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Welcome to Aotearoa? The Campaign to Decolonize New Zealand’s Name
- ggm 4y agoOther nations have renamed, to variable success. Myanmar comes to mind. Peking became Beijing (and, adoption of western alphabet was a whisker away, if Mao hadn't liked chinese ideograms enough, it was on the cards) overnight. Australia is slowly adopting dual-use local Aboriginal dialect names for regions alongside western, give it 4 or 5 years and it will be normalised. It was a conscious decision of the ABC, it might be pilloried a bit by other media as is "welcome to country" but again, given time, it normalises. NZ is 40+ years down the road on a gradualist approach. "6 months in a Leaky boat" put AoTeaRoa "on the map" for most westerners when Split Enz put it into a song. (I know there is much more substance behind this move, I just mean, in the populist sense of how people become attuned to the idea) Flag changes are contentious. I wish laser-kiwi had got up, it is Boaty McBoatface good, for self-ridicule.