Pop culture has power
Cultural victories are not political wins. But that doesn’t mean pop culture doesn’t have power. “It is important to be seen on film, especially for our children, our grandchildren [...] normalizing something like this is very important,” said Hinetu Dell, who plays Abuela Alma, on the Encanto Reo Māori red carpet. These rereleases can act as learning tools, inspirations, and thorns in the sides of those who want to clamp down on te reo.
- [Disney has landed in the middle of a fight over an Indigenous language]
New Zealand, compared to Australia, is comparably notable amongst the Commonwealth for actually attempting to have some sort of treaty with its indigenous population. (This was, incidentally, one of the factors that kept New Zealand from Federating into a country with Australia as Australia's poor relationship with its own indigenous peoples at the time was seen as a step back on what NZ had negotiated and agreed to already.)
Whilst I don't speak any of the languages mentioned in this article personally, it's surprising to see a company at the scale and size of Disney put the amount of attention and care into their localisation efforts to the degree that it sounds here. (It apparently marks the first time that they've released a te reo version of a theatrical film at the same time as the english version.) And it's deeply disappointing for the New Zealand government to try and diminish the cultures of the people who were living there first.
