The weird craving from (mainly) young women to falsely claim part exotic ancestry, usually but not always of their nation’s indigenous race, is not peculiar to New Zealand. They then waste their lives on the strength of this fantasy with so-called “activism”, fighting for “our people”. Invariably many are exposed, in Australia and America in particular, although less so here. In New Zealand, challenging someone’s claimed “morri” credentials and adopted new maorified name is something the media cowardly shies from exposing.
The latest amusing such revelation comes from America following the death of a women known as Sacheen Littlefeather. She popped up half a century back, gaining world-wide attention at the Academy Awards, on behalf of the winner Marlon Brando, who’d asked her to represent him and turn down the award as a protest against the treatment of her “fellow native Indians”.
Her sisters have now piped up and exposed her as a fantasist. Their father was Hispanic, they advised and her mother, a white American. Her real name was Marie Louise Cruz.
My pop psychologist’s explanation for this behaviour is simply the desire for attention by otherwise untalented and unexceptional people, claiming an exotic characteristic.
There are many manifestations of this attention-seeking by the non-de-script, such as obese girls with green or pink hair, rather than a more rational approach of losing weight.