Te reo Maori
ELLOISE CAMERON Year 12 Columba College
TE reo Maori. The native language of Aotearoa.
You faced near extinction of your swirls and whirls of tikanga. You sound like a song weeping softly in a summer breeze, your vowels and consonants blend together into a beautiful symphony, your inflections rise and fall like a lullaby.
I listen to your voice ebb and flow, your tides simultaneously crashing and lapping the sandy shore. Despite your conservative phonology, the amount of expression and emotion drawn from your voice is unmatched.
From joyous to melancholy, sorrow to anguish, your capacity to convey emotions not even expressed in the English language is extraordinary. Your myths and legends eloquently weave your tales of creation for the world to see.
I see. I listen. I read. I write. I learn your patterns and discover new perspectives because of you.
Ehara taku toa i te toa takitahi, engari he toa takitini. This whakatauki, meaning my strength is not as an individual but as a collective, is the motto you, te reo Maori, have lived by.
I have seen this whakatauki remain true for you throughout history, from losing connotations after your oral language was confined into a written language by settlers, to your people getting caned in school if even one of your words was spoken.
It is astonishing that oppression of you and your people has not forced isolation, instead you have managed to stay united. You have so many proverbs that have been born from a place of oppression. Te reo Maori, this is both heartbreaking and commendable, as on one hand the weight of oppression you have faced is so great that the whakatauki which tell of this have been infused into the very heart of you; but on the other hand, it shows just how steadfast you are in the face of adversity, and how you can turn oppression into one of your most recognisable attributes.
I admire the strength with which you carry yourself in spite of all the unfair baggage you and your people have had to carry for centuries. Even though there have been attempts in the past, Aotearoa as a whole needs to step up and take the weight of that baggage off of your shoulders.
We can start small, te reo Maori, we already have in many ways — it is so refreshing to see you feature in various media, slowly but surely becoming more prevalent in everyday society.
Admittedly, it is less noticeable that you are a language to be respected in Te Waipounamu, our South Island, than Te IkaaMaui, the North Island. The Cook Strait does a lot more than just divide two bodies of land.
This small stretch of water really does seem to create a stark difference in how valued you are.
As a Pakehamajority country we could blame this on the fact that the representation of Maori in Te Waipounamu compared with Te IkaaMaui is blatantly disproportionate, and that’s just the way it is — the South Island will never compare to the North Island in relation to Maori.
However, the size of the population of your people should not determine your popularity.
If anything, it should make us, even all the way down in Otepoti, chomp at the bit to meet the North Island’s reputation and enrich ourselves in tikanga and reo. Unfortunately, this is not currently the case, and our attitudes need to change desperately soon.
Not just me, but we as a class, a school, a city, an island and a country need to at least be open to learning more about te reo Maori and understand why it is so important we don’t let you become extinct, like you were close to doing a few decades ago.
What’s the harm in building a platform for you, te reo Maori, to thrive in places where you haven’t even had the chance to be spoken before? Ehara a tatou toa i te toa takitahi, engari he toa takitini.
Our strength is not as an individual but as a collective.