The Decolonizing National Imaginary: Promotional Media Constructions During the 2005 Lions Tour of Aotearoa New Zealand

This article explores the representational politics of postcolonial national identity in New Zealand/Aotearoa. Specifically, it interrogates the promotional media surrounding the 2005 British and Irish Lions rugby tour as a site in which narratives of nation were enacted. Symptomatic of the emergence of “corporate nationalisms” advertising emerged as a space in which a selective “national imaginary” was constructed. This sought to reconcile the challenges of the sociopolitical moment by positing a unified decolonized “kiwi” culture invoking several interlocking discourses. These included foregrounded representations of indigenous Māori culture as a central symbol of national essence. These representations simultaneously interlock those grounded in a longstanding discourse of Māori as primordial, spiritual, ignoble warrior. Furthermore, symptomatic of an ongoing “ethnogenesis,” active constructions of White settler—Pākehā—identities asserted a unique tie to Aotearoa/New Zealand and distinction from “the British.” Critically, these discourses operate to account for postcolonial challenges and shifts in reasserting a hegemonic national imaginary.