Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi. Photo / NZME
Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi. Photo / NZME
Opinion
I represent a small part of a very lucky generation. I was brought up in a Māori language-speaking community with te reo as its first language.
I was loved by my aunties and nannies in our Kohanga Reo at Whangaparoa where the language was again affirmed, supported and entrenched.
As part of our Waititi journey and a legacy passed on from the educationalist, Hoani Waititi, us Waititi whānau do embark on learning more about who we are as a nation, as Aotearoa.
As a consequence we are all sent from a very strong language base at home into the cities to learn new skills in a new community.
Our skills were taught to us while being hosted by Aunty (Dame) June Mariu who was a Waititi, having married Uncle Joe Mariu.
I will go into some detail about this journey because not all Māori were this lucky or this blessed.
In coming to the cities to learn more, what I did learn was the way in which my cousins far removed and others were carefully and clearly denied access to their language.
We understand that part of colonisation and imperialism is to assert the dominance of the colonial culture and language.
Colonisation meant that the whole system of Māori self-belief had to be attacked and derided. The Tohunga Suppression Act of 1907 is merely one example of our spiritual leadership being outlawed.
Prior to this piece of legislation, our spiritual leadership was attacked by missionaries who arrived in Aotearoa to tell us that we were uncivilised and that our spirituality was wrong.
Tamariki at Te Heti Kohanga Reo in Whanganui. Photo / NZME
So to destroy a culture, to assimilate it and integrate it and pretend it never existed, you must take away the deep spiritual yearning of a people and you do that by destroying and vilifying their belief in their systems and in their own spiritual leaders.
You also attack their creatives, the people that have authority over the expression of their language, who in all cultures are extraordinarily important as hosts of the culture.
And so it came to be that Māori carving was idolatry in the worship of false gods and that we were denied the right to continue to practise creative arts that affirmed our Māoritanga and our belief in ourselves.
So we must never forget the way in which we were treated and we must never forget who we are, where we come from and who we must serve in advancing the interests of our whakapapa. We were told we were Stone Age people and we had no written language.
With respect, our tohunga whakairo, our masters of creativity in carving and tattooing, were the holders of our language, expressed in writing.
For example, the Ngati Porou people have a marae at Whangara built in the honour of Paikea Ariki Moana, the great whale rider.
That particular meeting house is a massive repository of Tairāwhiti history from the time of the great ancestor Maui Tikitiki-a-Taranga casting out his hook in a forlorn last bid to seek replenishment for his whānau, who were in very difficult circumstances.
As he started to pull his hook and line in, Aotearoa started to rise as his waka crested the horizon.
And so it was born that Maui fished up Te Ika-a-Maui and his waka lay atop of Hikurangi, the sacred maunga of the Tai Rāwhiti people.
These are our Māori stories. They should never be reviled or denied. And our language is our greatest messenger of the culture - to have a language denied is to have a culture destroyed.
Every Māori language week I yearn for every young Māori who does not know their Māoritanga. They are victims of this colonisation. And every Māori baby may not know their maunga, but their maunga knows them.
They may not know their awa, but their awa knows them. And they may not know their whānau, but their whānau know them.
It's just a matter of us connecting and being proud to be Māori. The reo is the messenger that brings the reclamation and that reconnection.
