Indigenous-Washing and Colonial Amnesia: How New Zealand’s Nation Brand Depoliticizes Climate Change

Authors

  • Olli Hellmann University of Waikato

Keywords:

nation branding, climate change, colonialism, Indigenous perspectives, de/politicization, New Zealand

Abstract

New Zealand’s nation brand has drawn ever louder accusations of “greenwashing” the country’s image in recent years. Through a visual discourse analysis of Air New Zealand’s Tiaki & The Guardians safety briefing video, this article shows that brand managers have responded with a strategy of “Indigenous-washing,” appropriating the Māori worldview to deflect attention from intensive farming’s carbon footprint and other environmentally unfriendly activities. More broadly, this article makes an important contribution to the growing critical-cultural literature on nation branding by revealing how New Zealand’s latest marketing initiative contributes to the depoliticization of climate change. The “Tiaki” campaign not only positions New Zealand as an “untouched land,” but also closes the space for democratic debate about climate change by obscuring the role of colonialism in causing the planet’s ecological crisis and by silencing alternative socioecological futures proposed by Indigenous peoples.

Author Biography

Olli Hellmann, University of Waikato

Olli Hellmann is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Waikato, Aotearoa New Zealand. His research on collective memory has been published in a number of leading journals, including Memory Studies, Visual Communication, and Democratization.

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Published

2023-07-27

Issue

Vol. 17 (2023)

Section

Articles

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