Te Wiki o te Reo Maori: Te Mahi Kai - the Language of Food
New Zealand Customs Service; Wellington
Monday 26 July 2010; 11.30am
Hon Tariana Turia; Co-leader of the Maori Party

In 1972, our people stood on the steps of Parliament, to tell politicians that our language must live. At that time, 70,000 were fluent speakers of their tribal language. Today there are less than 20,000. My question to us all is what will it take to revitalise our reo?

I was humbled by the invitation from Iti Paenga to join you for your celebration of Te Wiki o Te Reo Maori - and to share my thinking about the concept of the theme for this week - Te Mahi Kai : the language of food.

Te reo Maori is always associated in my mind as food for the soul. It is the sweet nectar of sustenance that feeds our spiritual strength, our cultural competency, our identity.

It is the fuel that drives us on, that provides the energy and the momentum to search for a greater understanding. Our language can help us to restore ourselves to the essence of who we are.

Over this last weekend many of our families of Ngati Apa/Nga Wairiki; Ngati Rangi and the Rangitikei have celebrated 100 years of the prophetess Mererikiriki.

One of the stories shared was at the old pa site of Parewanui. It was at this pa that Mererikiriki gave her nephew Enoka Mareikura two bells - one bell to be rung for karakia, the other bell for kai.

To this day when you hear the karanga of these bells, you will know that your faith and your fortitude will be nourished; your wellbeing nurtured. And with every ring of the bell a direct association is made with the ancestors and whakapapa that link us to our history.

Such is the power of language that the karakia that have been recited over generations; the waiata and haka that have been passed down over successive families; instantly connect you to those who have now passed on. It is indeed soul-food.

I have listened to some orators on the marae who have such an amazing grasp of the language that they can weave word paintings which instantly uplift you to another time.

It is said that the limits of our language are the limits of our world. Conversely confidence and competence in te reo Maori opens the door to the wider horizons of our world - providing access to greater knowledge about our ways of seeing and being in the world.

One of the most wonderful things about the present times is to see the resurgence and the revitalisation of te reo Maori.

We now have a generation of young people who have graduated from kohanga reo, kura kaupapa Maori and wharekura and who are well equipped to go out into the world secure in their identity and strong in their expression of their culture.

Proficiency in te reo Maori has brought them to a point in which their understanding and appreciation of te Ao Maori has made them well equipped as citizens of the world.

We hear Maori spoken in all range of meetings - whether they be Maori or non-Maori audiences. We hear more and more vocabulary which reflects the respect accorded to te reo Maori as official language of New Zealand. In fact on Budget Day Minister of Finance, Bill English, told me that he had all of his hapu waiting for in his office - and knowing the size of his family I absolutely believed it.

But we must never forget it has not always been like that.

In my lifetime alone I have experienced the almost successful annihilation of the language; the attempts to starve language growth by a dismal lack of resourcing; and the passing of a rich repository of native language speakers.

I have my own experience of language loss which directly attacked the soul. My mother was raised to know te reo Maori as her first and principal language. It was the language of the home; the language of the pa; the language of her world. That is until she entered school.

From that day on, things were never the same. My mother was part of the generation whom was hit and spoken sharply to, every time she uttered a Maori word. And yet it was the only language she knew.

As time passed, her voice was silenced and replaced with a new persona - a quieter, more restricted one. To the end of her days, I never heard her using te reo Maori.

Yet sometimes I would watch her intent in conversation with fluent Maori speakers. They would speak to her exclusively in te reo and she would reply exclusively in English - but it appeared that there was perfect and mutual understanding.

There was only one time that I recall her coming close to sharing what it must have been like to have your true voice beaten out of you. We were sitting with a group of others who were talking about having been hit at school for speaking te reo Maori.

My tiny mother said nothing but hung her head in her knees and sat there, huddled in her own quiet distress.

As I think of her experience, it reminds me of my uncles who returned from war, never to speak of that experience again. They returned damaged, shell-shocked and in too many cases destroyed by the trauma they had endured.

Just as there was a huge vacuum in our understanding of what they had seen and lived through, I believe there is a similar void in trying to comprehend the level of trauma experienced when your tongue is silenced forever, when you are denied your voice.

In te reo we might say 'kua ngaro' - one interpretation of which something which is gone. But a fuller interpretation of kua ngaro is 'to be unseen or unheard'.

And so it was on my own marae, that in our very recent history - probably not more than 25 years ago - we thought that our language was indeed 'kua ngaro'.

When my Uncle Hop passed away there was no-one of the next generation who had the reo, and so we went through a period in which were relying on people from other iwi to take on the role and responsibilities of taking care of our paepae.

And so those who would welcome on manuhiri to our marae, who would put down the korero for the day, came not from Nga Wairiki/Ngati Apa but from Tainui, Hokianga, Raukawa, Tuwharetoa.

That was until one day, a kaumatua from Raukawa/ Tuwharetoa arrived at our marae and my son, all of thirteen years of age, rose to mihi to him.

Although his language was still developing, Pahia's commitment was intense and the significance of him standing on our behalf stays with me till this day.

This kaumatua later took my boy aside and told him that the korowai of the hapu had landed on him, and that he would do everything he could to support him in developing his voice.

True to his word, that kaumatua took my son home, invested his time and energy in him, and by the time he was sixteen, Pahia was fluent in te reo rangatira, and was ready and able to take on his responsibilities on the pae.

Two decades later, it is a different world - a more enlightened world - in terms of how the promotion and resurgence of te reo Maori has been supported to thrive.

I only have to look at the names of our children - our mokopuna - to know the tangible progress that has been made.

We have children with beautiful names like Nga Wairiki or Pareraukawa - synonomous with our tribal identity. There are names which are in themselves a blessing to that child for their life ahead: names like Te Tihi o te Ora (the fullest expression of our wellbeing) or Ngakaupirirawa (to cling close to my heart). We have names which tell a story in themselves, like Pakaitore or the names of our tupuna carried on into our upcoming generations.

And I have one last story to tell, which shows me how far we have come.

When that same son went to school, we had a favourite nickname for him - after the famous Mouse of cartoon fame - and that was Micky. But his teacher looked at his enrolment form and told the class, no, from this day on you will address 'Micky' by his proper name - Simon.

After school my son came home and told us all we must follow alike and from now on in, only use his proper name. Despite his protestations, I told him that while I was appreciative of his teacher's efforts to be responsive, I needed to talk to her about that name.

I duly marched of to the class teacher and told her that actually his first real name was Pahia, and I would be delighted if she use that name as it had great meaning for us as a whanau.

The teacher looked aghast and replied, 'actually Micky will do just fine'.

My hope for 2010 is that the era in which Maori names were minimised, mispronounced and re-interpreted, is indeed 'kua ngaro'.

We have lived through a time in which beautiful tupuna names have been treated with little respect - with people responding to a new name by asking - but what do we call her for short? Doesn't he have a nickname? Does she have a Pakeha name I can call her to make it easier?

I truly believe we are in a new era - an era in which people can respect te reo Maori as a vital foundation for tangata whenua.

Our identity is sourced in our language - in our waiata, our haka, our karakia, our whenua, our pepeha, our whakatauaki, our names.

Today, I have shared many stories with you - all of them deeply personal but which I hope demonstrate how vital our mother tongue is to the expression of our being.

I wish you all a wonderful Te Wiki o te Reo Maori - and as we celebrate Te Mahi Kai across the motu; let us think of every morsel spoken as food for the soul - creating an environment in which Maori language is valued for the difference it makes to our lives.

ENDS

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