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.