Te Wiki Whakaara
Ko Tainui te waka,
Ko Whitireia te maunga,
Ko Raukawa te moana,
Ko Takapūwāhia rāua ko Hongoeka ngā marae,
Ko Ngāti Toarangatira rātou ko Kāi Tahu, ko Ngāti Pāhauwera, ko Ngāpuhi ngā iwi.
Ko Te Rauparaha te tupuna ariki.
Ko Nīkau Wi Neera tōku ingoa.
He rangi hōhā, e kaha pupuhi ana te hau i te tāone matua. Kātahi anō ka mutu te ua, he tini ngā punua whakaata e whakairoiro ana i ngā arawhata, e whakaata ana i ngā koti, i ngā kāmeta me ngā makawe pūhutihuti o te rōpū iti kua whakahuihui ki te tahua. Ko ngā kiritohe, ngā rangatira o ngā hapori, ngā kaumātua, ngā mātua, me ngā kaitautoko e kōpipiri ana ki mua i te tūru o Te Kāwanatanga, me te whakapakoko o Dick Seddon e tiro mākutu iho ana ki a rātou. Ko ngā minita ērā, a Whetū Tirikātene-Sullivan rāua ko Matiu Rata, rātou ko ētahi atu hoa māhira, i te tū wahangū ki runga i te atamira i ā ngā kāmera e kā ana. Ka raru te mū o te reo i tētahi kaikaranga e tuku ana i tōna reo, ā, ka tāwhai atu te rōpū iti rā ki te whakatakoto i tētāhi pouaka iti kua hangaia i te rākau.
Kei roto i te pouaka rā ko ngā waitohu o Rawiri Paratene, o Hana Jackson, o te 30, 000 tāngata o Aotearoa e tono ana kia ako i te reo Māori ki ngā kura. Ko te tau 1972 te tau. Tekau tau ka pahure, ka hoki te tokomaha o ēnei mumu reo ki te whare pāremata, kua pakari ake rātou i ngā āki o te motu whānui me tētahi kēreme mō Te Taraipiunara o Waitangi. I hoki mai kia whakamahia ko te reo Māori hei reo matua mō te whenua i ahu mai ai ia, i tōna whakawhitinga mai i te moana nui, i ngā whārua o ngā moutere o Poronīhia, ki ngā ngāhere o Aotearoa i ngā arero o ngā kaumoana.
I tērā tau tonu, i whakatūria te Kōhanga Reo tuatahi, ā, ka hipa he rima tau anō kātahi, i te tau 1987, ka pāhi te Ture Reo Māori i tōna pānuitanga tuatahi. Koinei te wā i pakari rawa te mana porotū Māori, ko te take nohowheta i tū ki Takaprawhā i te kōkō tonu o ngā mahara o te hunga whānui whai muri mai i tōna otinga i te tau ‘78. Kua tīmata te whakarauoratanga tuatahi o te Māori, ā, i te whakaara te iwi i te pitomata i roto i te tuakiri torongapū, reo, āhua hoki i ngā pungarehu o te hekenga nui ki ngā tāone i kaha tūkino i tō tātou ao Māori.
I roto i tēnei taiao porotū me te whakarauora ka tīmatangia Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori. I tīmata ki tētahi rangi kotahi hei whakanui i te tau 1972, ā, ka tupu ki te roanga o te kotahi wiki i te tau 1975. I whakaritea te wiki hei whakatairanga i te reo, kia kōrerohia te reo i ngā wā katoa me ngā wāhi katoa, hei whakamauhara hoki i tōna tāmatenga. E tohu ana tēnei Wiki o Te Reo Māori i te wā tuatahi i āta aro te motu ki te whakatairanga i te reoruatanga o Aotearoa, me te kite i tōna kaha puāwai i ōna tau tuatahi ahakoa ngā whiunga whakahē nui ā ngā rōpū whakauka o te porihanga o Aotearoa. Ka tupu tonu te kaupapa i ngā tau, tae noa mai ki tēnei wā, ki te kaupapa e ārohanuitia ana e te marea.
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Te Wiki Whakaara
Ko Tainui te waka,
Ko Whitireia te maunga,
Ko Raukawa te moana,
Ko Takapūwāhia rāua ko Hongoeka ngā marae,
Ko Ngāti Toarangatira rātou ko Kāi Tahu, ko Ngāti Pāhauwera, ko Ngāpuhi ngā iwi.
Ko Te Rauparaha te tupuna ariki.
Ko Nīkau Wi Neera tōku ingoa.
It was a hōhā, windy day in the capital. It had rained, and small mirrors dotted the steps of Parliament, reflecting the coats, scarves and tentative afros of the small group assembled in the courtyard. Activists, community leaders, kaumātua, parents, and supporters were huddled before the seat of government, the statue of Dick Seddon coldly sneering at them from his marble plinth. MPs Whetū Tirikātene-Sullivan and Matiu Rata, along with a few other curious colleagues, stood in silence atop the landing as the television cameras were wound into life. The silence was broken by a karanga, and the small group shuffled forwards and set down a small wooden box upon the steps.
The box contained the signatures of Rawiri Paratene, Hana Jackson, and 30,000 other New Zealanders calling for the government to teach the Māori language in schools. It was 1972. Ten years later, many of these champions would return to parliament, strengthened by warming public opinion and a Waitangi Tribunal claim. They came to demand te reo Māori be made an official language in the whenua whence it sprung, having travelled across oceans from the misty, tropical valleys of Polynesia to the ngāhere of Aotearoa on the tongues of voyagers.
That year, the first kōhanga reo was founded, and five years later the Māori Language Act of ’87 passed its final reading in parliament. The Māori protest movement was in full swing, with the Bastion Point occupation not yet faded from public memory after having concluded in ’78. The first Māori renaissance had begun, and our people were reforging a nascent political, linguistic, and aesthetic identity from the ashes of the the great urban migration which had cost te ao Māori so dearly.
It was in this heady climate of protest and revitalisation that Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori was born. Beginning with an annual day in 1972, and growing to a whole week by 1975, the week was established to build awareness of the language, to promote its use in everyday life and public institutions, and to recognise how close it had come to annihilation. Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori represented the first concerted move by the state to promote a bilingual New Zealand, and saw success in its early years particularly amongst younger kiwis, despite fierce opposition from more conservative sectors of New Zealand society. It would grow over the years, eventually becoming the beloved festival we know today.
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When I was eighteen, I lived for short time in Vienna, Austria. During the winter months, we would wrap up warm and bundle ourselves off to school, to bask in the central-heated schoolhouse. A tall, brown boy from Pōneke, I was a curiosity, and I was once told by my German teacher (much to ribbing of my classmates) that packs of thirteen-year-old girls were hungrily roaming the corridors to catch a glimpse of my inexplicably dark hair, eyes, and skin.
In the first couple of weeks on the term, I stood up in front of the class and gave a presentation on Māori language and culture. I had trawled Google for images of whakairo, raranga, and marae, trying to find cultural touchstones that would communicate hundreds of years of history to a class of bored Austrian teenagers. I stammered through the presentation in my halting German, resorting to English occasionally and translating the reo as best I could. I finished in about five minutes, and was received with polite nodding and applause.
Later, a classmate asked me to give her some basic lessons in te reo. My grandfather had been given the strap at school for speaking our language, and thus was unable to teach my father, who grew up on the pā but had to learn the language as an adult. At the time, I was at the very beginning of my reo journey, but I gave it my best try and explained some rudimentary grammar and vocabulary.
All was well until I was asked why some things belonged to the “a” category, and some to the “o”. German groups nouns by gender, being either masculine, feminine, or neutral. It had made little sense for me at the time why a table was masculine and a street corner was feminine, so I resorted to rote-learning. However, German speakers seemed to be able to intuit this concept, even applying it to foreign words – a friend had recently insisted to me that the kākā absolutely must be masculine.
I didn’t know it yet, but I was about to learn the difficulties of explaining how the Māori concept of manaakitanga was so core to our cultural identity that it suffused even the language we spoke. Māori speakers in the same way can intuit why an animal is “a” and fresh water is “o”, but this differentiation must have seemed alien and arbitrary to my well-meaning Austrian mate. I went on to study te reo at university, and now finally have the skills to communicate this concept to others – though it remains no mean feat.
I recently had the privilege of meeting a First Nations knowledge-keeper of the Squamish people in Vancouver, Canada. We exchanged songs, karakia, and fragments of our ancestral languages. Expecting another difficult explanation about linguistic manaakitanga, I was shocked when my companion instantly understood the concept, and even guessed its relation to whakapapa, which I had explained barely moments earlier. I returned from this meeting with my wairua soaring, as I imagined his ancestors and mine meeting at a marae or a longhouse, exchanging stories, kai, and taonga.
***
Culture is utterly inseperable from language. It is impossible to understand te reo Māori without understanding the moral, spiritual, legal, and genealogical customs whereon it is based. I am profoundly, fantastically grateful to those rangatira who gathered on the steps to parliament on that windy day back in 1972, and to the first 30,000 who signed their names to protect our shared taonga. Yet we must not consider their work done with the hanging of vocab posters or the ordering of a coffee in Māori. We must make a deliberate and conscious effort to understand te ao Māori, her tikanga and kawa, and all her wondrous complexities, if we are truly to understand that warm, percussive, full-throated speech which is the lifeblood of our culture.
This is my challenge to you, reader, for Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori 2022, fifty years after that fateful day. Take a moment to read a story from your local iwi, talk to a kaumatua, or enrol in a summer class of MAOR101. Look for those essential cultural concepts which inform our relationship to the world around us, and to one another. To understand our language is to understand us, and whatever your heritage, I promise you that this journey will bring you closer to your own language and culture - all in your ancestors’ good time.
Tōku reo, tōku ohoho. Tōku reo, tōku māpihi maurea.