Aotearoa is simply a word for our country, along with New Zealand, writes Rob Rattenbury.
Photo / 123RF
Aotearoa is simply a word for our country, along with New Zealand, writes Rob Rattenbury.
Photo / 123RF
Comment
Jacinda Ardern is famous for her "team of five million" phrase, arising last year at the time of that long lockdown when Covid-19 first arrived on our shores.
Since then we have become less a team of five million and more a country of agendas and resentment.
As theuse of te reo on public television and in our everyday lives has grown, so too has a fear, insecurity and resentment that Māori may be getting more than what they are "entitled to".
I often write in an attempt to understand the world from a Māori perspective despite being Pākehā. Tangata Tiriti.
I see that resentment in the eyes of mainly older Pākehā when I am out and about.
Having one's features plastered in the local paper every week guarantees that people who do not know one will judge one, the same for any person in New Zealand who has an opinion that others fear or disagree with.
I am loath to mention the Tall Poppy Syndrome as I am not that tall and certainly not important, but you get my drift.
For some reason, the recent increased use of the word Aotearoa is exercising the unhappy glands of many.
It is a word for our country, along with New Zealand. It has been on our passports for many years, it is on the cash you carry in your wallets and purses. It is simply a Māori word to describe New Zealand.
Its provenance is worth discussing but it is only a word.
The European name for our country came from a Dutch mapmaker.
Dutch explorer Abel Tasman had stumbled across the top of the South Island in 1642, had a fatal dust-up with the local iwi and left without ever setting foot on land.
The mapmaker Joan Blaeu named the land Nova Zeelandia, which became New Zealand or Zeeland, after a province in Holland.
Our actual connection as a country with Zeeland or the Netherlands is only that.
We are more connected to Aotearoa, a name used by Māori before Europeans arrived.
Te reo is one of Aotearoa-New Zealand's two official languages, the other is Sign. That's right; English is not an official language for some reason.
With Covid hanging over our heads, restricting international travel, creating uncertainty in all our minds, we seemed to have turned inwards and even on each other.
There is talk of social change coming along with many changes driven by climate issues, fossil fuels and the usual political uncertainties around the world.
The proposal for New Zealand's colonial history to be a compulsory subject for our children in school seems also to scare and anger many.
The settlement of our country by Europeans and Asians in the 19th century is an extremely interesting story that has been hidden for too long.
Yes, it is uncomfortable to learn what really happened here from about 1800 onwards.
It is our history. A history founded on violence. We had almost continual war in this country from 1845 to 1872, when Māori fought for their land and way of life, and Europeans fought to settle here.
It is, mostly, a shameful story of deceit, conflict and imperialism.
The great grandparents of people my age were alive then and many on both sides actually fought in those battles.
It is not long ago, too soon to consign to history, especially for Māori.
Yet many people do not want to know these stories.
Rob Rattenbury. Photo / File
They seem to believe that was then, this is now. We are the results of our history, as our descendants will be of what we do or do not do now.
We all know that if we ignore history, especially our mistakes, we will tend to repeat it.
So it is important that we allow our children to learn about their place in our country's story.
I do not like to use the word racism about the attitudes of some.
I prefer to think it is an unawareness instilled by simply the inability to learn our history as it was really not generally available to all other than history students.
I sense that there was a shame among influential academics and educators in the late 19th and early 20th centuries about our history, to the extent it is just best put to one side.
They preferred to teach that New Zealand was a "racial paradise".
That assimilation would take care of the woes of Māoridom.
The result is now the fear and anger we see on our news outlets and on social media every day stoked, of course, by certain groups for political reasons.
Ordinary Pākehā who are more open-minded and accepting being derided for being left-wing "Māori lovers" shows how polarised we are becoming. It is only a word, folks.
