13th Congress of the International Society for Folk Narrative Research

Presentation Abstracts

BOENISCH-BREDNICH, Brigitte

New Zealandism and Governmental Mythology: the narration of colonial cultural concepts

Over the last fifty years successive New Zealand governments have altered the construction of national identity. These changes are evident in their policies. Even the ‘New Zealander’ per se was an invention that followed the period of ‘Britishness’ (which itself included indigenous people becoming as British as possible). The creation of the ‘New Zealander’ and the way in which different governments placed citizens into official frames can be traced through specific languages and stories about people and their identity.

This paper will try to draw out how specific myths about the cultural self-narration of a nation have been generated and how official narratives are constructed and structured. It will suggest that there is something that could be called the ‘Official Folklore of a Nation’ and that this is a genre of narratives that can be fruitfully analysed.