Our te reo capital is a victory for the middlers
as the beautiful Te Nga¯ kau for the toothnumbingly dull Civic Square), and a preference for Ma¯ ori names for new streets.
Te reo Pa¯ keha¯ is everywhere. It’s an inescapable fact that I even have to employ te reo Pa¯ keha¯ to rail against it.
So, I like the new policy. Obviously. It’s good to see more reo Ma¯ ori in the public spaces of the city. I would love it to go further, and faster, but the unanimous decision by councillors is a decent and enlightened pushback against how things were done up until last week.
Another fantastic move came with the unveiling of a reo Ma¯ ori masthead – the chunk of real estate at the top of page 1 – for the region’s newspaper, The Dominion Post. (Obvious disclaimer: I write for it.)
The decision to run with the new name, Te Upoko-o-te-ika, during Matariki and alongside the policy launch is both a small step and a significant one. I got a genuine thrill seeing te reo Ma¯ ori atop the front page. It was beautiful: a simple, powerful gesture of inclusiveness for tangata whenua and the decent Pa¯ keha¯ of this place.
It means something to many people, and the act itself came with risks that could have been avoided, if wished, by following the safe path of doing the same as always – bugger all.
I love it, but I mention risks because, for some, the very act of temporarily inserting te reo Ma¯ ori into the masthead has tainted the news and daily features beneath it. Brown staphylococcus. Now, upon completing the Five-minute Quiz, these infected people will apparently start popping wildeyed pukana and emitting uncomfortably loud giggling. Sadly, dignity is the first thing to go with the savages – uh, I mean ravages – of illness.
So the temporary new name has become a Rorschach test of sorts. And those who rail against basic decency, although they don’t know it, actually only see themselves in the ugly ink blots.
My heart belongs to Te Hiku-o-te-ika, the tail of Maui’s fish, with my iwi Te Rarawa, but I’m lucky enough to live in Te Upoko (the head). Wellington city is a wonderful place: Cuba, Lambton, Courtenay, Midland Park, criss-crossing the slopes heading up from the waterfront. Modest high-rises and boulevards cheek-by-jowl with bungalows and hills.
There are so many places that could be gifted new names in te reo Ma¯ ori over the coming years to go with their current ones. I genuinely look forward to the changes. Other cities, if they don’t already have such policies as a bare minimum, should look to adopt them too.
The radical changes of the 60s and 70s and 80s were the adults’ party downstairs to my generation’s childhood. We sat on the stairs after bedtime and peered through the bannisters at the commotion, wide-eyed, snickering.
But maybe we can make progressive changes too. Small, incremental, perfectly reasonable changes, in the tiny window of opportunity between the decline of the Boomers and the rapid ascent of Millennials.
It’s time for us to fight for once. We never had a war of our own to fight. Our war can be against being obsolete before we achieve anything.
So watch out world. Be prepared for the hushed reckoning of the 40-somethings.