Our Koko Richard Joseph, my brother Jeremy and our nan Celestina Joseph. Photo / Supplied
Our Koko Richard Joseph, my brother Jeremy and our nan Celestina Joseph. Photo / Supplied
Tēnā koutou, my name is Vaimaila Leatinu'u, I am Māori, who descends from the iwi Ngāti Maniapoto; I am also Sāmoan, who hails from the villages of Matāvai in Safune and Vailoa in Faleata. I'ma 26-year-old son, brother, uncle and South Aucklander who works as a Te Rito cadet journalist.
"Kei te aha koe uncle?"
To see and hear my 3-year-old niece ask me in te reo Māori what I'm doing is a beautiful thing, even though she can clearly see me cooking.
But any opportunity to kōrero with her I take, and happily reply "tunu kai taku irāmutu".
The credit for these moments I cherish with my niece goes to my older brother, Jeremy, who is raising her in te ao Māori.
He started his te reo journey seven years ago after the death of our koro Richard Joseph - who was the last connection to Māoridom.
Today, Jeremy's a kaiako at Te Wānanga o Aotearoa, Māngere.
It's because of my older brother's commitment to reconnect, despite the trauma our whānau suffered that inhibited any willingness to learn or be Māori, that I started my own reo journey.
To say that my whānau were disconnected from Māoridom is an understatement.
Where colonialism ripped it away from my tūpuna, violently and unapologetically, the ripples of that ripping created violent effects on my whānau. Abuse, alcoholism, violence and addiction riddled the lineage of my Māori family tree.
This is the trauma I speak of that inhibits Māori from ever wanting to embrace Māoridom.
The film Once Were Warriors (1994) was once the most accurate depiction of the Māori world I knew, and it wasn't until recently that I found out it's not the experience for all.
Sometimes films are real life for Māori. My family was no different. Photo / Supplied
A lot of people don't realise our whānau will always be the first point of representation of our whakapapa, and so my Māori family was my first and only connection to Māoridom for a long time.
So every connotation of Māoridom for me, and a lot of Māori I know is saturated in negativity.
The effects of post-colonialism and poverty had thrown my whānau, and a lot of Māori into the chaos of addiction and abuse that some stereotype as an exclusively Māori problem caused entirely by Māori people.
In that grossly inaccurate belief and chaos, is the difficult comprehension for our tamariki that Māori who do bad things is not indicative that they are bad people, but broken people.
It's even more difficult to understand because broken people continually break people - the generational cycle of abuse started from violent colonialism.
How do you tell a Māori child who suffered abuse by their caregivers who are Māori, and entered physical conflict with other Māori in low socio-economic areas that their trauma-induced experience isn't who Māori are when that's all they've seen from fellow Māori?
What further confuses Māori who share this experience, is that media constantly corrodes the nuances of human morality with news reports, films, music and television shows with narratives of good vs evil.
And with the public constantly using law to determine morality, which they then use to discern good and bad people, how do you reconcile with the statistical negatives of your own people?
The complexity and negativity of all of this ends up generating a sense of self-hate because if Māori act shamefully and I become ashamed of Māori, as a Māori - I'm ashamed of myself.
Brother's in arms - Vaimaila Leatinu'u (right) and younger brother. Photo / Supplied
There's even further confusion because trauma is hard to talk about for everyone but is easily exhibited by anyone.
Last year I brought my younger brother to a party, where he said to a friend of mine, also Māori, that he hates Māori.
She was shocked by the statement, especially because he and I are Māori, but that's because she lived a very different life compared to me and my brother, especially in terms of Māori we knew and interacted with.
Other Māori kids would constantly pick fights with my younger brother, and on top of that, he'd seen the ugly side of our Māori family since birth.
The experience of physical violence, especially the visceral image of people who look like you doing it to you, leaves scars that generally never get addressed. It's especially painful if it's your own whānau, or elders doing it to you.
It's an experience that was alien to her, but common to me and my brother and a lot of Māori we grew up with, knew or know.
Today anti-Māori public opinion is still strong and another layer that inhibits Māori from proudly embracing Māori identity.
Vaimaila Leatinu'u has accepted his Māori ancestry after a childhood estranged from his Māori forebears. Photo / Alex Burton
But since internally crossing a line where I've given myself permission to embrace my identity as Māori, I find corners of humour in watching people explain why a chocolate having "Miraka Kīrimi" on it has incentivised them to boycott it.
Who would've thought that te reo Māori would help bitter people make healthy decisions like rejecting a sugary treat?
So, what does it mean for me to experience having my niece ask where my younger brother is by saying, "kei whea a Uncle Lealyn?"
It means the universe to me.
It's a bittersweet window to a world where I can see what kind of life my koro, Nana and Aunty who have passed after a lifetime of survival would have had.
It's a marker, that the next generation and my whānau will enter Māoridom and fill their kete with the knowledge of te ao Māori, woven by the aroha of safety, patience and encouragement, which my generation never had.
My current family's generation's kete is woven by trauma, where learning our heritage has become a responsibility rather than a right. Today, we dutifully continue to salvage what we can from the debris colonialism left us to make a blueprint out of that rubble in the hopes we can navigate back to te ao Māori to find the plentiful taonga our tūpuna left us.
