Description
New Zealand’s nation brand has drawn ever louder accusations of “greenwashing” the country’s image in recent years. Through a critical semiotic analysis of Air New Zealand’s “Tiaki & The Guardians” safety briefing video, this paper shows that brand managers have responded with a strategy of “Indigenous-washing,” appropriating the Māori worldview to deflect attention from intensive farming’s carbon footprint and other environmentally unfriendly activities. More broadly, the paper makes an important contribution to the growing critical literature on nation branding by revealing the trans-national effects of image management practices. New Zealand’s nation brand not only positions the South Pacific country as an “untouched land,” but it also produces and disseminates a particular framing of the global ecological crisis, in that it obscures the role of colonialism in causing climate change and sidelines alternative futures proposed by Indigenous peoples.
