What a throwback to my childhood! I loved Bionicle! My siblings and I had the pieces, books, games, etc. I never knew it was a competitor to Pokemon - but my parents tried to steer us away from video games to more creative toys. So that's why we were a huge LEGO household in general.
The online community for bionicle has done a solid job of archiving and even polishing the various content that was released over the years. There's a site that collected all of the flash games [0], and someone stitched together a few versions of the "Biological Chronicle" [1], which is every book, comic, and even transcriptions of two of the flash games that had an actual narrative, woven so the narratives all line up.
[0] https://biomediaproject.com/bmp/
[1] I don't have a link handy to the ebook, I'm also not sure if they had permission to upload all of that content in one file or not
Digging it out, the box says "Quest For Makuta / Bionicle / Adventure Game" with LEGO and RoseArt logos on it, and it was bought in a store ... and it's number 31390, which is found on ... well, one LEGO-adjacent site (bricklink) at least. A lot of others don't seem to have it. Apparently there's also a version (31391) that came in a metal tin, but the one I have is the cardboard box.
I believe they mean "Bionicle Adventure Game: Quest For Makuta (2001)" which has a Lego logo on it. I also cannot find anything on the site in question
"I figured that if we were going to use a language, we’d better use it properly, and respectfully. The Maoris didn’t see it that way of course, and it cost Lego quite a bit of money in ‘cultural compensation’."
I mean fair enough, that is the way it happened, but I find it bizarre that it can be considered a "cultural attack" by... using the language?
There is this weird phenomenon where there ends up being no safe way to reference a foreign culture, Every possible method becomes "cultural appropriation" or "racism". I understand people wanting to protect their culture but weird because it is self defeating. The only safe move is to avoid mentioning the culture at all, effectively forgeting about them.
Well there was a time when Maori were stopped by others from speaking and using their own language, and I guess nowadays they've had to bootstrap Maori language starting with full immersion Maori language schooling from childhood. There's a couple of generations of Maori between post WWII and late Gen X who weren't bought up in the Maori language and have had to go to great lengths to reclaim it, but most haven't been able to at all. Maori culture isn't just about the language, there's the meaning and context of the language, as well as cultural aspects of place (whenua, turangawaewae) and ancestral connection (whanau, whakapapa). You can't divide or separate these things, and the language is not a thing floating around in isolation from the culture.
It holds true for every culture. Even the English will tell you english is a language and kindly don't bastardise it. That is to say there's a whole culture around the English language and its proper usage.
Look at these artefacts the community was admiring just yesterday https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41536156
We know jack all about the people who created these, and most of it was lost. Three comments in the whole thread, we know humanity fucked up because we don't know what to say, and so we keep making the same mistake over and over and over
I'd argue that's the real dominance of Western culture; anybody can be part of it, bastardize it, idealize it, demonize it, and so it can evolve, it transcends from just a singular tradition to a universal culture.
Part of colonialism is replacing native cultures with your own. Indigenous cultures, conversely, fight for survival in the face of forces that seek to exploit or exterminate them. There's a marked difference in context between the post-colonial world speaking English and the Maori people trying to defend part of their cultural heritage.
The Māori's main criticism was the use of the word "Tohunga", which in Māori means something like "respected expert", but in Bionicle meant "funny little guy who is constantly getting into trouble".
> The Maoris protested that the word Tohunga - the name Lego gave to the cowed inhabitants of the island - was the Polynesian word for spiritual healer and that using it in such a trivial context was offensive.
Lego changed that term to "Matoran", and modified a few other terms/spellings slightly, and the Māori were happy.
They're a multi-billion dollar company with no connection to Māori culture, and they picked some Māori words for your product because they feel exotic and they'll "help crack the Far East market". The article doesn't talk about the brief incorporating actual Māori culture, just picking up the words because they sound good.
Do you need a "safe way" to make a product for profit using a culture you don't know anything about? There's plenty of room for Māori people and pākehā to make content that actually incorporates the language and the culture. Look at the use of haka in sporting events, for instance.
It's really funny because if someone is accusing you of cultural appropriation, they're actually saying you're not acting like how they think YOU should act, the stereotype for how you look or your background, and they're telling you to feel bad about it. i.e. racism.
The real distinction was whether one is PARODYING another culture than their own. That usually does not go well unless you have good comedic skills and an audience that trusts you.
Back in undergrad I had to attend an event that was about these extreme social justice-y topics, and yeah, it was pretty self defeating. Was my first exposure to that kind of thing outside of the internet.
It was kind of offensive, since a big chunk of it was telling me that I was supposed to be mad about "outsiders" trying to participate in positive or neutral aspects of my home country's culture without necessarily fully understanding it.
As the user Kaikue pointed out in another comment, the Māori had a couple specific comments, which Lego addressed, and then everyone seems to have moved on.
My stance on appropriation is more nuanced than most, I think. If you're not part of a culture, but you use their language, dress, or other cultural trappings, that's appropriation; whether or not that's bad is a different question. But here's the thing: you don't get to be the one who decides whether or not it's bad. A billion dollar company commercializing Māori language because they thought it sounded neat was probably not the greatest starting point, and though I'm sympathetic to Alastair for not having access to the resources to properly vet his usage of te reo Māori, I don't think Lego had such limitations and probably should have put a little more effort in.
Perhaps another, more recent example: in the video game Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire, one of the main cultures that the player interacts with are the Huana, a Māori/Pacific Islander-inspired culture that is, not coincidentally, beset on multiple sides by colonial powers. Game director Josh Sawyer says[1] "...we should have also hired some Māori consultants specifically to look at the Huana. The Huana aren’t really Māori (just like the Rauatai aren’t really Japanese), but even a fictional culture that’s only “inspired by” a mix of real world cultures can still get into uncomfortable or outright bad territory.
A few Pacific Islanders have contacted me to tell me that they appreciate that Deadfire deals with PI-type cultures and colonial themes. I’m genuinely glad for that, but we could have very easily done something incredibly shitty through pure ignorance. It never hurts to ask ahead of time."
I am an immigrant in a European country. Most people are like “wow, good for you, you’ve learned the language!”, but I have also, from a couple of gen Z folks, had accusations of being a coloniser and cultural appropriation… for learning the language of the country in which I live. I was surprised enough that I didn’t realise I was being accosted at first. As a crusty old millennial it never even occurred to me that learning someone’s language could be offensive to them. “Portuguese is for the Portuguese, not for foreigners!” was one of them. Strange how there’s this mix of anti-coloniser sentiment that actually seems to be or at least feed into anti-immigrant sentiment.
Bluntly, I think these people are idiots, and safely ignored.
I'm usually met with a mix of shock, disbelief, and sometimes a little bit of joy, when I speak Greek with a Greek person outside of Greece - which was at first odd, considering the origin of the word "diaspora". Some reactions were really weird, one person told me it feels wrong to hear a foreigner speak their native language so far from home, another told me it's the most useless language to learn, etc - but I've never been met with antagonism.
I don't think language and culture can be separated; Greece has been occupied by the Ottoman empire for ca 400 years, and the history of reclaiming their culture and independence is stained with blood (like most of them are).
In retrospect, I'm glad I ended up being "friends" with a hospitable culture. I haven't been to Greece in over a decade but it always feels like I'd be welcome there.
Not unlike how US folks react to the idea that England is the authority on English -- Brazil and the US are far more populated than the countries that originated their languages and so there are more books and movies targeting them and using their version of the language even if they are using it "wrong" as compared to the origin country.
I agree, but if some idiot tell you mean things, you will hear it anyway, and it might ruin your day, even if you know those are best ignored. My solution is the best for my own mental health: i acknowledge the criticism, i use bit of a socratic method if they are available (not as a rhetorical tool, but to achieve understanding for myself), and then i ignore them.
It's worth considering if the people complaining are the actual people so concerned or just Social Justice Warriors bitching for attention.
If it's the former, it is obviously and absolutely necessary to listen to their concerns and perhaps demands and try and find a solution that satisfies everyone.
If it's the latter, we really need to use their playbook and just Cancel Culture(tm) the SJWs for the betterment of humanity.
reply