Treatment of Maori is borderline insulting

[NPJ]

I was excited to see Paradox finally including the Maori in the game with the Leviathan DLC and update. However there is a lot to be desired. Paradox has clearly done a very superficial research job, and as a result made rookie errors that make the game unplayable for anyone who actually knows a thing or two about Maori culture and history.

In no particular order:

1. The 'nations' represented largely do not refer to any real political entities that ever existed. They appear to mostly refer to the 'great waka' or canoes that in Maori mythology settled New Zealand and from which the tribes descend. Aside from the Tainui confederation in the Waikato, these were never actual real political entities. In other cases it's just nonsensical - the northernmost nation is called "Te Tai Tokerau" which just means "the north". Is it too much to use the major iwi (tribes)?

2. Surnames/dynasty names are all wrong. It is completely immersion-breaking when my Maori chief has the surname Butta or Lakeko, neither of which are Maori names and both of which include letters and sounds that don't exist in Maori.

3. An event popped up describing 'utu' as some sort of mystical force called 'the utu' that creates balance rather than a simple concept of reciprocity between groups and individuals.

4. Kaitiakitanga, or guardianship, was misspelled as 'kaikiakitanga'.

5. There were Polynesia-wide events that described animals that hadn't made it to New Zealand. There were resources such as gems that didn't exist, or were not significant, and even if you assume it refers to pounamu (jade) it's in the wrong place - the major stores were on the West Coast of the South Island, not Northland and Tauranga. There's a reason the South Island is called "Te Wai Pounamu".

6. When you become Aotearoa and switch events you lose all unique national ideas and just get the generic ones. That seems odd.

7. Aotearoa is a weird grey, which is a drab colour that was never used in Maori art and has never been used to represent Maoridom or New Zealand.

8. The symbols on the Maori shield/flags include designs that were never used in Maori art, and use colours that were never used in Maori art. Maori are represented by signs utterly foreign to them.

9. The admittedly very good looking unit sprites seem to freeze when moving at certain zoom levels, which causes confusion. They also have serated blades, which were not a thing for pre-European Maori weapons, which were essentially staffs (taiaha) or clubs (eg patu).

10. Development is the same for every tribe all over New Zealand, despite the fact that settlement was focused very heavily in the north, where Maori first arrived and where it is warmer and they could grow Polynesian crops, whereas the South Island barely had any settlement at all.

I'm sure there are more issues. This is just what I noticed in the short time I played the game before giving up.

 

[Blindbohemian]

Hey @Blindbohemian, this is what I see on the current beta version (1.31.4). Not sure if it's different from 1.31.3 as far as NZ/Maori are concerned.

Spoiler: Tags

Spoiler: Provinces

Even if it takes time, I'm glad the devs are being receptive.

Awesome. Thank you. That looks so much better. Now to put together a strong suggestion for Victoria 3

 

[wingren013]

Paradox couldn't be bother to do a basic level of research on how the Ming tributary system worked. Why do you think they'd do any real research anywhere?

 

[Blindbohemian]

I wasn’t certain about this critique so I didn’t level it earlier, but I have spoken to a few other people (including Aroha Harris, an author of the book used above) and kaumatua and I think now I can firmly say that the name Aotearoa for the unified Māori tag is pretty intensely questionable.

“Aotearoa” is nominally the Māori name for the whole of New Zealand, which is why it’s been chosen as the formable. This is true in 2021. The problem is that it isn’t true in 1444 or 1821 or any point in between.

Historically the reason Māori are said to know New Zealand as “Aotearoa” is because Kupe the Navigator, discovering New Zealand, first sighted it as a long white cloud lying over Hokianga in Te Tai Tokerau. Aotearoa - land of the long white cloud. This only makes sense as a name for New Zealand, though, if you imagine “New Zealand” as one whole big thing that Kupe discovered all at once… as Europeans did, but not as Māori did. Maori ancestors came from islands, and understood themselves as living on islands. Giving names to collections of islands was a wholly European thing: to the highly maritime, island-based Maori culture any collection of islands was pretty arbitrarily defined. Aotearoa, then, only referred to New Zealand's North Island (and indeed more likely only to the north of the North Island--the area around Hokianga that Kupe actually sighted). Michael King's seminal 2003 Penguin History of New Zealand writes:

...in the pre-European era, Maori had no name for the country as a whole. Polynesian ancestors came from motu or islands and it was to islands that they gave names.

In a later interview, King further clarified:

There were some Maori tribes that had a tradition that the North Island had been called Aotea and Aotearoa but the two writers who popularised the Aotearoa name and the story of Kupe associated with it, were a man called Stephenson Percy-Smith and William Pember-Reeves and in a school journal in particular, it went into every school in the country in the early 20th century, they used Percy-Smith's material and the story about Kupe and Aotearoa said this is a wonderful name and it's a wonderful story, wouldn't it be great if everybody called New Zealand, Aotearoa. And the result was that Maori children went to school.. We had a pretty extensive education system both in general schools and in the native school system.. And they learnt at school that the Maori name of New Zealand was Aotearoa and that's how it became "the Maori name".

In Roger Robinson's Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature reference is made to the "Maori" name of New Zealand prior to the introduction and popularisation of "Aotearoa": Niu Tirani or Nu Tireni, which appeared for instance in the Maori-language text of both the Declaration of Independence of the United Tribes of New Zealand and the Treaty of Waitangi. This is quite obviously a phonetic spelling of the Maori pronounciation of "New Zealand", and not an appropriate name for a Maori formable!

Heading of the Declaration of Independence of New Zealand

Preamble to Te Tiriti o Waitangi, the Maori-language text of the Treaty.

You may also note that when the Maori king was elevated in 1858 he was called the Maori King, not the King of Aotearoa.

We can take from this that Maori did not have a native name for what later colonisers would make into a single country and that "Aotearoa" is an invented postcolonial backformation which emerged from forcing Maori to see these islands from a European worldview. "Aotearoa" would make a good name for a Maori revolter tag from a European colony (possibly a thing in Victoria, not in EUIV) but not for a Maori formable.

It’s a bit like how Muslims called Europe during the Crusades “Franjistan”, “land of the Franks”, because as far as they were concerned Europe was just one thing and all that mattered about it was that “the Franks” came from there. Europeans disagreed about the appropriate way to understand Europe and what to call its various parts—a single European formable, Franjistan, would be kinda silly--forcing a European-shaped peg into a medieval Islamic-shaped hole

What the Maori formable in EUIV represents is Māori coalescing into a single power on their own terms, unifying essentially along ethnic lines—“we are all Māori people inhabiting these many islands”—and then, for some reason, deciding to name themselves after a European idea that was wedged onto them following their colonisation. This doesn't make sense and is not appropriate.

I think a much better name, far more effectively communicating the nature of the Maori formable and the way Maori understood themselves (and in line with other self-defined broadly ethnic states giving themselves roughly ethnic names), and a term that is used by Maori even now to refer to the structures of Maori society distinct from colonial structures, is Maoridom.

 

[Wafflecopper]

Really interesting and informative post! I never knew that Aotearoa didn't refer to all of modern NZ until after colonisation. One thing though:

I think a much better name, far more effectively communicating the nature of the Maori formable and the way Maori understood themselves (and in line with other self-defined broadly ethnic states giving themselves roughly ethnic names), and a term that is used by Maori even now to refer to the structures of Maori society distinct from colonial structures, is Maoridom.

Isn't the -dom suffix itself from English? Is there an equivalent in Te Reo Maori? Perhaps something like Tangata Whenua? From Oxford Languages:

"used to describe the Maori people of a particular locality, or as a whole as the original inhabitants of New Zealand."

 

[Blindbohemian]

Isn't the -dom suffix itself from English? Is there an equivalent in Te Reo Maori? Perhaps something like Tangata Whenua? From Oxford Languages:

It is, so Whenua Māori might be a more accurate name… but as we’ve observed in this thread (“the rangatira” rather than “nga rangatira”; “amirs” rather than “umara”), EUIV’s map is in English. I think Whenua Māori (or as a cool Easter egg Rohae Potae—“King Country”—following an “elect a Māori king” decision requiring westernisation) would be a fine name, although I would prefer Maoridom in EUIV.

[Edit: “whenua Māori” would mean “land of the Māori” as “Serbia” means “land of the Serbs”; “tangata whenua” would mean, essentially, “Māori people”, which probably isn’t how a hypothetical Māori state would name itself I think?

Perhaps of interest to @Aldaron as a potential bad-ass and also historical name: rangatiratanga means something like “sovereignty” in Māori, but also that which it is sovereign over—“realm” or “kingdom”. Tino rangatiratanga means “absolute sovereignty”, but also “realm” or “kingdom”. It’s also what was signed away to the British Crown under the Treaty of Waitangi. Poetically we might imagine that as a Māori signing away of their “kingdom” to the colonisers. Perhaps Tino Rangatiratanga, something like “the great” or “the true kingdom”, would be a good, cool name for an independent, sovereign, unified Māori?]

“Gaeldom” isn’t Gaelic, “Lithuania” is not the proper name of Litwa in Lithuanian, etc.

I can definitely see how “Maoridom” might be seen as a lame generic name compared to the exotic-sounding Aotearoa, though… and as much as it pains me—it’s a clearcut case of cultural colonialism, reducing Māori to a source of “cool” and leaving what’s inconvenient or uninteresting—keeping the “cool” name is probably more important to more EUIV players than using an accurate one.