We learnt oui, but never a¯e

‘What is te reo for girl?’’ was the question in my daughter’s year 3 homework. A couple of answers popped in to my middle-aged brain: ragazza, I remembered, thinking of the Italian night class I’d taken in my twenties.

‘‘Une fille’’, came another lightning bolt, with the memory of a blackboard eraser being thrown at my head by a frustrated French teacher in fourth form.

When I was in the equivalent of year 3 we learnt no Ma¯ ori, unless you count bleating out ‘‘Oma Ra¯ peti’’ (‘‘Run Rabbit’’) at school assembly.

Perhaps I am being ungenerous and there were a few couple of other songs, but if there were, we were never given context or explanation. We did learn stick games using rolled up newspaper, bound with sticky tape, and perhaps we made poi, I can’t recall. But we weren’t taught colours or numbers or greetings in te reo Ma¯ ori. We certainly never learnt the word for girl.

At intermediate school, I do not remember a single lesson or song in te reo.

I’m not sure te reo Ma¯ ori was a subject choice at my all-girls high school because I never looked into it. I’m pretty sure the only choices were French, German, or Japanese. You could walk up to the boys’ school for Latin, which was incentivising for some and terrifying for me.

I learned French until fifth form and Japanese right through to seventh form. I chose to learn New Zealand history while two-thirds chose to learn English history, but later discovered I’d been taught an erroneous and whitewashed version of my own country’s past.

I didn’t do my own research to challenge what I’d been taught – there was no internet and I was too busy trying to get a boyfriend.

The extent of my ignorance started to dawn

on me when I moved from middle-class, homogenous, suburban Auckland to attend Waikato University. We were told we could submit assignments in national languages, including te reo Ma¯ ori.

I had trouble pronouncing the word ‘‘Waikato’’ properly; were there people submitting entire essays in te reo? The holes in my skewed and poor understanding of New Zealand history were becoming obvious to me too. I was embarrassed, intimidated by what I didn’t know, and ashamed.

How could I not know the basics of Ma¯ ori language, culture and history? Why wasn’t I taught? And, more importantly, why had I not tried to learn?

The unanswered question – ‘‘What is te reo for girl?’’ – in my 7-year-old’s homework book shook up unanswered questions I had been avoiding for years.

Instead of learning about my own country and its people, I had fled overseas; ordering ‘‘pain au chocolat’’ and lighting candles in ancient stone churches before I had sung my own national anthem in te reo Ma¯ ori or stepped on to a marae.

But now I was back living in Aotearoa and I couldn’t help my own children with their homework – wasn’t this the time to start learning?

Ibegan my reo journey at age 39, knowing less Ma¯ ori than my young kids. I easily found a summer school paper Introduction to Conversational Ma¯ ori at Auckland University of Technology. It was government-subsidised, so I paid zero dollars for it. Despite the many options available for learning te reo and the financial support to do so, I was still embarrassed and scared. I was filled with guilt that I should already know this. But I didn’t. The only way to help rectify that was to try to.

My initial fears dissolved as I realised I was one of hundreds learning reo that semester at AUT, all of us knowing less than we would like. The lens of te reo Ma¯ ori helped me appreciate Ma¯ oritanga and tikanga Ma¯ ori in a new light and deepened my understanding of the experiences of tangata whenua.

It was meaningful, challenging and fun to be finally learning some te reo. I laughed a lot and learned more about myself than I expected.

I finished my te reo course in December last year. But my learning is far from complete. It won’t ever be.

Learning te reo Ma¯ ori, understanding our country’s history, seeing and acknowledging Pa¯ keha¯ privilege, my many and various privileges, is a journey of a lifetime. I have many new unanswered questions. I have so much more to learn. In this, despite my age, I am still a ko¯ tiro.