A year on and I am kickstarting my reo journey by following Te Reo Manahua. In the year since I completed Te Reo Pouāwai I have tried to keep my Reo going and embed vocabulary more deeply in my mahi. I have become more comfortable saying my pepeha and have extended it and improved the way that I say it as I have listened to feedback from Māori speakers.
I get the Kupu o te Rā delivered to my inbox everyday but mostly it passes me by after I skim read it. Earlier this year I joined the 100 Day Project and decided to use the Kupu o te Rā as a focus for my creative challenge. I know that some of my sentences are incorrect but the process of trying to work them out was good for me!
It is exciting as the start of the course follows hot on the heels of Te Wiki o te Reo Māori and there has been lots of kōrero about the language and tikanga in the media. I enjoyed the focus on using the language as much as possible by joining in with Mahuru Māori. I committed myself to always greeting people in Māori and my husband I practised our numbers by using them when we played cribbage in the evenings! I have loved that there seemed to be so much more engagement with Te Wiki o te Reo Māori across the country this year.
I like this article about Guyon Espiner – RNZ presenter, who has made a real effort to learn Te Reo and use it as much as possible on the radio. He talks about how he felt when he first started learning – about not wanting to get it wrong and feel humiliated. I guess for him it is a bigger step than for most of us as he has a large audience! He also talks about how people send in feedback, sometimes positive and sometimes negative and how easy it could be to focus on the negative when in reality there are more positive comments. But it hurts when someone puts you down when you are trying. It is interesting that he says that he encouraging comments come from Māori who are pleased that he is having a go and that the mistakes don’t matter too much. We have had mixed messages about that and there are now one or two people who I am reluctant to try speaking Māori in front of. They are people who, I think, have my best interests at heart and don’t want me to put myself in an ‘unsafe’ space where I may offend if I get the tikanga or the language wrong.
The pākeha who have criticised Guyon seem to be those who have been brought up in NZ, they may well be 3rd generation Kiwis and see the resurgence of Māori as a threat to all that they have ever known. Other radio and TV presenters spoke about what they believe is their role in promoting the use of Te Reo; Duncan Garner said about the people who don’t believe that Te Reo should be used more widely; “It’s sad because it’s a taonga, it is a treasure. And once we lose it, it’s gone mate.” Kanoa Lloyd says she reckons New Zealanders are too scared to give it a go, and she doesn’t think that’s a decent excuse either.
Recently, we stayed at Michael King’s house in Opoutere (it is now owned by the University of Waikato and is available to rent for employees and their whānau). Whilst I was there I read his book “Being Pākeha Now“. It is not a long book and it is very readable; it tells his story as a Pakeha and his ‘growing up’ and his developing understanding of Māori tikanga and reo and his sense of identity as a Pakeha. He talks about our responsibility to know where we fit as Pākeha in New Zealand, about not being afraid to find our own identities but to also respect others’ cultures and language and value the place of Māori tikanga and reo in Aotearoa. In an interview with Terry Locke he talks also about how New Zealand attitudes, values and habits as well as his experiences growing up ‘have contributed to or intensified that feeling I have that my culture is not European. It’s something different, it’s Pakeha, and it’s something which I now would define, as I say, as a second New Zealand indigenous culture.’ Both are well worth a read.