Clues to the story of your life

Many iwi, hapū and rōpu offer immersion kura reo where only Māori is spoken. It’s a great way to learn to think in Māori, writes Tainui Stephens. To then speak te reo offers a true reflection of yourself. (All photos by Rawhitiroa Photography)

 

We try to walk in the footsteps of our ancestors. For many of us on our Māori language journey, we try to walk in their sentences, too. We want to talk like them.

There comes a time, depending on how your life is panning out, when you need to sound like the tribal people you belong to. One way to do that is to go to a kura reo. Around the country, the phenomenon of immersion kura reo gives tribes a focused way to teach their dialects to growing numbers of their own. This is entirely in keeping with the current era of vigorous Māori political consciousness where there’s pan-Māori unity, built on ever stronger tribal constituencies.

To be Māori counts. To be iwi is number one.

In January, I got a precious ticket to Te Taumata, the annual Tai Tokerau language immersion hui held around Northland. I went to the seventh of these kura reo, held in Ngāti Kahu territory in Whangaroa. The people of Wainui marae, Ngāti Ruamahue, and Te Kura Kaupapa Māori o Whangaroa hosted 170 devotees of ngā reo o te Nōta.

All of us were hungry to acquire the twang and idioms of our own dialects. Along the way, we would soak up the history of the area and be blessed by the vocabulary, values and kai of a coastal people. E Hēmi, e Sailor, e Frances mā, e ngā tohunga o te manaaki, tēnā koutou katoa.

The simple sound of your voice and the way you speak tell a story.

You may speak Māori that uses few words or many. You might do so with an accent that shows your roots are rural or urban. You may sound as if you learned your language from a book, or from teachers of a different tribe. You may talk in a way that shows you go to a lot of hui, or wānanga, or parties — or all of the above.

However you utter the words that fall from your mouth, you will reflect your passions or abilities or ignorance. Your language contains clues to the story of your life. You don’t sound like anyone else. Your voice is your audio signature in a world of sound.

Your voice. Your reo.

At any immersion hui, you learn to think in Māori. How can you not? You’re immersed in te reo for nearly a week. Beginners may try to stay silent and smile, hoping to keep their heads above water. But they’ll soon be made to talk. The teachers at these hui are deep reservoirs of knowledge and patience. They’re adept at making you feel comfortable about how you might speak, blunders and all. We’re all in it together. Learning. Always.

An important destination on your language journey is to get your reo to lie naturally within you. Inā noho tangata whenua ana tōu reo: hara mai rā. Happily, this has nothing to do with the number of words you know. All it means is that the words you do know will come naturally, and not after being Google-translated in your brain.

Every hui like this requires someone to call the shots. That was Raniera Kaio, a local historian, kaikōrero, and singer par excellence. With easy humour, he made sure that everyone knew what was expected of them and when: the times for karakia, times for class, and times for kai. We were divided into groups according to our ability, and then the business of learning kicked in.

Raniera also taught a class on traditional waiata. His session examined the intricate story behind a lament written for the great Northland chief Hongi Hika. The song was composed by his wife Turikātuku. She was a renowned (and blind) seer, and it was written before his death at Whangaroa in 1828. Complex histories are gradually made clear as names in the whakapapa of the song’s creation are given story and motivation. As we learn to sing it, we feel the vowels and cadences of pure expression that could exist only within our people.

Quinton Hita has long been a leading advocate and resource for learning the Ngāpuhi dialect. His website, Māori Minute, contains untold hours of superb resources for reo speakers, from learners through to the fully fluent. Q’s favourite project is a series of 65 documentaries called Kōwhao Rau. It features the strong northern dialects of previous generations of elders, most of whom have passed. During his class, he’d play extracts from those interviews, and we’d break it all down, word for word. It was exciting to hear memories and ideas from the lips of kaumātua, who many of us remembered or have connections to.

Hinewai Pomare took us back to kōhanga reo vibes, with a range of hilarious games about northern names for various body parts. “Māngai” instead of waha (mouth). “Kōpū” instead of puku (belly). And “huruhuru” for all body hair — not the widely used makawe for the hair up top. We moved on to idioms that often used words and sounds from other languages to make playful contributions to the dialect. “Taringa Pisai” is one term for someone with blocked ears. “Aini koe aini” means you’d better watch out. “Seeder” is what you can call your lover. “No” means no.

Te Puaheiri Snowden’s class examined the specialised language of poroporoaki. To farewell the dead is a tapu business. We started by responding to his question about where we wished to be buried. Many outlined a desire to lie in a certain and sacred piece of ground. Others said they would make no claim: “Kāhore āku. You fullas sort it out!” We laughed heartily when a Ngāti Porou classmate said he wasn’t telling a bunch of Ngāpuhi where his body might lie.

And having a laugh is one of those things that happens at kura reo. All the time. I don’t mean just a giggle or a chortle. I mean gut-busting belly laughs. And it’s not because of clever jokes and puns, though there are plenty of those. It’s because to laugh is to heal. As we reclaim ourselves through a language that was taken from us, we discover that it’s hard work linguistically and spiritually. A good laugh can help us forgive our all too human frailties, as we allow our language to define us as the people we happen to be.

Whaea Moe Milne is a legend in the north. She’s full of the unique lilt and laughter of the Matawaia bush her whānau hails from. She and her daughter Tanya took a class that examined the language of love. The saucy love ditties of a previous era made use of metaphors that reflected the Māori life of those times. One song used a horse’s bridle and reins to illustrate a desired coupling.

However, as Moe explained, a horse was a rare and revered resource for a community back then. Those metaphors don’t translate so well today. Let’s use new ones. She asked us to choose something that we truly valued. That passion may offer up the words to make our own love songs.

As it happens, a lifelong passion of mine is ice cream. At Christmas, Santa gave me an ice cream-making machine. I’ve not bought ice cream since. Mine is way better.

So I thought about that for my little ditty.

Mitimiti ake nei taku arero                         My tongue licks to savour

Ki te reka aihikirimi, e taku tau                  Such sweet ice cream, oh my love

Me he ngau o Tiakareti                               With a shot of Chocolate

Me he ngoi Vanilla pai                                And a hit of the best Vanilla

Ko te ngote pune tao                                  We’ll suckle the spoon together

Kia Caramello ai                                           And be Caramello forever

Leading Ngāti Wai orator and rangatira Āperahama Edwards shared his views about the deep responsibilities of those who stood as speakers for their iwi. He expressed a wish that the people of the north be more aware of their history, their important ancestors, and the sayings they left behind. He offered some of the visions of the 19th century prophet Āperahama Taonui. The evocative language Taonui used to explain that turbulent century to those who lived it is still relevant for us in this time.

“Tērā te taniwha e haere mai ana. Ko ōna niho he hiriwa, he koura, ko tana kai he whenua.” There’s a taniwha coming. Its teeth are made of silver and gold. Its food is the land.

This prophecy goes on to say that we shouldn’t fear silver or gold, nor treat them as godlike. And that we won’t know when that taniwha arrives until we see it blinking in the eyes of our grandchildren. The only remedy is to cloak them in love.

Life isn’t an immersion hui, but that week I felt cloaked in love. I went there to learn. I went there to cry. I went there to sing. I went there to connect with my bones. I went there to stretch.

A Māori of the 21st century comes in every shape and every shade. Your reo is a true reflection of who you are as a complete human being. The sentences that we learn at kura reo unlock a language that demands our intellectual, emotional and spiritual attention.

To return to an English-speaking world after a kura reo is to return to something that is distressingly familiar: the reality that, for too many Māori, to be Māori in language and action remains a struggle.

Why do we wish to follow in the footsteps of our old people? It’s because they survived! Their worldview, their stories and their language are the tools they left us so we can do the same.

Toitū te tōiri tangata.

 

Tainui Stephens, of Te Rarawa, has been fully engaged in the film and television industry since 1984, working with a range of genres and content. He is particularly attracted to compelling Indigenous stories that critique and celebrate the human condition. Tainui lives in Ōtaki with his wife and fellow filmmaker Libby Hakaraia. Together, they and a small whānau team run the Māoriland Film Festival.

E-Tangata, 2025