‘I feel like I’m trapped in a dark satire’
The incoming Government’s winding back of the clock on te reo might have the opposite of the intended effect – as proud and influential Māori who rallied yesterday pledge not to back down. Kevin Norquay reports.
Saying young aspirational Māori are unhappy and upset is an understatement. They see the incoming Government as setting out to erase te reo and Te Tiriti principles they’ve lived with most of their lives. Sick to the stomach is closer to how they are feeling, even if the anti-government protests yesterday were peaceful.
Māori have expressed a range of emotions; many upset and disappointed - but opting to stay quiet, due to being government employees.
But those interviewed for this story didn’t mince their words.
Criminal lawyer Echo Haronga (Ngāti Kahungunu ki Heretaunga) says the new Government “approves of the Māori experience of these systems of 40 years ago, and would prefer Māori experience returned to it”.
Waikato law student and financial blogger (under the name Māori Millionaire) Te Kahukura Boynton says moves to remove te reo from the names of government agencies are a “harmful and horrible idea”.
And Te Wānanga o Raukawa in Ōtaki head lecturer Dr Carwyn Jones regarded rubbing out te reo as a disservice to all New Zealanders, the young particularly.
The National, NZ First, ACT coalition says it is setting about a much-needed rebalancing of an overly sensitive, politically correct culture stifling free speech and economic progress.
Under the coalition agreements, treaty principles in legislation will be reviewed, while the NZ First influence will get te reo names removed from the names of government departments. Three Waters, the Labour plan for water infrastructure with its Māori co-governance aspects, has been sunk.
But for young Māori, it’s a cultural and generational attack by three older men - two of them Pākehā (David Seymour also has some Māori ancestry - clawing back changes made by consecutive governments of many hues over five decades.
Auckland University associate history professor Dr Aroha Harris (Te Rarawa, Ngāpuhi) who wrote Hīkoi: Forty Years of Māori Protest, says “I feel like I’m trapped in a dark satire.”
“The three-headed taniwha we have for a Government is choosing cheap-shot politics to distract us from the big issues like the climate crisis, poverty, a decaying health system and no doubt many other priorities.
“My mind can be changed if someone can show me the research that shows erasing reo Māori names from government agencies will reverse the decline in populations of so many of our native species, or that revision of Te Tiriti will end poverty.”
The Government’s moves have some support. “It's a fight we have to have sooner or later,” former ACT MP Stephen Franks, a Wellington lawyer, told the Sunday Star-Times at the weekend.
“I don’t have any doubt that it has been getting worse, so I'm just delighted that we’ve got Winston (Peters) and Shane Jones saying, ‘it's time to face it’.”
The “it” to be faced is the place of Te Tiriti in a modern world, as it nears two centuries since it was signed. If the Treaty’s intent was to form a Crown-Māori partnership - two equals - it is no surprise Kiwis who have grown up with that notion feel betrayed.
More broadly, the Christopher Luxon, David Seymour and Winston Peters-led pushback is a democratic risk at odds with younger voters, who are already less inclined to vote.
It has New Zealand headed in the opposite direction to where demographics are taking it (a more diverse population), and have raised fears it will lessen social cohesion, in part by widening the richpoor divide.
Māori made up 17.3% of the total population as of June 2023, a proportion growing more swiftly than the overall population. Median ages for Māori males and females are 25.5 and 27.6 years respectively, (compared with national median ages of 37.0 and 39.1).
Children born Māori are projected to increase from 27% in 2018 to 33% (about one in three) by 2043, with the Māori population projected to grow to 21% of the total.
Criminal lawyer Echo Haronga (Ngāti Kahungunu ki Heretaunga) is a supporter of initiatives aiming to keep the most oppressed out of jail.
“It is no hyperbole that the changes represent a reversal of decades of hard work, including work done by some of the coalition parties' previous governments, to have advanced gradually towards te reo Māori and tikanga Māori survival, and celebration in some aspects of life in New Zealand,” she says.
“It is no surprise that Māori are upset, frightened, or angry at the proposals. The hurt and trauma remains in living memory, for our people who have suffered unspeakable harms in the care system, the justice system, the health system, in our alienation from our whenua, in the silencing of our reo.”
The coalition’s policy wish-list showed, after decades of inquiries, reports, research, journalism, litigation and activism, that the Government wanted to take Māori back there.
She says most voters would not have expected the coalition to spend so much time, and resource, on winding back decades of work.
“This is the threat these changes pose, and this is why Māori will protest. I look forward to seeing you at the hīkoi, or making your voices heard in other ways.”
Te Kahukura Boynton, (Te Whakatōhea, Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāi Tūhoe) the blogger who helps Māori toward financial
independence, attended the protest “to make a stand for my tupuna, my whānau and our mokopuna”.
“I am going to make a stand and show that we will not back down.
“The current propositions to remove te reo Māori from government agencies or to disestablish the Māori Health Authority is a harmful and horrible idea,” the law student says.
“[They] will harm all vulnerable communities in Aotearoa, but particularly tangata whenua. We cannot sit by and let all of the work that Māori and Tiriti activists have put forth disappear.”
She did not accept it was Parliament’s role to decide what Te Tiriti o Waitangi meant.
Auckland University Māori Studies PhD candidate Aimee Matiu (Ngāti Here, Ngāi Tūpoto ki Motukaraka, Te Rarawa ki Hokianga, Ngāpuhi) says the attempt to eradicate te reo and Te Tiriti, coupled with the ugly rhetoric, bears a striking resemblance to drunken old men talking at the pub.
“They ramble on about the good old days, banging their beers on the tables, and declare that the youth of today lack the grit and resilience of their bygone era.”
Tangata whenua and tangata tiriti were facing the latest political chatter with a collective eye-roll, she says.
“The Government’s attempt to sideline te reo and Te Tiriti is, for many, just another round of the same old boomer kōrero – a monologue that’s easier to ignore than engage with.”
Matiu says she will ignore the politicians, continue to kōrero te reo Māori, and work towards what her ancestors declared in He Whakaputanga and agreed to in Te Tiriti.
“We will always stand up and push back, and in fact, this is when we have forged forward the most. We will protest, and we will wave our flags in various ways in all the spaces we occupy.”
Dr Carwyn Jones (Ngāi Te Apatu, Ngāti Kahungunu ki Te Wairoa), head lecturer at Te Wānanga o Raukawa in Ōtaki, said te reo was a part of life for many in the town, not just Māori.
“When I look at high school-aged kids, they are te reo speakers, and Pākehā families at the high school are so thrilled to give their kids the opportunity to be around Māori speakers, to get that learning,” he says.
“When you look at how popular te reo has become, not just amongst Māori, the Government is not just trying to take us back, but have not realised how far the country has moved on.”
Less informed decisions would be a result of minimising Māori input through anti-co-governance measures, Jones says.
“We have really been missing out on the benefits of bringing different voices in around the table, bringing in iwi who have local knowledge built up over generations,” he says.
“We're going to need those voices when we're dealing with things like climate change. We really need to be engaging with knowledge systems outside of the systems that have created the problem in the first place.
“We all lose out on that as well.” While the protest ended peacefully yesterday morning with groups slowly trickling out of Parliament grounds, ACT leader David Seymour fired back in a statement sent to media soon afterwards, blaming people “unhappy with the election result” for the Māori Party-led movement.
“It’s a sad day when a political party is protesting equal rights. They’re on the wrong side of history.”
Professor in Politics at Massey University, Richard Shaw, admits he is baffled by some aspects of the coalition moves, though he agrees a conversation needs to be had.
“I don’t understand why so many people in ACT, in New Zealand First and elements of the National Party struggle with the use of te reo Māori, which comprises about 0.01% of the words you hear on any given day,” he says.
“I want somebody to explain to me why they object to te reo. If you are so emotionally or intellectually fragile you cannot cope with an agency called Waka Kotahi, maybe you're the issue, not the use of the language.”
New Zealand has long grappled with its multicultural nature, and its colonial past.
“The Government’s attempt to sideline te reo and Te Tiriti is, for many, just another round of the same old boomer kōrero – a monologue that’s easier to ignore than engage with.” Auckland University Māori Studies PhD candidate Aimee Matiu
Erasing te reo and the treaty principles will not end that struggle, he says.
“People don't want to have those conversations. We can pretend some of those things will go away, they won't, they will come back to haunt us.
“We can't avoid that kind of part of our historical legacy. You can have those conversations in respectful ways. Nobody needs to lose out, it can be a positive outcome.”