December 05, 2016
Maori pressure puts paid to cowboys and indians float
Organisers of Christchurch’s Santa Parade made a last minute call to leave the Native American costumes in their box, but a float with cowboys and horses still joined yesterday’s procession.
Parade chair Anna Jamieson says they had received nasty emails, and made the decision for the safety of the children who would have been dressed in the Ojibwe tribal costumes.
She earlier said the float had been part of the parade for 20 years.
But Dr Leonie Pihama, the director of Waikato University’s Te Kotahi Research Institute, says Native American people have been fighting against such racist and demeaning representation for the past 20 years.
She says cowboys and indians is not a game, as white colonial invasion was about the genocide of Native Americans.
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