I’m uncomfortable about Aotearoa New Zealand becoming the “Lord of the Rings” country, attracting tourists with hobbit holes etc. After all, the indigenous Māori culture has been used and misused for tourism even while being suppressed and obliterated. That’s why this statement chimes for me as we hand taxpayer dollars to Amazon to make even more LotR stuff:
we will be ploughing more money into a film about a fake indigenous culture than we are into Māori TV, which tells the stories of New Zealand’s indigenous culture and real people.