war, right, But
all of this was extremely structured. Um. The Maori wars
were typically held in the fall after the harvest, right
(07:34):
yeah football season. Yeah. Um, let's a really good analogy. Uh.
They would use weapons um that were usually clubs. There
were a short range battle clubs called kaika uh, and
then there were clubs that had a cutting edge that
were called patu. These are the most typical weapons used
in these battles. And you would get brained and creamed
(07:59):
and be up to heck. Yeah. But as far as
loss of life goes compared to firearms, there was there
were relatively few. Yeah. It sort of reminded me of
the old gang fights back in the day, like when
you would get together with your chains and your clubs
and hit each other and fight. Yeah, and then you
(08:21):
would walk away with your bruises and your scrapes and um,
not a lot of loss of life, right, But the
the intent was the same. It was the vanquished people
to get control of their land, to make them move
to more populated, less fertile areas. Um. And like you said,
it was to gain mana or prestige for your tribe. Um.
(08:44):
Everything changed once the Europeans came and brought firearms, as
is the pretty by now familiar narrative for anybody who's
listened to one of our cultural historical episodes. Yeah, it's
pretty interesting that it follows about the same path all
over the world. You know, the boomstick comes in, the
white folks come in with the boomstick and the powder,
(09:05):
the boom powder, and then things change, um. And things
changed by the Maori gaining access to some of these guns. Um.
And it says here you know, they would trade things
like pigs and flax and potatoes. But I watched the
documentary last night and six, as the documentarian said, was
the big trading coinage basically what it was six? What
(09:30):
is that s e x six? He kept saying it though,
you know, in that Kiwi accent, which is one of
my favorites, by the way. Um. And so they would
trade when they ran out of other stuff to trade.
You know, it was a big hot spot for Europeans,
not even to settle necessarily, but to come by and
do some trading and stop over. And they would stop
over and they would sign their women up to like
(09:53):
three week contracts and trade for one musket. And it
was a very sexual culture. Like women and this was
in the hundreds could take like multiple lovers and not
be looked down upon. And they didn't have the hangups
that europe did about sex. Yeah, I know, the HMS
bounty was mutinied because the sailors wanted to go back
(10:13):
to Polynesia. Well, dude, the Maori were down with it
early on. They didn't have big hang ups, um hang ups.
You could have sex before you were married and it
wasn't a big deal. Um. So the sex trade by
the eighteen thirties was the biggest uh money maker in
New Zealand at the musket huh so chuck the when
(10:38):
the muskets come along um eighteen oh seven is kind
of a seminal year because this is the year when
the first Maori tribe um got their hands on muskets
and used them for battle. Yeah. The problem is they
hadn't practiced quite so much, and so as they're trying
to fire and reload and aim, they were vanquished by
(10:59):
the ie they raided with using traditional clubs and get
clubbed in the head while they're trying to load a musket.
And I think that some of them started to swinging
the musket like a big club, which is it makes sense,
especially even out of frustration. And that actually started the
musket wars. Yeah, because the leader of that tribe said,
you know what, we these firearms. We shouldn't abandon him yet,
(11:21):
so let's get some more and we'll trade whatever we
need to for him, and let's practice this time, and
hence the musket wars were born. Once they got good,
they started tearing up the countryside in eighteen fifteen and
just basically said we've got these guns, we're gonna kill you,
take your land, enslave you, and maybe eat you. Yes,
(11:41):
they mentioned that a lot of Polynesian tribes they they
were accused of cannibalism. I don't know if it's true
or not. Yeah, bears pointing out them, right. Um, but
this first group that got the muskets definitely changed everything
because now it was kind of like, um, when the
Soviets and the Americans, when the Americans had the bomb.
(12:04):
So if you were like, we have to have the bomb.
Now you can't just have one country with the bomb.
You couldn't have just one Maori tribe with firearms. Other
groups were forced to adopt firearms as well, and hence
the musket wars got pretty bloody. Yeah, but it became
the great equalizer. About twenty Maori and New Zealander's died.
But once everyone had guns, it's sort of calm things
(12:27):
down in a weird way. Yeah. Well, it's like the
mutual usured destruction exactly. So before we move on, I
think it's a good time for a message break, all right,
So let's continue. So chuck um. The eighteen thirties, Uh,
(12:48):
two tribes that have been forced off their land by
other must get using. Maoris um went south. I believe
it was south of the Chatham Islands. Yeah. They wanted
to basically find a better place to live where all
this war wasn't going on. But they found the Moriory
people and that's right, but what's one more war? Exactly
(13:11):
because they were a peaceful people and they were like, well,
you know, these people are here, let's figure out what
to do with them. And they said kill them, kill
them basically, Yeah, that's what they did. They killed them,
thrust them into slavery, and then um basically took over
Chatham Island and now it was a Maori island, right.
So one genocide, that goot another genocide, that's right. So
(13:33):
the Maori are like pretty well established by this time,
but they're kind of hanging onto their cultural lives um,
and everything kind of hinged on a rumor. I don't
know if it was a factual rumor or not, but
come eighteen thirty five there was a rumor that France
was going to try to annex New Zealand. Yeah, and
(13:54):
previous previous day, eighteen forty they were pretty welcoming of
the Europeans, like they are of trading with them. They
got along pretty well. Even this guy in the documentary
that said six said that they were you know, they
got pretty friendly and they said, you know, come here,
route down will be trade partners and we all got
along great. But like you said in thirty five, that's
(14:15):
when France started, or at least there the Maori's point
of view was France was trying to get their little
French hooks in them, right and good. By this time,
the Maori had a pretty good idea that they were
in trouble. They were losing their numbers, which they think
hit about a hundred thousand before contact with Europeans, um
to not just the Musket Wars, but also disease introduced
(14:39):
by Europeans and familiar thing um. So they they decided
to allie themselves. In the face of this rumor that
France um was gonna annex New Zealand, they decided to
allie their lands to the British. And why not at
the time, who else are you gonna go with? Yeah,
they're like, we like your powdered wigs, Yeah you're read, Yeah,
(15:00):
like your accent. We can nick that and change it
around a bit and making our own. And so let's
sign the Treaty of Watangi. Yes, and uh it was.
It was a pretty good contract. At first, they thought,
um it gave the Marory control over their own land,
and yeah, so they think, um, until it turns out
that the British really said, you know what, we're gonna
take a lot of that land. We're gonna tax you
(15:23):
and violate the treaty in that way, and um, this
ancestral land that's been in your family forever, we're gonna
we're gonna just take what we want basically and shuffle
you to the side, just like American treaty was going
to be broken. So that started the New Zealand Wars.
And this guy in the documentary said, it's sort of again,
(15:43):
sort of like here in America, they weren't really taught
that so much in school, or they were taught a
very sanitized version of the New Zealand Wars, when in
fact it was thirty years of very bloody, fierce battling
with the British soldiers in the British government, and um,
dwindled down to really sad. So at this point, what
(16:08):
you have is what would be called an evolutionary bottleneck. Basically, Um,
you have a group of population that's in real danger
of extinction. Um. And I guess what the Marie does say, Okay,
all right, the British control New Zealand. We're not going away.
We are fierce warriors. Have you seen these tattoos we got? Uh?
(16:32):
And the British said again, we are in control of
New Zealand. You just said it yourself. We won't wipe
you out entirely because hey, it's almost the twentieth century
and who does that, right, Um, But we are going
to anglicize you. And first let's start by creating an alphabet.
Which this struck me as weird, right, Marie culture had
(16:54):
an oral tradition. They didn't have any written language. They
had totems basically what amount to totems comparison, um, But
they didn't have any kind of alphabet or written language.
And so European missionaries said about creating one. Rather than
teaching them just English, like oh, well, here's your written language,
(17:16):
they went about creating a Maori written language, which is
strange to me, you know, like there's this is the
Maori experience. It's almost like a condensed version of what
went on in in North America and in the United States.
There's like one treaty. Um, there's some weird aspects to it,
where like missionaries are not just trying to anglicize the groups,
(17:38):
they're helping them preserve their culture simultaneously. UM. And I
think that that was helped Maori culture survived by taking
their royal traditions and writing them down. But that's not
to say the Maori were helpless in preserving their own
traditions because as we'll see that everyone's expected to know
their own history and to be able to recite it. Yeah,
(18:01):
for sure. Um. And that that came along in the
seventies is when they really started to sort of gain
more ground in re establishing their culture and claiming their
culture as their own. Uh. Previous to that, they it
really dwindled because they they they scattered. Basically they started
to move to urban areas. Um. After World War Two
(18:22):
there was a mass migration. Prior to the war lived
in rural New Zealand and twenty years later lived in
urban areas. So I mean that's when you moved the
tribe from their native land. You take their land and
they moved to the big city. It just the culture
is just gonna go away. Well, it gets diluted, especially
(18:43):
in the face of the government. Um. The official language
of New Zealand was English. Yeah, they tried their best
to stamp it out there. Yeah, there were government schools
that weren't like they didn't teach anything about myer Maori culture. Yeah.
Um so yeah, the the culture was the people were
still there, but they were losing their culture. And then
like you said again, uh, analogous to um, North America
(19:06):
in the nineteen seventies saw a an awakening of pride
in being a Maori, just like the aim the American
Indian Movement was founded in the seventies UM and in
the nineteen eighties. By that time about of the Maori
were actually fluent speakers of their language, which was Terreo
Maori was the name of the language. So it was
(19:28):
a big win, it was, but the there was a
lot of groundwork that was laid between the seventies and eighties,
a lot of battles that were fought. In one UM,
there's a the establishment of the Maori Party and political party. UM.
They sued the government to have Treo Maori, the Maori
(19:50):
language be officially recognized somehow, and in ninety five UM
the British were forced to say, yes, this is a
treasure that we were supposed to protect under the Treaty
of what Tangy and we didn't, So now we're gonna
make this one of three official languages in New Zealand. English,
New Zealand Sign Language and uh Terrayo Maori are now
(20:14):
the three official languages of New Zealand. Exactly in nineteen
seventy five that was the designation of Maori Language Week
and they opened the first bilingual school in ninety eight.
So by the time five rolled around, they made it
an official one of the official languages. Um, like we
said about we're now speaking it and fluent in it,
and um, you know, the British were like, well, we'll
(20:36):
give you these small things, but what we don't want
to give you back is your land. But they were
forced to eventually with the what what Tangi Tribunal in
nineteen it was It's not h I don't think it
was um. I don't think they established laws. I think
it was just like you fill an application out into
(20:58):
a claim on some land and they'll decide whether or
not to give it back to your family. And they
did to a large degree, not all of it though.
So was it like a European run tribunal that like
um that indigenous people went and petitioned or was it
was it made up of indigenous people, because I got
the impression that they were like jealously guarded um Maori
(21:22):
culture and we're like suing for repatriation of Maori artifacts
from other museums. And well, yeah, that definitely happened because
there were you know, Maori trinkets and um heads all
over the world. And it's still ongoing today. Um, like
all these reparations are still going on, like people are
(21:42):
still getting back their land even here in the twenty
one century. So the um the Maori culture kind of
is vibrant, beaten down, hangs on by a thread and
starts to revive. Right. That's right, that's good. That's where
we're at. Okay, um, let's talk a little bit about
their culture again. A lot of it was deluded and
(22:05):
lost over time, but there's still like some very robust
um fundamentals that are very much alive today. Yeah. They're
very spiritual people, even though they were fierce warriors. Um
and you know a lot of the white folks thought
they were savages. Of course, sounds familiar, like the face
tattoos were very much repressed but never went away exactly. Um.
(22:25):
So they're very spiritual. They believe that um, their ancestors
and other supernatural beings are always around. UM, their family
and their ancestry is really really important. Their genealogy, which
they called the uh waka papa waka papa. I went
with wakapapa waka papa. UM, that's the genealogy of the ancestors.
(22:46):
Um spiritual and mythological significance and basically your whole spiritual
existence as a person is told through the wakapapa, and
the face tattoos will tell that story. That's what that's
what it means. That's why they're not hip on non
Maori people getting these things. Yeah, you're insulting like their
(23:07):
ancestry basically, and they're really protective of this stuff. I
was reading um about Maori waka papa stories and how
like if you're like a social services worker, like you're
not necessarily told to ask these questions that would be
considered part of somebody's wakapapa, Like they'll tell you if
(23:29):
they trust you. Um. Yeah, and you don't just run
around telling just anybody. There's actually some sort of UM.
I believe there's a law where Maori will tell the
their waka papa to government agencies. But these things have
to be like explicitly protected, like now that they're being
(23:49):
put out there on the internet and everything, they need
to like your protection because these things are sacred. They
belong to the individual because that's their history, and since
there wasn't anything before like a written language, speaking it
out loud is extremely sacred and protected. Yeah. Well, part
of it too is there. Um. They're really big on
(24:11):
learning and changing things that they did wrong, learning from
past mistakes. So part of the waka papa is it's
not just like some rosy history of their family. It's
also the bad because if you understand your past, you
can understand your future better. Right, And the point of
it is to keep going as far back as you
can and usually from from this article they and at
(24:32):
about the time your ancestors arrived. Uh so we talked
about mana a little bit, the honor in prestige. Um.
There are three forms of mana in the culture. It's
one is achieved by birth. So basically what the rank
of your descendants and your ancestors um the mana given
(24:53):
by other people um, which this article says they boiled
down to two good deeds, like being recognized for what
you've done to pat on the back. Yeah, here's your mana. Um,
and then mana of the group, which is when outsiders
visit and if they leave with a good you know,
a review on Yelp for you right or trip Advisor.
(25:14):
These guys are so welcoming, then that's mana of the
group and it's very important to them, you know, they
want to have a good uh leave a good impression.
I guess, well, yeah, there's exactly. Um, you can also
be affected by Correo corel. This one's tough, carrero ko
(25:35):
r e er oh. Which is the spoken word, um,
which is where you're you gain mana by house people
speak of you personally. I guess yeah. I think it's
kind of like mana of the group, but for an individual. Yeah,
and you mentioned earlier how they had an oral history.
Um that of course the white Christian missionaries poop pooed.
(25:58):
They said, now you've got right stuff down, and they said, no,
we're not just like telling stories here. We actually like
historians are trained and uh, their memory is trained to
remember everything about the history. So it wasn't just like, hey,
let's just tell stories about our past. Like historians were
revered and very important and and uh acknowledge for their
(26:20):
like incredible memories. So coming up next, we gotta have
a little message break, but we're going to talk about
what I think is one of the coolest things, which
is the hakka dance. That's something big. Huh yeah, well
let's let's get back to it, all right, the hakkah dance.
Have you seen this? I have? Um. I saw in Budapest,
(26:44):
of all places, at a natural history museum there was
a like basically a grass outfit and um, like there
was video of a guy wearing this grass outfit doing
a hackey dance by himself. Yeah, it was like ethnographical footage.
See I've never seen it, um with a like a
(27:04):
solo dancer. I've usually just seen it as a big group,
like a whole tribe. And um, it's really cool, Like
you should look it up on on the YouTube. H
A k A um. Very in fact, they're doing it
in the picture right there, very uh like intimidating. They
would do it before battle, and it's kind of scary
and like when they first get started, before they're even
(27:26):
moving in unison, they're just like individually shouting out things
and sticking out their tongue and their eyes are wide
and crazy and it's just like it's it would have
sent me running for the hills, right, Well, that's what
I was intended to. Um. And the New Zealand national
rugby team, the All Blacks, they do a hakka before
every rugby game. Yeah, they still do it for They've
(27:47):
done it for more than a hundred years, I think,
starting in Yeah, and they got the name the All
Blacks when they change uniforms to all black uniforms makes sense.
And um again to intimidate and even watch the rugby
team do it, and um, it's pretty cool. Yeah, Like
I would like to try it out, but I think
I would just people laugh at me. Let's let's if
(28:08):
I wouldn't intimidate anyone with my hawka, especially if you
like bulls dr eves and start your tongue out to that,
wouldn't I wouldn't have the same effect. Nope, let's talk.
Let's talk chuck. The two that is actually from the
Polynesian word t a t a u ta tao I
guess and um, which means to mark. Yeah, and they
(28:30):
we need to do one on the whole tattoo thing.
We will um and Like we said, the Maori aren't
the first to come up with tattoos. You can trace
back further in their Polynesian lineage, but they are the
ones that use chisels, really sharp chisels, but chisels. Nonetheless, Yeah,
I wonder how that works. It's like you hammer in
(28:54):
I know how chisel works. But and then you rub
the pigment. And so basically you take a very sharp
chisel and ammer and you make a mark. And then
after you've made your marks, you go through and rub
a pigment, usually taken from a certain type of caterpillar.
And then the since you're you've used the chisel instead
(29:14):
of a needle, there's not only a tattoo, but there's
also scarification along where you made that chisel mark. So
the original Maori tomokos were like they were pretty severe looking.
They looked even more like hardcore than a regular That's
what I was gonna ask is how like how tight
was it? You know? I think I have the feeling
(29:35):
that like this was like considered an art form. Is
all right? Well, I know, they, incidentally, um are the
ones who introduced color tattoos. UM, even though most of
the Moco have seen or black, So I don't know
if they just don't use color that much. They like,
I haven't seen any color money either, but you know
a rainbow dolphin. And they're like, let's just go back
(29:57):
to the moco. H Um. Men typically have the moco
on their face. Um, but women also have the tattoos
and um, they have them on the arms, the thighs,
the abdomen, and the crotch. Apparently, well, men will have
him on the face, buttocks, and thighs and it's detailed
stuff like I'm sure you've seen it before, um, but
(30:18):
if not, look it up right now, because it's not
like Mike Dyson, right, well, I mean it's there. It's
supposed to depict the waka papa, like each swirl and
symbol has like a real meaning that has to do
with the person's genealogy. That's right, it's pretty cool. Um.
And then again we said that there's another kind of
tattoo that's not quite as intricate that's called the um
(30:44):
what is it called the kira tuohy? Yeah, yeah, which
is just fun to say. And I think that won't
offend and and I think the impression that I have
is Maori culture from this resurgence of Maori pride in
the seventies and the revival of the culture, and say
like taking steps to save it, like they do very
(31:04):
jealously protect and guard their culture, their cultural history, their
personal lineage. Um. And so it is I mean maybe
even compared to other indigenous tribes, Respecting Maori culture on
its own terms is a good idea for sure. Uh.
These days they make quite a comeback in population. Um.
(31:24):
New Zealand as a whole has more than four million
people in about fourteen percent or Maori, compared to a
low of about forty five thousand and eighteen nineties. Yeah,
it's about five sixty thou people. Um. But like I said,
there are like many marginalized indigenous tribes all over the world,
there are problems with alcoholism. Um. The Maori are as
(31:49):
far as more likely to be drinkers than uh fifty
six percent Pacific Islanders. And among those who consume alcohol,
hazardous drinking occurs and thirty six percent of Mau. Um
And crime too, in violence is still sort of part
of the culture. Sadly, Um, I think I have some
stats here from a criminologist. Uh, even though they only
(32:12):
make up four percent of the population. I believe. Um,
they make up about of people in prison and they
you know, they throw that right back to the fact
that they were marginalized and their culture was stamped out.
And uh, young people are more likely to be violent.
Young Maori are than than older ones now. But um yeah,
(32:36):
apparently the losing your cultural identity really put a you know,
hamper on your evolution, is it? People? I mean you
can see that all over the world. Keen to you
certainly can. Um So, let's Maori. If you want to
know more? Do you have anything else right now? I
got nothing else. If you want to know more about
the Maori people, you can type in m A O
(32:57):
R I in the search bar at house to horks
dot com. We'll bring up this article. And since I
said Maori, it's time Chuck for listener mail. I'm gonna
call this email from a student at North Carolina Wilmington's. Hey, guys,
he's an econ dude. My girlfriend and I have been
together for a little over three years and are both
(33:18):
members of the stuff you should know Army. In the
early days of our relationship, I used to pay her
in doll hairs for favors such just cooking dinner or
getting out of bed to plug my phone in when
I forgot, I do this too. I tell Emily, like,
I'll give you six seventy five dollars to take out
the trash, and I'll just make up. You know, we
keep a running tap of what we owe each other.
It's just fun. He's just doll hairs, uh, Being that
(33:42):
a doll hair is not real currency, that's why he
uses it. Um. I could bid the price up or
down with ease, depending on her mood. The going rate
for dinner was about twelve thousand dollar hairs and a
BackRub was d h capital d h uh um. Of
course she was quickly. She quickly figured out that she
(34:02):
was not accruing the American dollars she thought she was,
and wanted her doll hairs exchange for US currency to
get myself out of this. I quickly got on eBay
to purchase her six hundred thousand Zimbabwe dollars to fulfill
up my financial debt obligation. Uh. Like you, I appreciated
the novelty of owning paper currency from a country that's
all hyperinflation on the scale the world has never seen.
(34:24):
We both got a real laugh out of a joke,
and I am out of debt now. We both now
carry one hundred thousand dollars in our wallets every day
so we don't feel like broke college kids. Um. Economic
research is a great passion of mine, from observation to
data collection and model building. I find happiness through math
and statistics. We don't how much in common talent Um
(34:47):
talent that's his name. I would be more than happy
to help you all with any economic questions you ever have,
although I don't think you need much, seeing as how
you You're super stuff. Guide to the Economy was so
well presented. Awesome. Yeah, so that is from Talent Wisdom.
His last name is wisdom Man from you and C. Wilmington's.
And I wrote him back and he followed up and
(35:08):
said he was in the middle of writing a lesson
plan and eating leftovers when he got my email. And
he said he's often daydreamed about being on listener mail.
This is a dream come true and you're gonna like
this part, Josh. He has a dog named Conway Twitty.
Conway Twitty owned by Talent Wisdom. That's right, uh, And
he he and Conway Twitty called his entire family to
(35:30):
let them know to look out for the upcoming listener mail.
Good going, thank you, talent Wisdom, Talent Wisdom, Conway Twitty,
and um his girlfriend. Yeah, he's got a lot of
doll hairs who who is very easy going with a
good sense of humor about money. Uh. If you have
a good story for us that has anything even remotely
(35:52):
to do with something we've even mentioned in passing on
any of the episodes here and Stuff you Should Know, Uh,
you can tweet to us at s y s K podcast.
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out on our website with us that Stuff you Should
(36:13):
Know dot com For more on this and thousands of
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Brought to you by the all New Toyota Corolla. Welcome
to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's
Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry's over there. So this
(00:21):
is stuff you should know the podcast. Jerry with her
face tattoos, fipster Maory wanna be Mariya thoughts Maori Maori? Yeah,
we just looked at the pronunciation. I was sure Chuck
was right because he picked this article. But it looks
like mayori. It seems like that should be an acceptable
pronunciation as well. I know, and you know we have
(00:43):
lots of quiet fans. They're in New Zealand. Hey, everybody,
and so this is for you. And if you're not
from New Zealand all the other ones, you shouldn't be
listening to just this one. Uh, if you're not from
New Zealand, then I think you'll enjoyed anyway, because um,
indigenous tribes are interesting. Plus those of you outside New
Zealand won't know how much stuff we got wrong. That's right. Yeah,
(01:05):
So chuckers, yes, were you familiar with the Maori ahead
of time? Did you know most of this stuff from
this article. No, I had seen the movie Once We're Warriors,
and that was my introduction to them. Is that right
many years ago? Yeah, that was the one that won
a bunch of Academy awards, right, or I'm thinking a
Whale Rider, You're thinking a Whale Rider? But um, yeah,
Once We're Warriors is not I feel good movie. Is
(01:27):
it a documentary, No, it's a it's um just a
regular narrative feature. But it's uh, it shows sort of
the dark side of the modern Maori, with like propensities
for violence and crime and alcoholism. So basically it's like,
I guess anyone who hears the story in the US
will be like this sounds familiar. An indigenous group pushed
(01:49):
around and completely obliterated by uh Europeans. Yeah, and then
later on perhaps suffering from alcoholism and and further marginalization,
trying to hang onto a culture that is not well,
it exists. But I don't want to spoil anything. Well,
I think, okay, So my my, uh, the extent that
(02:12):
I came to figure out my awareness of the Maori
um culture, it's my familiarity with Mike Tyson's face tattoo
and Um, the fact that there's such a thing as
tribal tattoos and that those are mostly rooted in Maori
uh tattooing. And in fact, the Maori they didn't necessarily
(02:32):
come up with tattooing. They're directly descended from the people
who did. But they had a specific kind of tattoo,
a specific method of tattooing. I should say that kind
of um gains them the status of the toughest tattoo
people around, and that they used not needles but chisels
to do their tattoos, which are called the tomoco. Yeah,
(02:57):
tom moko two words I think so, No, I mean
it's two words of moco is the face tattoo specifically,
I think right. Um, there's another type of tattoo that's
not quite as um spiritual as well, we'll find out,
called kiri two hey and um that's kind of more
like the tribal bands you see around people's arms and
(03:18):
things like that. Yeah. Like, if you're a hipster with
mocho face tattoos and you're from um, Michigan, then you're
gonna be frowned upon by real Maori people because you
shouldn't have a moco on your face. No, you should
have the other one because that's not as sacred, right,
(03:39):
you know what I'm saying. I know what you're saying.
And the question is do the people who have these
face tattoos know what you're saying. I don't know. I've
seen these white dudes with it, and I'm just like,
you know you're not Maori. Well I was. When I
was looking up like Mike Tyson Maori face tattoo, Like,
a whole slew of articles came up about how he was.
His visa was canceled before a trip to New Zealand.
(03:59):
It was like, and was it because he had faced tattoo?
No criminal past? Which makes sense? Yeah? And I don't his.
I don't think his is amoco. I think it's just
a face tattoo. Okay, let's get into it, man, because
there's much more to it than face statoos. Yeah. So
the Maori are credited as being the first um settlers
of New Zealand. The thing is, there's a lot of
(04:22):
controversy around this. I should say in academic circles, it's
um typically accepted, widely accepted, and that it's been proven
that the Maori were the original settlers of New Zealand. Um,
there are other circles that are like, no, there's there's
there's evidence that they're not the Maori zone. Oral history
says that there are people there before them. There's evidence
(04:43):
here there. But for the most part, if you believe
that in academic circles, you are considered fringe dweller. Right,
So for the most part that the generally accepted ideas
that the Maori settled New Zealand from Polynesia somewhere between
uh twelve eighty and fourteen fifty. Yeah, and they came
(05:04):
over on canoes, on ocean canoes that they still used today.
And um, they supposedly came from a mythical land called Hawaiki.
But um, these days scholars will say, what that probably
is is a combo of some real places. Um, Tahiti,
Samoa in the Cook Islands. Yeah, it's made of tomato exactly.
(05:24):
But they got to New Zealand and they named it
uh uh Otowa And there's a lot of pronunciations in here.
We might not get exactly right by the way, I
think that might be right. Actually, Oh to Rowa, I'm
gonna say the a is silent. I don't think so
it's capitalized even that means land of the long white cloud,
right and in other words, it's the Maori name for
(05:47):
New Zealand. Yeah. Um, And we should say that when
the Maori arrived, they arrived as they didn't describe themselves
or self describe as Maori until the Europeans came. Before then,
it was just desparate tribes that were familiar with one another.
But they settled. Uh. It's believed either in close together
waves or like pretty much all at once heading out
(06:10):
from Polynesia, arriving and saying okay, let's go to war.
Pretty much. The name means ordinary or common. And they
were and are tough people, right. And the reason Maori
means ordinary or common is they're referring to themselves in
comparison to white Europeans who, right, and their knickers in
(06:30):
their fancy hats with feathers and the muskets. Yeah, so
that's not very ordinary, especially compared to Maori. Um. And
they had a name for them, uh pakeha. Yes, those
are white Europeans who came colon settlers. Anybody who wasn't
Maori ordinary? Very true? Um. And like we said, they
(06:52):
were tough, they were very fierce. Um. When they battled
one of the trophies that they would and you know
a lot of tribes you'll see do this that we'll
put the old head on the steak as a trophy.
Very tough. Um. And then something else we'll get into
in a minute is very important to them called mana,
which is a power or prestige, and uh, there was
(07:13):
a lot of fighting going on when the mana was
challenged or disrupted basically sort of like, um, you insult me,
so we're gonna go to go to war, right, But
all of this was extremely structured. Um. The Maori wars
were typically held in the fall after the harvest, right
(07:34):
yeah football season. Yeah. Um, let's a really good analogy. Uh.
They would use weapons um that were usually clubs. There
were a short range battle clubs called kaika uh, and
then there were clubs that had a cutting edge that
were called patu. These are the most typical weapons used
in these battles. And you would get brained and creamed
(07:59):
and be up to heck. Yeah. But as far as
loss of life goes compared to firearms, there was there
were relatively few. Yeah. It sort of reminded me of
the old gang fights back in the day, like when
you would get together with your chains and your clubs
and hit each other and fight. Yeah, and then you
(08:21):
would walk away with your bruises and your scrapes and um,
not a lot of loss of life, right, But the
the intent was the same. It was the vanquished people
to get control of their land, to make them move
to more populated, less fertile areas. Um. And like you said,
it was to gain mana or prestige for your tribe. Um.
(08:44):
Everything changed once the Europeans came and brought firearms, as
is the pretty by now familiar narrative for anybody who's
listened to one of our cultural historical episodes. Yeah, it's
pretty interesting that it follows about the same path all
over the world. You know, the boomstick comes in, the
white folks come in with the boomstick and the powder,
(09:05):
the boom powder, and then things change, um. And things
changed by the Maori gaining access to some of these guns. Um.
And it says here you know, they would trade things
like pigs and flax and potatoes. But I watched the
documentary last night and six, as the documentarian said, was
the big trading coinage basically what it was six? What
(09:30):
is that s e x six? He kept saying it though,
you know, in that Kiwi accent, which is one of
my favorites, by the way. Um. And so they would
trade when they ran out of other stuff to trade.
You know, it was a big hot spot for Europeans,
not even to settle necessarily, but to come by and
do some trading and stop over. And they would stop
over and they would sign their women up to like
(09:53):
three week contracts and trade for one musket. And it
was a very sexual culture. Like women and this was
in the hundreds could take like multiple lovers and not
be looked down upon. And they didn't have the hangups
that europe did about sex. Yeah, I know, the HMS
bounty was mutinied because the sailors wanted to go back
(10:13):
to Polynesia. Well, dude, the Maori were down with it
early on. They didn't have big hang ups, um hang ups.
You could have sex before you were married and it
wasn't a big deal. Um. So the sex trade by
the eighteen thirties was the biggest uh money maker in
New Zealand at the musket huh so chuck the when
(10:38):
the muskets come along um eighteen oh seven is kind
of a seminal year because this is the year when
the first Maori tribe um got their hands on muskets
and used them for battle. Yeah. The problem is they
hadn't practiced quite so much, and so as they're trying
to fire and reload and aim, they were vanquished by
(10:59):
the ie they raided with using traditional clubs and get
clubbed in the head while they're trying to load a musket.
And I think that some of them started to swinging
the musket like a big club, which is it makes sense,
especially even out of frustration. And that actually started the
musket wars. Yeah, because the leader of that tribe said,
you know what, we these firearms. We shouldn't abandon him yet,
(11:21):
so let's get some more and we'll trade whatever we
need to for him, and let's practice this time, and
hence the musket wars were born. Once they got good,
they started tearing up the countryside in eighteen fifteen and
just basically said we've got these guns, we're gonna kill you,
take your land, enslave you, and maybe eat you. Yes,
(11:41):
they mentioned that a lot of Polynesian tribes they they
were accused of cannibalism. I don't know if it's true
or not. Yeah, bears pointing out them, right. Um, but
this first group that got the muskets definitely changed everything
because now it was kind of like, um, when the
Soviets and the Americans, when the Americans had the bomb.
(12:04):
So if you were like, we have to have the bomb.
Now you can't just have one country with the bomb.
You couldn't have just one Maori tribe with firearms. Other
groups were forced to adopt firearms as well, and hence
the musket wars got pretty bloody. Yeah, but it became
the great equalizer. About twenty Maori and New Zealander's died.
But once everyone had guns, it's sort of calm things
(12:27):
down in a weird way. Yeah. Well, it's like the
mutual usured destruction exactly. So before we move on, I
think it's a good time for a message break, all right,
So let's continue. So chuck um. The eighteen thirties, Uh,
(12:48):
two tribes that have been forced off their land by
other must get using. Maoris um went south. I believe
it was south of the Chatham Islands. Yeah. They wanted
to basically find a better place to live where all
this war wasn't going on. But they found the Moriory
people and that's right, but what's one more war? Exactly
(13:11):
because they were a peaceful people and they were like, well,
you know, these people are here, let's figure out what
to do with them. And they said kill them, kill
them basically, Yeah, that's what they did. They killed them,
thrust them into slavery, and then um basically took over
Chatham Island and now it was a Maori island, right.
So one genocide, that goot another genocide, that's right. So
(13:33):
the Maori are like pretty well established by this time,
but they're kind of hanging onto their cultural lives um,
and everything kind of hinged on a rumor. I don't
know if it was a factual rumor or not, but
come eighteen thirty five there was a rumor that France
was going to try to annex New Zealand. Yeah, and
(13:54):
previous previous day, eighteen forty they were pretty welcoming of
the Europeans, like they are of trading with them. They
got along pretty well. Even this guy in the documentary
that said six said that they were you know, they
got pretty friendly and they said, you know, come here,
route down will be trade partners and we all got
along great. But like you said in thirty five, that's
(14:15):
when France started, or at least there the Maori's point
of view was France was trying to get their little
French hooks in them, right and good. By this time,
the Maori had a pretty good idea that they were
in trouble. They were losing their numbers, which they think
hit about a hundred thousand before contact with Europeans, um
to not just the Musket Wars, but also disease introduced
(14:39):
by Europeans and familiar thing um. So they they decided
to allie themselves. In the face of this rumor that
France um was gonna annex New Zealand, they decided to
allie their lands to the British. And why not at
the time, who else are you gonna go with? Yeah,
they're like, we like your powdered wigs, Yeah you're read, Yeah,
(15:00):
like your accent. We can nick that and change it
around a bit and making our own. And so let's
sign the Treaty of Watangi. Yes, and uh it was.
It was a pretty good contract. At first, they thought,
um it gave the Marory control over their own land,
and yeah, so they think, um, until it turns out
that the British really said, you know what, we're gonna
take a lot of that land. We're gonna tax you
(15:23):
and violate the treaty in that way, and um, this
ancestral land that's been in your family forever, we're gonna
we're gonna just take what we want basically and shuffle
you to the side, just like American treaty was going
to be broken. So that started the New Zealand Wars.
And this guy in the documentary said, it's sort of again,
(15:43):
sort of like here in America, they weren't really taught
that so much in school, or they were taught a
very sanitized version of the New Zealand Wars, when in
fact it was thirty years of very bloody, fierce battling
with the British soldiers in the British government, and um,
dwindled down to really sad. So at this point, what
(16:08):
you have is what would be called an evolutionary bottleneck. Basically, Um,
you have a group of population that's in real danger
of extinction. Um. And I guess what the Marie does say, Okay,
all right, the British control New Zealand. We're not going away.
We are fierce warriors. Have you seen these tattoos we got? Uh?
(16:32):
And the British said again, we are in control of
New Zealand. You just said it yourself. We won't wipe
you out entirely because hey, it's almost the twentieth century
and who does that, right, Um, But we are going
to anglicize you. And first let's start by creating an alphabet.
Which this struck me as weird, right, Marie culture had
(16:54):
an oral tradition. They didn't have any written language. They
had totems basically what amount to totems comparison, um, But
they didn't have any kind of alphabet or written language.
And so European missionaries said about creating one. Rather than
teaching them just English, like oh, well, here's your written language,
(17:16):
they went about creating a Maori written language, which is
strange to me, you know, like there's this is the
Maori experience. It's almost like a condensed version of what
went on in in North America and in the United States.
There's like one treaty. Um, there's some weird aspects to it,
where like missionaries are not just trying to anglicize the groups,
(17:38):
they're helping them preserve their culture simultaneously. UM. And I
think that that was helped Maori culture survived by taking
their royal traditions and writing them down. But that's not
to say the Maori were helpless in preserving their own
traditions because as we'll see that everyone's expected to know
their own history and to be able to recite it. Yeah,
(18:01):
for sure. Um. And that that came along in the
seventies is when they really started to sort of gain
more ground in re establishing their culture and claiming their
culture as their own. Uh. Previous to that, they it
really dwindled because they they they scattered. Basically they started
to move to urban areas. Um. After World War Two
(18:22):
there was a mass migration. Prior to the war lived
in rural New Zealand and twenty years later lived in
urban areas. So I mean that's when you moved the
tribe from their native land. You take their land and
they moved to the big city. It just the culture
is just gonna go away. Well, it gets diluted, especially
(18:43):
in the face of the government. Um. The official language
of New Zealand was English. Yeah, they tried their best
to stamp it out there. Yeah, there were government schools
that weren't like they didn't teach anything about myer Maori culture. Yeah.
Um so yeah, the the culture was the people were
still there, but they were losing their culture. And then
like you said again, uh, analogous to um, North America
(19:06):
in the nineteen seventies saw a an awakening of pride
in being a Maori, just like the aim the American
Indian Movement was founded in the seventies UM and in
the nineteen eighties. By that time about of the Maori
were actually fluent speakers of their language, which was Terreo
Maori was the name of the language. So it was
(19:28):
a big win, it was, but the there was a
lot of groundwork that was laid between the seventies and eighties,
a lot of battles that were fought. In one UM,
there's a the establishment of the Maori Party and political party. UM.
They sued the government to have Treo Maori, the Maori
(19:50):
language be officially recognized somehow, and in ninety five UM
the British were forced to say, yes, this is a
treasure that we were supposed to protect under the Treaty
of what Tangy and we didn't, So now we're gonna
make this one of three official languages in New Zealand. English,
New Zealand Sign Language and uh Terrayo Maori are now
(20:14):
the three official languages of New Zealand. Exactly in nineteen
seventy five that was the designation of Maori Language Week
and they opened the first bilingual school in ninety eight.
So by the time five rolled around, they made it
an official one of the official languages. Um, like we
said about we're now speaking it and fluent in it,
and um, you know, the British were like, well, we'll
(20:36):
give you these small things, but what we don't want
to give you back is your land. But they were
forced to eventually with the what what Tangi Tribunal in
nineteen it was It's not h I don't think it
was um. I don't think they established laws. I think
it was just like you fill an application out into
(20:58):
a claim on some land and they'll decide whether or
not to give it back to your family. And they
did to a large degree, not all of it though.
So was it like a European run tribunal that like
um that indigenous people went and petitioned or was it
was it made up of indigenous people, because I got
the impression that they were like jealously guarded um Maori
(21:22):
culture and we're like suing for repatriation of Maori artifacts
from other museums. And well, yeah, that definitely happened because
there were you know, Maori trinkets and um heads all
over the world. And it's still ongoing today. Um, like
all these reparations are still going on, like people are
(21:42):
still getting back their land even here in the twenty
one century. So the um the Maori culture kind of
is vibrant, beaten down, hangs on by a thread and
starts to revive. Right. That's right, that's good. That's where
we're at. Okay, um, let's talk a little bit about
their culture again. A lot of it was deluded and
(22:05):
lost over time, but there's still like some very robust
um fundamentals that are very much alive today. Yeah. They're
very spiritual people, even though they were fierce warriors. Um
and you know a lot of the white folks thought
they were savages. Of course, sounds familiar, like the face
tattoos were very much repressed but never went away exactly. Um.
(22:25):
So they're very spiritual. They believe that um, their ancestors
and other supernatural beings are always around. UM, their family
and their ancestry is really really important. Their genealogy, which
they called the uh waka papa waka papa. I went
with wakapapa waka papa. UM, that's the genealogy of the ancestors.
(22:46):
Um spiritual and mythological significance and basically your whole spiritual
existence as a person is told through the wakapapa, and
the face tattoos will tell that story. That's what that's
what it means. That's why they're not hip on non
Maori people getting these things. Yeah, you're insulting like their
(23:07):
ancestry basically, and they're really protective of this stuff. I
was reading um about Maori waka papa stories and how
like if you're like a social services worker, like you're
not necessarily told to ask these questions that would be
considered part of somebody's wakapapa, Like they'll tell you if
(23:29):
they trust you. Um. Yeah, and you don't just run
around telling just anybody. There's actually some sort of UM.
I believe there's a law where Maori will tell the
their waka papa to government agencies. But these things have
to be like explicitly protected, like now that they're being
(23:49):
put out there on the internet and everything, they need
to like your protection because these things are sacred. They
belong to the individual because that's their history, and since
there wasn't anything before like a written language, speaking it
out loud is extremely sacred and protected. Yeah. Well, part
of it too is there. Um. They're really big on
(24:11):
learning and changing things that they did wrong, learning from
past mistakes. So part of the waka papa is it's
not just like some rosy history of their family. It's
also the bad because if you understand your past, you
can understand your future better. Right, And the point of
it is to keep going as far back as you
can and usually from from this article they and at
(24:32):
about the time your ancestors arrived. Uh so we talked
about mana a little bit, the honor in prestige. Um.
There are three forms of mana in the culture. It's
one is achieved by birth. So basically what the rank
of your descendants and your ancestors um the mana given
(24:53):
by other people um, which this article says they boiled
down to two good deeds, like being recognized for what
you've done to pat on the back. Yeah, here's your mana. Um,
and then mana of the group, which is when outsiders
visit and if they leave with a good you know,
a review on Yelp for you right or trip Advisor.
(25:14):
These guys are so welcoming, then that's mana of the
group and it's very important to them, you know, they
want to have a good uh leave a good impression.
I guess, well, yeah, there's exactly. Um, you can also
be affected by Correo corel. This one's tough, carrero ko
(25:35):
r e er oh. Which is the spoken word, um,
which is where you're you gain mana by house people
speak of you personally. I guess yeah. I think it's
kind of like mana of the group, but for an individual. Yeah,
and you mentioned earlier how they had an oral history.
Um that of course the white Christian missionaries poop pooed.
(25:58):
They said, now you've got right stuff down, and they said, no,
we're not just like telling stories here. We actually like
historians are trained and uh, their memory is trained to
remember everything about the history. So it wasn't just like, hey,
let's just tell stories about our past. Like historians were
revered and very important and and uh acknowledge for their
(26:20):
like incredible memories. So coming up next, we gotta have
a little message break, but we're going to talk about
what I think is one of the coolest things, which
is the hakka dance. That's something big. Huh yeah, well
let's let's get back to it, all right, the hakkah dance.
Have you seen this? I have? Um. I saw in Budapest,
(26:44):
of all places, at a natural history museum there was
a like basically a grass outfit and um, like there
was video of a guy wearing this grass outfit doing
a hackey dance by himself. Yeah, it was like ethnographical footage.
See I've never seen it, um with a like a
(27:04):
solo dancer. I've usually just seen it as a big group,
like a whole tribe. And um, it's really cool, Like
you should look it up on on the YouTube. H
A k A um. Very in fact, they're doing it
in the picture right there, very uh like intimidating. They
would do it before battle, and it's kind of scary
and like when they first get started, before they're even
(27:26):
moving in unison, they're just like individually shouting out things
and sticking out their tongue and their eyes are wide
and crazy and it's just like it's it would have
sent me running for the hills, right, Well, that's what
I was intended to. Um. And the New Zealand national
rugby team, the All Blacks, they do a hakka before
every rugby game. Yeah, they still do it for They've
(27:47):
done it for more than a hundred years, I think,
starting in Yeah, and they got the name the All
Blacks when they change uniforms to all black uniforms makes sense.
And um again to intimidate and even watch the rugby
team do it, and um, it's pretty cool. Yeah, Like
I would like to try it out, but I think
I would just people laugh at me. Let's let's if
(28:08):
I wouldn't intimidate anyone with my hawka, especially if you
like bulls dr eves and start your tongue out to that,
wouldn't I wouldn't have the same effect. Nope, let's talk.
Let's talk chuck. The two that is actually from the
Polynesian word t a t a u ta tao I
guess and um, which means to mark. Yeah, and they
(28:30):
we need to do one on the whole tattoo thing.
We will um and Like we said, the Maori aren't
the first to come up with tattoos. You can trace
back further in their Polynesian lineage, but they are the
ones that use chisels, really sharp chisels, but chisels. Nonetheless, Yeah,
I wonder how that works. It's like you hammer in
(28:54):
I know how chisel works. But and then you rub
the pigment. And so basically you take a very sharp
chisel and ammer and you make a mark. And then
after you've made your marks, you go through and rub
a pigment, usually taken from a certain type of caterpillar.
And then the since you're you've used the chisel instead
(29:14):
of a needle, there's not only a tattoo, but there's
also scarification along where you made that chisel mark. So
the original Maori tomokos were like they were pretty severe looking.
They looked even more like hardcore than a regular That's
what I was gonna ask is how like how tight
was it? You know? I think I have the feeling
(29:35):
that like this was like considered an art form. Is
all right? Well, I know, they, incidentally, um are the
ones who introduced color tattoos. UM, even though most of
the Moco have seen or black, So I don't know
if they just don't use color that much. They like,
I haven't seen any color money either, but you know
a rainbow dolphin. And they're like, let's just go back
(29:57):
to the moco. H Um. Men typically have the moco
on their face. Um, but women also have the tattoos
and um, they have them on the arms, the thighs,
the abdomen, and the crotch. Apparently, well, men will have
him on the face, buttocks, and thighs and it's detailed
stuff like I'm sure you've seen it before, um, but
(30:18):
if not, look it up right now, because it's not
like Mike Dyson, right, well, I mean it's there. It's
supposed to depict the waka papa, like each swirl and
symbol has like a real meaning that has to do
with the person's genealogy. That's right, it's pretty cool. Um.
And then again we said that there's another kind of
tattoo that's not quite as intricate that's called the um
(30:44):
what is it called the kira tuohy? Yeah, yeah, which
is just fun to say. And I think that won't
offend and and I think the impression that I have
is Maori culture from this resurgence of Maori pride in
the seventies and the revival of the culture, and say
like taking steps to save it, like they do very
(31:04):
jealously protect and guard their culture, their cultural history, their
personal lineage. Um. And so it is I mean maybe
even compared to other indigenous tribes, Respecting Maori culture on
its own terms is a good idea for sure. Uh.
These days they make quite a comeback in population. Um.
(31:24):
New Zealand as a whole has more than four million
people in about fourteen percent or Maori, compared to a
low of about forty five thousand and eighteen nineties. Yeah,
it's about five sixty thou people. Um. But like I said,
there are like many marginalized indigenous tribes all over the world,
there are problems with alcoholism. Um. The Maori are as
(31:49):
far as more likely to be drinkers than uh fifty
six percent Pacific Islanders. And among those who consume alcohol,
hazardous drinking occurs and thirty six percent of Mau. Um
And crime too, in violence is still sort of part
of the culture. Sadly, Um, I think I have some
stats here from a criminologist. Uh, even though they only
(32:12):
make up four percent of the population. I believe. Um,
they make up about of people in prison and they
you know, they throw that right back to the fact
that they were marginalized and their culture was stamped out.
And uh, young people are more likely to be violent.
Young Maori are than than older ones now. But um yeah,
(32:36):
apparently the losing your cultural identity really put a you know,
hamper on your evolution, is it? People? I mean you
can see that all over the world. Keen to you
certainly can. Um So, let's Maori. If you want to
know more? Do you have anything else right now? I
got nothing else. If you want to know more about
the Maori people, you can type in m A O
(32:57):
R I in the search bar at house to horks
dot com. We'll bring up this article. And since I
said Maori, it's time Chuck for listener mail. I'm gonna
call this email from a student at North Carolina Wilmington's. Hey, guys,
he's an econ dude. My girlfriend and I have been
together for a little over three years and are both
(33:18):
members of the stuff you should know Army. In the
early days of our relationship, I used to pay her
in doll hairs for favors such just cooking dinner or
getting out of bed to plug my phone in when
I forgot, I do this too. I tell Emily, like,
I'll give you six seventy five dollars to take out
the trash, and I'll just make up. You know, we
keep a running tap of what we owe each other.
It's just fun. He's just doll hairs, uh, Being that
(33:42):
a doll hair is not real currency, that's why he
uses it. Um. I could bid the price up or
down with ease, depending on her mood. The going rate
for dinner was about twelve thousand dollar hairs and a
BackRub was d h capital d h uh um. Of
course she was quickly. She quickly figured out that she
(34:02):
was not accruing the American dollars she thought she was,
and wanted her doll hairs exchange for US currency to
get myself out of this. I quickly got on eBay
to purchase her six hundred thousand Zimbabwe dollars to fulfill
up my financial debt obligation. Uh. Like you, I appreciated
the novelty of owning paper currency from a country that's
all hyperinflation on the scale the world has never seen.
(34:24):
We both got a real laugh out of a joke,
and I am out of debt now. We both now
carry one hundred thousand dollars in our wallets every day
so we don't feel like broke college kids. Um. Economic
research is a great passion of mine, from observation to
data collection and model building. I find happiness through math
and statistics. We don't how much in common talent Um
(34:47):
talent that's his name. I would be more than happy
to help you all with any economic questions you ever have,
although I don't think you need much, seeing as how
you You're super stuff. Guide to the Economy was so
well presented. Awesome. Yeah, so that is from Talent Wisdom.
His last name is wisdom Man from you and C. Wilmington's.
And I wrote him back and he followed up and
(35:08):
said he was in the middle of writing a lesson
plan and eating leftovers when he got my email. And
he said he's often daydreamed about being on listener mail.
This is a dream come true and you're gonna like
this part, Josh. He has a dog named Conway Twitty.
Conway Twitty owned by Talent Wisdom. That's right, uh, And
he he and Conway Twitty called his entire family to
(35:30):
let them know to look out for the upcoming listener mail.
Good going, thank you, talent Wisdom, Talent Wisdom, Conway Twitty,
and um his girlfriend. Yeah, he's got a lot of
doll hairs who who is very easy going with a
good sense of humor about money. Uh. If you have
a good story for us that has anything even remotely
(35:52):
to do with something we've even mentioned in passing on
any of the episodes here and Stuff you Should Know, Uh,
you can tweet to us at s y s K podcast.
You can join us on Facebook dot com slash Stuff
you Should Know. You can send us an email to
Stuff Podcasts at Discovery dot com, and you can hang
out on our website with us that Stuff you Should
(36:13):
Know dot com For more on this and thousands of
other topics, is it how Stuff works dot Com. Brought
to you by the all new Toyota Corolla
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Josh Clark
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