MAORI AND ME!

Before coming to work at Tranby I spent ten years in senior management in two schools in New Zealand. As you may know NZ is an English-speaking country but it is also a bicultural and essentially bilingual country too.

Photograph: Maori warriors perform a Haka, meaning dance of welcome, New Zealand Sept. 21, 2012. The ceremony is an ancient Maori tradition used to determine if visitors came in peace or with hostile intent. Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

The first people of New Zealand were the Moriori and then the Maori people from the Pacific. They arrived in New Zealand on their waka or canoes and settled throughout the North and South islands. The Moriori soon died out leaving the different tribal groups we now think of Maori covering the islands. This state of affairs remained for many centuries until the white/Pakeha arrived on their boats from Europe. Unlike in Australia where the white Europeans literally took over the country almost destroying the first peoples of Australia, New Zealand was different. Yes, white / Pakeha did think of themselves as more civilised and superior, but they also came to trade. Unfortunately, some of their trading practices, especially when dealing with land, were a bit underhand! And on 6 February 1840 the Treaty of Waitangi was signed by both white Pakeha Europeans and the Maori tribes. This Treaty meant that many Maori lost their lands and rights.

So what does this have to do with the Maori language and culture? Well, for over a hundred years after the Treaty was signed both Maori culture and language languished in the furthest corners of New Zealand, particularly the far north of the North Island, the eastern cape of the north island and in the Deep South of the South Island. The white Pakeha did not wish to learn the Maori language (it wasn’t a written language at this point and so white people struggled with understanding it anyway) and the Maori began to realise / believe that the only way to now succeed in this New Zealand was to speak the white man’s tongue.

It was quite common, even within living memory of those still living in New Zealand, for Maori people to beat their own language out of the children. They had been taught that to speak Maori is to be uneducated and uncultured. This didn’t stop it being spoken in the towns and villages that were furthest away from the big centres such as Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. Things changed in the 1990’s alongside other cultural developments. Maori activism had seen a review of the treaty of Waitangi, with Māoris rightly claiming that they had been manipulated in their linguistic ignorance into giving away land and rights for mere pennies. From the 1990s onwards there has been a reparation of both land, rights and monetary reward as well as a resurgence of the language. Where does this fit in with my experience? Well, I went to become a Deputy Head at a school on the South Island. It was my responsibility to respect and promote Maori language and culture in my school. So I had to learn Maori! As a Social Studies teacher I had to learn NZ Maori and Pakeha history in order to teach it to my students. I had to be sensitive to Maori culture (I once got told off by a Maori student for sitting on a table, being told that ‘ I wouldn’t eat off my backside so why would I sit on a table that I might later eat off!’)

The learning of the language was a bit harder! The emphasis on a word in Maori is always on the vowel rather than a consonant which might seem like a relatively minor thing but it makes a huge difference to how something sounds, believe me! There is also a great deal of formality to Maori, particularly in greetings and public speaking. The hongi too was a big surprise when I first got there (the touching of noses in greeting).

I would never say I became proficient in the language although I learned how to greet formally and informally. And like many naïve languages many words in Maori are linked inextricably to the object or place they refer to. Kaikoura for example is a town on the South Island. Kai means food and Koufax means crayfish – Kaikoura is one of the best spots in NZ for diving for crayfish and much of their economy was based on it at one time (now famous for whale watching). Piwikawakawa is a bird –named for the noise it makes.

Maori is a fascinating language and an even more interesting culture, filled with respect and old customs. White pakeha New Zealanders have appropriated much for their own purposes. The Haka is a Maori war dance used now by any NZ sports team who wishes to use it for example. Sadly this obscures the depth of respect, strength and meaning in each of the moves and words.