Hana O’Regan

Māori language advocate

When Hana O’Regan’s now teenage children were only 2 and 3, someone asked in complete seriousness if the two kids were babbling away in Greek.

It was not that long ago but, in another way, it seems like such a long time ago. O’Regan is in a small meeting room at the Christchurch headquarters of Te Ru¯ nanga o Nga¯ i Tahu, where she is in a senior management role overseeing oranga, or wellbeing. She is thinking about the remarkable revival of the Ma¯ ori language, which has accelerated in recent years.

It was impossible not to notice the growth when Ma¯ ori Language Week rolled around in 2018. Commercial media companies came on board as they never had before. Air New Zealand has also done its bit to normalise te reo. The result is that ‘‘the languagescape of the last year has been phenomenal’’, as O’Regan says.

Remember when Ma¯ ori place names were routinely mangled on TV? That was only a generation ago. Now most of us know our Taupo¯ from our Tao-Poe.

O’Regan speaks te reo as a second language, but she raised her children to speak it as their first. The growing uptake by wider society validates them. ‘‘They don’t have the same apprehension they had 10 years ago. When they were speaking Ma¯ ori to me or each other, they would get glares. People would say ‘Are they able to speak English?’ Now it’s OK to have a conversation with Mum on the side of the league field or the netball courts or in the supermarket.’’

There is a cultural strength in a country when we no longer fear the indigenous language and make it ours. ‘‘We are really showing our growth as a nation.’’

But we’re not quite at the language utopia yet. There is some way to go. Remember how often you used to hear opinions along the lines of ‘‘Why learn Ma¯ ori? It won’t get you a job.’’ Those attitudes persist but they’ve gone more underground, ‘‘not far below the surface of the New Zealand psyche. There is a part of our society that knows this perception is no longer popular thought, but it is almost part of our subconscious and will remain there until we actively dispel the myth.’’

There is a story about O’Regan that helps explain things. Back when she was 14, as a student at Queen Victoria boarding school for Ma¯ ori girls in Auckland, she set herself a mission. She wrote in her journal that she would dedicate herself to revitalising Ma¯ ori language within Nga¯ i Tahu. She is quick to add this was not standard teenage precociousness. It was the kind of thing you were expected to do in her family.

Her father, Ta¯ Tipene O’Regan, was helping to steer the South Island iwi towards its hardwon settlement with the Crown. Seven generations, 150 years – these were big stretches of time. There was patience and organisation, trauma and injustice. She remembers a childhood home where politicians came and went, along with representatives from other indigenous struggles. Someone from West Papua might be sitting in the kitchen.

In the family lore, the Ma¯ ori side mattered but so did the Irish. There were stories of goldminers, unionists and conscientious objectors. ‘‘It was ingrained in me that you had to have a purpose and commit yourself to it.’’ Her mother, who was just as influential, fostered a love of Ma¯ ori culture and language.

Hana was the youngest of five in a busy house and, maybe because of that, was accident prone. ‘‘I created a lot of drama around me.’’ She was 4 when she was hit by a Mini. At 9, it was a bus. At 12, a milk truck. It gets worse: when she was 6, her right hand was completely severed in an accident with

a Skilsaw. Yes, completely severed.

In what was a pioneering operation for New Zealand, her hand was reattached. The scar is still obvious 40 years later, the hand has minimal movement and function – ‘‘it makes doing the poi rather challenging’’ – and she had to teach herself to write with her left. She also remembers that she woke from surgery crying, thinking she had lost all her Ma¯ ori blood. ‘‘How do you get it back?’’

Her interest in the signs and symbols of New Zealand has taken her beyond the iwi and the academic sector to John Key’s controversial Flag Consideration Panel in 2015. It was an honour to be asked to join the 12-person team, she says. As for the result?

‘‘I was a bit saddened, I guess, by the kneejerk response and the way the response was politicised. We were at a time when we were brave enough to be us but we weren’t quite there.’’

Since the settlement in the 1990s, Nga¯ i Tahu has had influence and clout. The iwi’s cultural power within Christchurch seemed obvious at the National Remembrance Service in Hagley Park two weeks after the mosque attacks.

On paper, the event was jointly led by the Government, Christchurch City Council, Nga¯ i Tahu and the Muslim community but what viewers saw was an unusually rich mix of Ma¯ ori and Muslim culture.

On the Nga¯ i Tahu side, former TV presenter turned chief operating officer Julian

Wilcox was the master of ceremonies and singer Marlon Williams was a stand-out performer.

Such an event would surely have been unimaginable in the Christchurch of 30 years ago. ‘‘It felt normal, it felt natural,’’ O’Regan says.

She was pleased, from a language advocate’s point of view, to see the respect shown to the language and culture ‘‘at a time when we’re saying we need to be more aware of diversity, we need to break down the barriers that keep us isolated and [create] a level of fear for the unknown or the other.

‘To see that we were strong enough and brave enough as a community and a nation to embrace Ma¯ ori, to embrace the Islamic faith, to embrace all of the people directly affected, that was quite a proud moment.’’

The post-March 15 climate has produced moments of pride and moments of painful soulsearching. There has been a lot of talk about white supremacy. ‘‘That wasn’t new to me,’’ she says.

There are the damaging extremes but the stuff that happens in the middle has an impact as well – the everyday jokes in pubs and classrooms, the routine stereotyping, the kids who are followed around in shops because they are brown.

‘‘I’ve known about the far Right all my life. I got called a n ..... at primary school. I got called a honky at secondary school. I’ve been verbally abused for speaking Ma¯ ori. I’ve had my children as young as three be verbally abused by adults. Not just once, but on a number of occasions.’’

When that happened, it didn’t come from obvious white supremacists with tattoos and swastikas. It was from elderly Pa¯ keha¯ women who looked entirely normal or socially acceptable. In some ways, the ‘‘respectable’’ forms of racism are the worst, as they convince ‘‘those who are not mentally sound who hold those views’’ that they are right.

‘‘Unfettered rhetoric can legitimise the downright nasties in our society. The danger of that has never been far from my consciousness.’’

Racism is still common, but the majority fail to see it. Here is an example of that. Just four days before the Christchurch mosque attacks, a road rage video popped up in O’Regan’s Facebook feed. She watched as a professional Ma¯ ori woman with moko kauae was racially abused by some angry white driver. While the guy was ranting, the woman calmly turned on her phone and started filming.

Her point is that this kind of thing goes on all the time. Ma¯ ori notice but Pa¯ keha¯ don’t.

‘‘You can be forgiven for being oblivious to this undercurrent, because unless you are directly impacted by racism, you can be excused for not believing it happens. It is really hard to see something that is right in front of you, if there is a veil blocking your view.

‘‘What’s happened in the last few weeks is that the veil has been lifted.’’

‘‘It was ingrained in me that you had to have a purpose and commit yourself to it.’’