Having trained as a teacher in Wellington, his first teaching position was at Opoutama School in Mahia, in 1974, and Laurie's first contact with a significant number of Maori students.
“I kept thinking there was something wrong with the system. I didn't know what it was.”
After his experience in South Africa though, Laurie began to take notice of Maori and their grievances. Maori wanted to use the apartheid in South Africa to highlight what was happening in New Zealand, he says.
“In New Zealand, te reo Maori was still not an official language. In schools it was called a foreign language.”
In 1989 he relocated to Auckland where he taught full-time at Rongomai College in Otara and after school each day attended lectures in New Zealand history and te reo at Auckland University. Despite his passion for te reo, teaching five-year-olds in Rongomai's immersion unit was a humiliating experience. He was completely out of his depth, he says. He remained committed though.
“I'd sit in the staffroom and for two years I wrote down what Maori teachers were saying. One day a teacher said ‘we're off to a hui, Laurie — can you take the immersion class for the day.”
With his limited grasp of te reo, the hui proved to be another humiliating experience.
“After that, I was determined never to be caught out. I used to wait after work for the cleaner and follow her around and talk to her in Maori. She'd tell me in te reo what she was doing.”
He also fixed a vocabulary list to his car's dashboard so he could practise words on the drive to and from work.
On finishing his studies at Auckland University, he returned to Gisborne once more and in 1991 began teaching at Waikirikiri School, where he encountered the school's kaupapa of Ngati Poroutanga and the history of Ngati Porou.
“I was a beginner again but I'd tell my partner ‘this is better than Auckland University because I'm getting paid and I'm learning at the same time'.
“I thought ‘I'm truly blessed'. I stayed there for 10 years.”
During that time he aspired to gaining tohu matauranga Maori, an educational qualification for fluency in te reo.
“I wanted that qualification really badly. Part of it was you had to speak to various kaumatua and kuia around Gisborne and answer their questions. I applied for it every year and the principal refused to allow me to go because she didn't think I was up to the standard required.
“After three years she finally relented and said I was up to standard. That was in my final year there.”
Laurie talked about the history of Tairawhiti, in te reo, and gained the qualification.
Born in Wellington in 1949 he was schooled at Rongotai College and later studied law at Victoria University. Soon tired of it, he got the surfing bug and went to Australia. On returning to New Zealand in his early 20s, he hung out at Mahia where he met American draft dodgers. He had his first brush with active politics in 1966 when LB Johnson, who escalated American involvement in the Vietnam War, came to New Zealand to encourage Prime Minister Keith Holyoake to send troops to Vietnam.
“Someone said there was a protest so we all bundled off to it. That was the first time my political conscience was raised.”
Twelve years later he was part of the anti-Springbok tour mobilisation march from the Gisborne courthouse, along Gladstone Road during a Friday late-shopping night.
“We were lucky we didn't get lynched. People came out of the Record Reign to hit and abuse us. Then we'd go back to the Rec to argue politics.”
On graduation from teachers' college in 1974 he taught at Opoutama School, and later went to California and worked as a house painter for three years. He also painted Veterans Affairs hospitals.
“I saw Vietnam vets a little older than me and their brains were fried from trauma or drugs.”
He even met some of the draft dodgers, since pardoned, he had encountered at Mahia. He returned to Gisborne but before long was off to travel around Asia with Gisborne surfer David Timbs. He tried to live in London but found it too cold so he headed for South Africa — and that shake-up to his world view.
After taking a passenger ship back to Auckland he came back to Gisborne in time for the Springbok tour protests, went back to San Francisco, then returned to Auckland in 1989 where he met partner Liz Minogue and started a family.
When the couple moved to Gisborne, Laurie figured they would spend a few years here then be off again. He and Liz's children attended total immersion classes at Waikirikiri School by which time Laurie had also become immersed in te reo Maori. In 2002 he left Waikirikiri School to teach social science and history at Campion College.
“I loved it. I love the Catholic faith and I learned about the Catholic connection with Maori.”
Eight years later he joined the staff at Gisborne Girls' High and has taught there ever since.
“The first thing I do now when I find who the new Maori students are in my classes is say ‘no whea koe — where are you from?' I don't ask them for their name. Then I ask them who their whanau is, then I know something about their whakapapa.
“It often doesn't go well, because most girls don't speak te reo, but the immersion kids love it.
“The key thing is to work hard on relationships.”
