ABROAD
Tu m e ke Denmark BY VANESSA ELLINGHAM
W
hen one of my Danish students asked whether Poi E was available on Spotify, I knew I’d won them over. My first job overseas was visiting Danish elementary school classes aged 12 to 16 to allow them to practise their English on a native speaker. Each class had been studying New Zealand for a term, so they knew we had Marmite, mountains and millions of sheep. They also insisted we ate possum pie – something their research told them was a major Kiwi delicacy. Nothing I said could convince them otherwise. Showing them the Poi E music video was my attempt to convey the idea that Māori culture doesn’t belong in the ancient past, as depictions from the 1800s reproduced in old textbooks would have them believe, but that it lives and thrives today. Surely there is no better illustration of this idea than a bit of poi performed on roller skates, or so I thought. When students began asking me about Once Were Warriors, I could see I needed to up my game. Many of the older students had seen the movie as part of their New Zealand studies, but only one class had been blessed with a teacher who had discussed with them the connection between a loss of ancestral land and a loss of cultural identity and esteem. A lack of guidance about the film from teachers had left many of the teenagers equating being Māori with being violent. I wanted to tell them that unfortunately some people in New Zealand still think that, too, but I could see it really backfiring. I hoped that telling them I was Māori would be a good start. As a child at the marae I’d been told, “you’re as Māori as you feel”. Back at home, fair-haired, pale-faced me had only ever felt like I didn’t quite qualify; but now, far from home, I felt very Māori. Being the first to explain Māori culture to others felt like a huge responsibility. Everyone at home already had an opinion, but in Denmark I found whole classes of students eager to hear what being Māori meant to me. I decided to tell them about being plunged into my first marae stay experience, aged nine, at my granddad’s tangi. I realized that all the things I had found funny, strange or awkward at the time, they would probably find funny, strange or awkward, too.
I recounted what it was like hosting my granddad’s body in our dining room and having to sleep next to him to shield him from spirits; heading to the marae where hundreds of people I’d never met kissed me, said “I’m your Aunty Such-and-Such” and then told me off for not closing my eyes while we pressed noses to exchange the breath of life; finding myself another dozen brown cousins at the marae, who all asked, “were you adopted or something?” Was this not one of the most interesting things about Māoridom today? That many of us are raised Pākehā, often only experiencing our Māori side on specific occasions like the death of a grandparent. Instead of giving them a token Māori experience, I could offer these Danish kids the genuine article: a 21st-century, urbanized middle-class Māori experience. At the time I was only a couple of months into living and working in Denmark, but I’d already run up against a prevailing attitude that in Denmark there’s only one way of doing things, and that’s the Danish way. It really pushed my buttons, so when I walked into classrooms where I found something other than monoculture – not only white kids but brown ones as well, often from Turkey or other parts of the Middle East – I’d be itching to let them know that where I come from there’s room for more than one culture to be expressed. That there’s a brown part of me too and, in my class at least, it’s ok to talk about being different. (I should pause here and say that I only lasted one year in Denmark, for this reason. Despite my appearance fitting in perfectly, I quickly realized the rest of me did not). After thoroughly spooking the students – they had many questions about my granddad’s corpse and what it smelt like – I’d end each class with our unofficial national anthem. At the end of my first week on the job, I met a class of kids who couldn’t believe the Poi E video had amassed 999,000 views on YouTube – what is this corny, out-dated crap, they asked. But by the time I showed it to the next class the following Monday it had overshot one million views. I like to believe I was at least partially responsible for this. Just imagine 30 Danish families sitting at home on a Friday night watching Poi E. Tumeke..
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