The way back to whakapapa
When we lost our koko our wh¯anau lost our link to M¯aori whakapapa
‘Kei te aha koe uncle?” To see and hear my 3-year-old niece ask me in te reo Ma¯ori what I’m doing is a beautiful thing, even though she can clearly see me cooking.
But any opportunity to ko¯rero with her I take, and happily reply “Tunu kai taku ira¯mutu”.
The credit for these moments I cherish with my niece goes to my older brother, Jeremy, who is raising her in te ao Ma¯ori.
He started his te reo journey seven years ago after the death of our koro, Richard Joseph, who was our last connection to Ma¯oridom.
Today, Jeremy’s a kaiako at Te Wa¯nanga o Aotearoa, Ma¯ngere.
It’s because of my older brother’s commitment to reconnect, despite the trauma our wha¯nau suffered that inhibited any willingness to learn or be Ma¯ori, that I started my own reo journey.
To say that my wha¯nau were disconnected from Ma¯oridom is an understatement.
Where colonialism ripped it away from my tu¯ puna, violently and unapologetically, the ripples of that ripping created violent effects on my wha¯nau. Abuse, alcoholism, violence and addiction riddled the lineage of my Ma¯ori family tree.
This is the trauma I speak of that inhibits Ma¯ori from ever wanting to embrace Ma¯oridom.
The film Once Were Warriors (1994) was once the most accurate depiction of the Ma¯ori world I knew, and it wasn’t until recently that I found out it’s not the experience for all.
A lot of people don’t realise our wha¯nau will always be the first point of representation of our whakapapa, and so my Ma¯ori family was my first and only connection to Ma¯oridom for a long time.
So every connotation of Ma¯oridom for me, and a lot of Ma¯ori I know, is saturated in negativity.
The effects of post-colonialism and poverty had thrown my wha¯nau, and a lot of Ma¯ori into the chaos of addiction and abuse that some stereotype as an exclusively Ma¯ori problem caused entirely by Ma¯ori people.
In that grossly inaccurate belief and chaos is the difficult comprehension for our tamariki that Ma¯ori doing bad things is not indicative that they are bad people but broken people.
It’s even more difficult to understand because broken people continually break people — the generational cycle of abuse started from violent colonialism.
How do you tell a Ma¯ori child who suffered abuse by their caregivers who are Ma¯ori, and entered physical conflict with other Ma¯ori in low socioeconomic areas that their traumainduced experience isn’t who Ma¯ori are when that’s all they have seen from fellow Ma¯ori?
What further confuses Ma¯ori who share this experience is that the media constantly corrodes the nuances of human morality with news reports, films, music and television shows with narratives of good vs evil.
And with the public constantly using law to determine morality — which they then use to discern good and bad people — how do you reconcile with the statistical negatives of your own people?
The complexity and negativity of all of this ends up generating a sense of self-hate because if Ma¯ori act shamefully and I become ashamed of Ma¯ori, as a Ma¯ori I’m ashamed of myself.
There’s even further confusion because trauma is hard to talk about for everyone but is easily exhibited by anyone.
Last year I brought my younger brother to a party, where he said to a friend of mine, also Ma¯ori, that he hates Ma¯ori.
She was shocked by the statement, especially because he and I are Ma¯ori, but that’s because she lived a very different life compared to me and my brother, especially in terms of Ma¯ori we knew and interacted with.
Other Ma¯ori kids would constantly pick fights with my younger brother, and, on top of that, he’d seen the ugly side of our Ma¯ori family since birth.
The experience of physical violence, especially the visceral image of people who look like you doing it to you, leaves scars that generally never get addressed. It’s especially painful if it’s your own wha¯nau, or elders doing it to you.
It’s an experience that was alien to my friend but common to me and my brother and a lot of Ma¯ori we grew up with.
Today anti-Ma¯ori public opinion is still strong and another layer that inhibits Ma¯ori from proudly embracing Ma¯ori identity.
But since internally crossing a line where I’ve given myself permission to embrace my identity as Ma¯ori, I find corners of humour in watching people explain why a chocolate block having “Miraka K¯ırimi” on it has incentivised them to boycott it.
Who would have thought that te reo Ma¯ori would help bitter people make healthy decisions like rejecting a sugary treat?
So, what does it mean for me to experience having my niece ask where my younger brother is by saying, “Kei whea a Uncle Lealyn?” It means the universe to me.
It’s a bittersweet window to a world where I can see what kind of life my koro, nana and aunty who have passed after a lifetime of survival would have had.
It’s a marker that the next generation of my wha¯nau will enter Ma¯oridom and fill their kete with the knowledge of te ao Ma¯ori, woven by the aroha of safety, patience and encouragement, which my generation never had.
My current family’s generation’s kete is woven by trauma, where learning our heritage has become a responsibility rather than a right. Today, we dutifully continue to salvage what we can from the debris colonialism left us to find the plentiful taonga our tu¯puna left us.
Overall, Kia kaha te reo Ma¯ori!
●Vaimaila Leatinu’u, 26, descends from the iwi Nga¯ti Maniapoto and is also Sa¯moan hailing from the villages of Mata¯vai in Safune and Vailoa in Faleata. The cadet journalist tells his story as part of Maori Language week.