Whose Story Are We Telling? The Cost of Disneyfication and the Power of Oral Storytelling

Whose Story Are We Telling? The Cost of Disneyfication and the Power of Oral Storytelling

I was talking with a colleague just this week and she told me a story. She said she was working in a classroom with students and she asked, “Who knows Māui?” The answer was quick and united. “Oh, he’s in Moana, the movie.” Well of course he is.

But long before that, he was the star of the beautiful Peter Gossage picture books. And long, long, long before that, he was a central figure in the Aotearoa creation story (and many Pacific cultures). The demigod. The atua. The younger brother. The trickster. The one who fished up the North Island and dared to chase immortality. Māui is so much more than a sidekick in a Disney plotline. Yet here we are, watching our stories shrink into pop culture cameos. The only way that children know him….oh no!

We are living in a time where our stories are in danger of being disneyfied, museumised, and standardised. These processes may begin with good intentions to celebrate culture, to preserve heritage, to streamline learning  but if we’re not careful, they reduce living stories to staged performances, glass cabinets, and generic lesson plans.

As Burlingame (2020) warns in Dead Landscapes – and how to make them live, when stories are detached from the people, the place, and the oral traditions that breathe life into them, we end up with "dead landscapes"  empty representations that look like culture but feel like theatre.

And this is happening all around us.

Disneyfication usually reshapes authentic narratives to fit feel-good arcs. Museumisation can often freeze culture in time as if it’s no longer evolving. Standardisation seeks efficiency, often at the expense of nuance, diversity, and voice. It can stereotype and place important stories at risk.

But our stories are not flat, frozen, or finished. They are living things. And we have to protect them.

At Telling Your Stories (www.tellingyourstories.co.nz), we are working across Aotearoa and now in Australia to challenge this trend. We’ve listened to teachers who told us they didn’t know the stories of their communities, were nervous to share those they weren’t born into, and felt unsure of their Te Reo Māori or multilingual storytelling skills. They worried they weren’t “storytellers.” But they are. We all are. We just need to reclaim that role.

Storytelling doesn’t have to begin with a book. It begins with a voice. A memory. A connection. Oral storytelling is our oldest and most enduring pedagogy. It holds wisdom, it builds belonging, and it passes on identity in ways that paper and print never quite can.

The power is in learning to tell, not just to read. To share what we know, what we remember, and what we imagine with children, whānau, and each other. These are the stories that thread generations together. And they are fragile. If we don’t tell them, they disappear.

So here’s my challenge: tell a story. A real one. Yours, your parents’, your grandparents’. Learn a local tale. Make it live in your voice. And teach others to do the same. Let’s stop waiting for the perfect curriculum, resource pack, or show. Let’s just start. Before the landscape goes quiet.

#TellingYourStories #OralStorytelling #CulturallyResponsivePedagogy #LivingStories #IndigenousEducation #AuthenticVoices #DeadLandscapes