PHYSICAL BEINGS: STEREOTYPES, SPORT AND PHYSICAL EDUCATION OF MAORI IN NEW ZEALAND

Abstract

This essay examines how sport, State education and physical education have contributed to the suppression of the indigenous New Zealand Maori by promulgating their stereotype as a physical and unintelligent people. It begins by providing an historical genealogy of the savage physical Maori stereotype. Next, this stereotype is shown to have justified a racist education system that channelled Maori into manual, as opposed to academic, areas. Later, Maori culture and Maori successes were afforded inclusion only within non-threatening domains such as physical education and sport. The ramifications of physical education becoming the first subject area to offer overtures to Maori, are examined. Lastly, I suggest that the naturalization of Maori as sportspeople contributed to the colonization process by assimilating Maori in an area that highlighted their supposed inherent physicality.

Keywords: Sport. New Zealand. Indigenous. History.