Native Immigrant

As a young Māori boy, I remember playing manhunt outside the wharenui with all the other kids, while the elders met and shared their voices. 

I would occasionally pop my head in to watch proudly as my parents voiced their mihi. 

My mother, an Israeli immigrant, was fluent in te reo Māori after a few years of wānanga. My Māori dad was still on basic reo. Mum was a huge inspiration to my twin brother and I, and we would always take the chance to sing a waiata for her at the conclusion of her mihi. 

When my brother and I were nine, our Māori-medium bilingual unit shut down, forcing us to move into a “mainstream” pakeha curriculum for the time being. 

A year later, we packed up and moved into the city, where my brother and I found a whole new world. 

A Jewish intermediate school was our new life.  

The school had a standard educational curriculum, with the addition of prayers in the morning and the occasional classes about Jewish bibilical history or learning the Hebrew language. 

I always knew household Hebrew (the language of the Jewish people) and the general festivals and holidays, but it was only when we warmed up to these new hallways and classrooms that we realized Judaism spanned further than just our family.  

Soon enough, RNZ was interviewing my twin brother and I, along with another Māori-Jewish boy the year below us, about our upbringing and “unique cultural background.”  

We claimed ourselves as the “HeBro’s”.  

This was the moment when I started caring about who I was.  

I was a half-caste. A native immigrant. A Māori-Jew. 

As I reflect now, my identity is politicised. It lingers in the struggles of land conflict, indigeneity, repression to oppression, and the condemnation of the colonist and conqueror. 

My whakapapa bears not one, but two different histories of oppression and racism. Living life as a humble tug-of-war rope. Constantly being pulled between two different worlds.  

I have the gift of belonging to two rich, cultural spaces, but the curse of not feeling whole in either one. But I must focus on it as a gift. An ability to fight even harder against cultural bias. 

I have learned the closeness of these two worlds. The synagogue and the marae, the connection to the whenua and ancestors, and the vital part food plays in bringing together whānau and community.  

It’s 2024 now, I’m 20 years old, and the Israel Palestine war has resurfaced in mainstream media for the world to watch from behind their screens.  

But it has plagued my life since I was born, after plaguing my mother's – who left her country after her government tried to force a gun into her hands to maintain the occupation and violence.   

But it hasn’t plagued the lives of many Westerners who fight for Israel or fight for Palestine when it is convenient for them.  

For me, the switch is always on. I am unavoidably bound to the issue. 

Growing up, I’d always dreamed of one day being old enough to vote for the Māori Party. Last October, I was finally able to.  

Only a couple weeks later, Māori Party co-leader Debbie Ngawera started a campaign to expel the Israeli Ambassador from Aotearoa and, in turn, his daughter – my friend of three years – and their family.  

A couple weeks later, on November 8th, my synagogue was vandalised. People started fires on the fences and spray painted “Free Palestine” all over them. This misplaced means of protest terrified my peaceful community.  

This series of events poured fuel on the embers of my internal conflict. It sent the Māori and the Jewish in me squabbling irrationally. 

When I was born, Dame Te Atairangikaahu was the present Māori Queen. She had a meaningful relationship with the Jewish community of Aotearoa, frequently inviting Israeli ambassadors to Marae Turangawaewae, the official residence of the Kīngitanga. 

There are many leaders from my Iwi, Ngāti Whātua, and others who speak against Ngawera’s actions. These leaders fight against the occupation of Palestine by Israel’s far-right government, while also supporting the Jewish people of Aotearoa and denouncing anti-semitism. 

Throughout 2022, I spent some of my time volunteering in the Middle East. Teaching Israeli and Arab kids English, looking after the children of Ukranian refugees while they scrambled for new lives, and speaking to Israelis and Arabs about their upbringings and struggles. 

If there is one thing I learned on that journey, it was that we don’t deserve to hate someone until we understand them. 

Both my Māori and Jewish communities talk frequently of the need for more tolerance, more desire for co-existence, and more understanding and kōrero with other perspectives. My mother is one of the thousands of immigrants in Aotearoa who left their country due to the lack of these things. 

In the polarised world of today, we must understand and learn about the nuanced views of immigrants in Aotearoa, rather than blindly associating them with rigid ideologies.