Defining Cannibalism

While further reading about the Māori people it became even more obvious how little I understood about the practice of cannibalism. Why did they do it? Revenge seemed like the most obvious answer. Inter-tribal warfare had, over the years, instilled the cultural practice of eating one another. What a better way to insult your enemies tribe than eating its members? It's still hard to know whether or not the Europeans' bias is at the root of that explanation. A simple Google search of cannibalism brought to my attention that cannibalism has been studied and is really an umbrella term for all of the different motivations for the practice. Eating people is what ties these practices together.

For example, cannibalism is split up into exocannibalism and endocannibalism. Endocannibalism is the act of eating the corpses of people from your own community, tribe or group. It is almost never done solely for nutritional purposes (as i discussed before) and is usually highly ritualized. I wonder if this is the type of cannibalism the Māori engaged in. Endocannibalism is often done to 'absorb' the good qualities or life-force of the deceased family member (or whatever relation they might have, so long as they are from the same community).

Most of the reports of cannibalistic behavior that European explorers described sounded like exocannibalism—eating people outside of the immediate community. It seemed like a lot of the Europeans were so terrified by the accounts of viscous cannibalism and dismemberment that they never got the chance to witness any endocannibalism and perhaps see the symbolic meaning behind the act. Exocannibalism could be done to absorb the traits of strong enemy warriors slain in battle, or as a testament of complete and utter dominance. All of these ideas seem plausible and would make sense. Perhaps I should look into Māori religion and their cultural beliefs.

Further Understanding my bias-- a surprising finding

While I have been reading up on cannibalism, I've found it incredibly hard to view the phenomenon in an unbiased way.I understand cultural relativism but at the same time feel that there are some things humans just shouldn't do. In order to truly understand the act, I think it's important for me to get past my own bias. But at the same time, should I judge the Māori of the past for eating human flesh? Should there be at least some basic human standards that bypass cultural relativism?

It seemed like a question I would never answer, but as it turns out, I wouldn't have too. I stumbled upon an interesting article on ABC.net that, in a way, defended cannibalism. It didn't exactly defend it, but it explained that the presence of certain genes could only have come about when cannibalism was taking place. They found this gene in people all around the world--which means that cannibalism is something that people on all of the continents did at some point. This made cannibalism seem more normal, if one could call it that. The idea that cannibalism was a world wide phenomenon, and not just something a few groups of people did, made it slightly easier to get into the mind's of the Māori that i was studying. It did ,however, bring up another concern: My latest finding (that cannibalism has taken place worldwide) has made me question how much I really know about cannibalism. It did seem likely that the Māori did it for more than just revenge, or that it at least goes much deeper than that.

Cannablism--Understanding my own cultural bias

I will be looking at The Māori of New Zealand from the 1840's to modern times. The specific aspect of Māori culture that intrigues me is cannibalism. When we keep in mind that every culture acts in a way that is logical to the culture itself, this particularly phenomena, once viewed as savage, takes on a different light. The Māori would only occasionally eat those they captured in battle. I can't help but ask myself why? Cannibalism is inevitably linked to nutrition and sustenance because it is a practice that involves going through the actions associated with eating for nutritional benefit. It’s important to separate this practice from our typical notions of food consumption. For me this is the biggest problem in understanding and relating to the Māori. I come from a personal background where food is ingested almost solely for nutritional reasons and certainly human flesh is out of the question—that coupled with my own cultural assumptions that the ‘savage’ way of life is inferior to other European lifestyles makes it hard to separate the ritual of cannibalism from the actual act of eating. It is clear that cannibalism is not partaken in because of a lack of food, as the Māori had a steady supply of fern roots—their staple food. It is fascinating to think that cannibalism, typically a taboo topic, has logical roots and motivations. It is just going to be
challenging to surpass my own cultural bias towards the issue.

The first encounters between the Māori and Europeans (or anyone else for that matter) made it clear that the Europeans would judge the Māori as inferior because of their less developed technology. Even that judgment is based on the false premise that a culture’s merit and humanity can be judged by advancement in technology. The European explorers’ view of the Māori as savages created an attitude intolerant to many of their cultural practices, especially something as ‘grotesque’ as cannibalism, but it is important to take a closer look before making those assumptions. The Māori are a very unique culture—one of the few cultures to have an absence of any form of alcohol (until Europeans brought their own). They were also considered a race of “high stock” because of the natural selection that occurred on the treacherous canoe trips to New Zealand. Most explorers who visited the island described the general good spirit of the people and the unusual high amount of elderly people. They were almost always described as an extraordinarily healthy people—that is until Western influences reached them and the reports took on a more sinister tone. The Māori are often viewed in relation to their depiction as unruly savages consuming the body parts of helpless victims. However, the act of cannibalism was usually highly ritualized and purposeful. The fact that the Māori did engage in the eating of human flesh which gave them sustenance and nutrients is far less important than the symbolic meaning of the act— The symbolic interpretation of the act should be emphasized far more than the literal interpretation of the act. These were not mere savages.