July 4, 2014, saw me in Chicago having finished one conference and about to head to another. But … what a great chance to see an American Independence Day. So I headed to Navy Pier (with my boy on my shoulders) for music and fireworks. A good quarter-hour of fireworks they were, too.
Fast forward to July 1 this year, and I’m in Mississauga, on the shores of Lake Ontario. I’m there because I have three days to rest after the annual International Society for the Study of Self-injury conference, and it’s a lot cheaper than staying in Toronto before heading home.
Coincidentally, July 1 is Canada Day, and that meant an hour-long parade down the main street. Yes, there was a lumberjack float. But the most striking things were the size and enthusiasm of the crowds, most of whom had dressed up in their Canada Day-best – anything red. Canadians love their red, and anything maple-flavoured.
Contrast this with our national celebrations. Er, do we actually have one? For me, Waitangi Day comes closest, but where are all the parades, flag waving, and everyone dressing in national colours? (Okay, that would probably mean black, like an average day walking along Lambton Quay.)
A fellow chatted to my wife about the Canada Day parade, telling her not to expect much in the way of First Nations representation. Given the history and consequences of colonisation, he noted, local tribes weren’t particularly keen to wave a flag representing their dispossession.
Maybe that’s part of our own parade-related reticence? First Nations people make up a fraction of the Canadian population, about 5%, whereas 18% of New Zealanders were recorded as Māori in the 2023 Census.
A national day is a reminder of … what, exactly? The establishment of a nation? But we know Māori were here long before Europeans, and the British didn’t conquer them before the Treaty of Waitangi was signed.
In my most recent nationwide survey, just over a third of us would like NZ to remain a part of the Commonwealth, with the British King as our head of state. About one in five are ambivalent, but four in 10 are at least somewhat supportive of becoming a republic.
Interestingly, 45% of respondents, including one in five pro-republicans, agreed we should forge closer military ties with the US, UK and Australia.
Who wants those closer military ties? People who are most worried about how the world is going. It has been a bit of a pattern that incumbent governments that dragged their nations through Covid have been getting roughed up at the polls, and that seems to be driven, to some extent, by a fear that the world is a more dangerous, dog-eat-dog place than before the pandemic.
Those people are also the most patriotic and nationalistic. The borders that surround nations also define who’s the in-group, and who’s potentially a threat. At times of threat, we get more in-groupy and behave in in-groupy ways that are designed to hold off out-groups that might want to make off with our stuff. While nationalism often comes with a few unsavoury side effects, it’s adaptive – it has evolved to keep us safe, even if that safety is at the expense of others.
But I still don’t think we would expect the same wide-scale response to New Zealand Day if it were held tomorrow. Even the parades thrown when the All Blacks have won recent World Cups have been somewhat more staid affairs. Maybe we’re just a bit more reserved as a nation at a personality level?
I suspect it’s a combination of these things. There’s still just enough No 8 wire mentality that makes a parade feel a little ostentatious, and we’re still coming to terms with what it means to be a bicultural nation in an increasingly multicultural world.
