Getting kids to walk and talk the line between cultures
Our six-year-old isn’t the only blond kid in his primary school’s whanau class, but he’s in the minority. ‘‘Why would you?’’ a few people shrugged when we were agonising over whether to enrol him there at the start of the year. ‘‘Why wouldn’t we?’’ we eventually said to each other.
After all, at worst he’ll learn a new language – top marks for brain development. At best, he’ll grow up with an innate understanding of the fullness of New Zealand culture, which is something I certainly do not have myself.
I despair of ever really getting there – I’m aware of my own discomfort when discussing Ma¯ ori issues. I have a dearth of knowledge, and a bunch of feelings that I don’t quite know what to do with – frustration, guilt, defensiveness.
I grew up in the south of the South Island, and my understanding is anything but inherent. Te reo was taught for a few weeks at high school, alongside Japanese, French and German. New Zealand history was taught, too, but so was the Irish potato famine and the Arab-Israeli War. There wasn’t much of a sense that this was something special to us, nor that it would continue to shape the country we live in. It was history, after all.
When I was in my early teens, I asked Mum hopefully if we had any Ma¯ ori ancestry. I had a vague sense that being Ma¯ ori was cool, and an even vaguer sense that it was somehow advantageous.
There had been talk at school about scholarships for which I wasn’t eligible, and a feeling that there was a fellowship to which I wasn’t privy. Teenagers – perhaps humans in general – want to feel that they simultaneously belong and are special.
No-one ever thought to properly explain to us kids that the scholarships and advantages were to act as redress for inequalities in the past that were still influencing the present. Perhaps the conversation was too big – our world view was certainly too small and our sense of history too shallow for us to have figured out the deeper issues for ourselves.
We carried that sense of righteousness and confusion with us for years afterwards.
I want my son to grow up feeling comfortable alongside the Ma¯ ori world – not so he can integrate, but so he can make decisions that aren’t informed by his own uneasiness. I hope that he will have positive choices open up to him because of this one that we made for him at age five.
So far, he is learning his mihi and is being taught what it means to be centred by a river and a mountain. He’ll understand etiquette on a marae. He’s learning kapa haka, waiata, and of course a growing pool of te reo.
There is a range of ages across the whanau unit’s two classrooms, and they use a tuakana-teina structure, where the older children buddy up with the younger ones to help them with their learning.
Like every other classroom in the country, this learning includes reading, writing and mathematics. The class enjoys science experiments, plays games, and does artwork.
He’s not in there to prove a bigger point – we were never going to sacrifice his wider education to put him in a bilingual class. He’s learning all the things that he should be, at the proper level and pace.
He’s not out of place there. It is of no consequence to him that some of the other kids are Ma¯ ori and he isn’t, just as it would be in any other classroom. His classmates are also Tongan, Fijian, Japanese and Mexican. The teachers make no distinction and teach to the child’s level, not their ethnicity.
I get a bit nervous every time I write about Ma¯ ori issues, which in itself is part of the problem. These are discussions we need to have, but there is a constant fear of causing offence to others and bringing shame to myself.
What I cling to is the fact that those of us who are still in the early stages of our journeys need to have a chance to take others along with us.
Ma¯ ori culture is such a key part of New Zealand’s unique culture as a whole, but as Pa¯ keha¯ , it’s hard to know how much we can embrace it and how much we should just admire it from a distance.
It’s embarrassing how little te reo I know, but then it’s also a little embarrassing to use the language, too. It doesn’t quite feel like it’s mine to use.
It’s difficult to strike the right balance between cultural appropriateness and cultural appropriation. Hopefully, our children will be better equipped to walk the line between our cultures. Perhaps they will walk it so well that it begins to disappear beneath their feet.
I want my son to grow up feeling comfortable alongside the Ma¯ ori world.