Bringing te reo to deaf Maori
Thanks to people like Stephanie Awheto, being deaf is no barrier to learning te reo Maori. Ruby Nyika reports.
‘‘We would talk about where we were going to eat, what we were going to order before we left the house. It was so not acceptable to be signing in public. [Deaf people] had no mana, no status.’’ Stephanie Awheto
Ma¯ ori concepts like tikanga, iwi and kauma¯ tua don’t exist in Englishbased sign language.
And it means deaf Ma¯ ori have been deprived of their culture, Hamilton-based interpreter Stephanie Awheto said.
But that’s changing, albeit slowly.
Awheto and deaf Ma¯ ori lobbyist Patrick Thompson worked on developing te reo signs together for about 20 years.
Thompson died in 2014 and pressure is on for Awheto, the most senior interpreter of te reo sign, to teach the next generation of deaf Ma¯ ori and keep their work alive.
Sign language, te reo Ma¯ ori and English are New Zealand’s three official languages.
But Awheto is one of just a handful of people fluent in all three and one of two trilingual interpreters developing Ma¯ ori signs.
‘‘That has developed over time – Ma¯ ori conceptual signs,’’ Awheto said. ‘‘We’re not there, we’ve got a lot of work to do.’’
Iwi-specific language is the hardest and still being developed.
But most concepts, such as kia ora, are hard to directly translate into English sign language and needed their own signs.
Kia ora isn’t just a greeting, it’s a blessing.
You can’t be too literal with translation between English and Ma¯ ori, she said.
‘‘You lose stuff in the middle of it … te reo Ma¯ ori is much more metaphorical.
‘‘I think it will always evolve.’’ Her work spans 25 years and involves translating for events, such as debates and marae speeches.
And as te reo evolves, te reo signing will need to evolve too, she said.
‘‘The more Ma¯ ori deaf learn about their culture, the more they understand the concepts.
‘‘[We] will develop more signs as we go.’’
One of the most touching moments Awheto has encountered was while interpreting at a funeral. A deaf son was able to understand the stories and aroha shared about his dad.
Another was seeing Thompson – the first to begin developing te reo signs – begin translating speeches amidst renowned speakers.
When Awheto first met him, he wouldn’t even sign in public.
‘‘We would talk about where we were going to eat, what we were going to order before we left the house.
‘‘It was so not acceptable to be signing in public.
‘‘[Deaf people] had no mana, no status.’’
The duo began sitting for hours as she taught him te reo and he taught her signs.
‘‘He became like a brother to me.’’
When Thompson died, so did the deaf Ma¯ ori community’s greatest ally.
‘‘We still feel it.
‘‘He was the crusader for that kaupapa.’’
Despite not being deaf, Awheto finds it hard to talk without signing.
‘‘People expect to [hear] my mother and father were deaf or my brother and sister were deaf.
‘‘I act and behave very much like a person that has grown up with the language in my life.
‘‘I’m an oddity,’’ she said, laughing.
Signing is purer than most languages, Awheto finds. There’s no room for ambiguity.
‘‘The beauty of it is, it doesn’t matter what you’re saying. It’s what you’re meaning, it’s the concepts. We don’t get caught up in transliteration.
‘‘If you said to a deaf person, get off the grass, and literally signed get off the grass, they wouldn’t get it.
‘‘Sign language doesn’t allow any of that. You just cut through the crap and get to the point of what is being said.
‘‘They just state the facts.’’
Te reo signing probably won’t ever become nationally recognised, she said. It’s hard enough to keep spoken te reo going as an official language.
But while recent comments by Sir William Gallagher and Don Brash were disheartening for
Ma¯ ori, most people understand the importance of their culture, Awheto said.
‘‘The old codgers like the Don Brashes and Gallaghers – it is a dying attitude, I think. They’ll finally fall out of favour.
‘‘I have great hopes for the next generation of our Ma¯ ori deaf community.
‘‘They have this belief that they can make changes for the world. And I love that.’’