Young Maori dazzle at speech series
Dozens of young Ma ori headed to Pahıatua to test their speech-making skills at Nga¯ Manu Ko¯ rero Manawatu -Horowhenua 2018.
Tararua College Ma ori teacher Richard Daymond said the speech competition, which has run since 1965, was designed to nurture great, young Ma¯ ori orators.
‘‘We have four winners – senior Ma ori and English, and junior Ma ori and English – because the idea was to make sure they were strong in both languages. And it has produced some very, very successful young Ma ori in the past.’’
Past winners include Kingi Kiriona, who went on to work for Ma ori TV as both a presenter and director, and Hinuwera Poutu, who is now a Massey Universtity professor and director of the Ma ori Language Commission.
Daymond said Tararua College had only hosted the competition twice in its history, so it was fantastic to host this year’s event on Friday with so many talented youngsters taking the stage.
The four winners of the competition will head to the national competition in Gisborne later this year.
Maia Takitimu, from Manukura School, was surprised to hear her name announced as winner of the senior Ma¯ ori division.
‘‘I was shocked, but I was glad all my hard work paid off.’’ Although, it was her teachers that had done the real hard work, and she’d just used what they’d taught her, she said.
‘‘A lot of it was because of Mana Tamariki, I was raised at that school for 13 years. They got me started early with te reo.’’
It was particularly sweet to be following in the footsteps of her older brother Wipere Takitimu, who’d won the competition twice in the past two years, she said.
However confident she normally felt, Maia found it a little nerve-wracking, and challenging, to get up on stage, especially, because the young speakers were only given topics on the day. Maia got ‘my Ma¯ ori world is nearly lost’.
It was a statement she saw some truth in, as she explained in her speech.
‘‘I reckon it’s our responsibility [as the youth] to uphold and revive those things our people almost lost, like our language and our tikanga.’’
Maia was also hugely impressed by the winner of the best junior Ma¯ ori speech – Hinete-ahurangi Durie, who she knew from Mana Tamariki.
‘‘She was so confident and articulate, she sounded really good. It was like it all came naturally to her.’’
Maia said her family capped the night off with a celebration dinner at Lone Star, where Maia got to enjoy her favourite meal – pork ribs.