Witi Ihimaera: Back at the beginning

Witi Ihimaera has garnered many awards and plaudits, at home and internationally, as one of Aotearoa’s most celebrated Māori writers. More than 50 years ago, he was the first Māori writer to publish both a novel (Tangi, 1973) and a book of short stories (Pounamu, Pounamu, 1972). In 2002, his book The Whale Rider was made into a globally acclaimed film. 

But one thing has eluded him in all that time: the ability to speak the language that he grew up hearing but was discouraged from learning. Last year, at age 80, he decided to rectify that — and that haerenga, or journey, is now the subject of a podcast called Witi Underwater. Eugene Bingham, who co-produced it, explains.

 

In February last year, against the background noise of a chorus of cicadas and shoes shuffling nervously on asphalt, a rōpū of strangers gathered in a carpark over the fence from a garden centre.

A pōhiri was about to begin, the first step in a long, arduous haerenga.

Manuhiri carried with them the anticipation of months of hard mahi, of sweat and tears. They carried with them the dream of having te reo Māori become familiar and comfortable to their tongues.

Many of them also carried mamae and trauma.

And there among them, carrying all of those things — as well as a small, hardshell case which complemented his dapper, cream-coloured jacket — was Aotearoa’s most famous Māori writer.

Witi Ihimaera — a prolific, celebrated author, former academic, diplomat and journalist, the man who made the pūrākau of Paikea famous around the world through the movie Whale Rider — was going back to school.

Not just any kura, mind.

This was the pōhiri for the start of the 2024 academic year at the renowned Te Wānanga Takiura o Ngā Kura Kaupapa Māori o Aotearoa, home of a famous (or possibly infamous) year-long, full-immersion te reo Māori course. The school is in a nondescript rabbit warren of a building in Ōwairaka/Mt Albert, surrounded by a Kings Plant Barn, a gym, and engineering workshops.

It’s a long, long way from the village of Waituhi in Te Tai Rāwhiti, where Witi grew up, steeped in te ao Māori, in the kōrero tuku iho, the pūrākau, and the reo of his kuia and koroua.

But when he first set off for Auckland University from Waituhi back in the 1960s, Witi left without knowing how to speak te reo Māori. He was discouraged from learning it, encouraged instead to pursue excellence in the world of the Pākehā.

And so, last year, aged 80, he decided it was time to do something about it.

He was thinking about the future.

“In Māoridom, we farewell our people to a place called Hawaiki Nui, Hawaiki Roa, Hawaiki Pāmamao,” says Witi.

“There waiting for us will be all of our tūpuna. When I die, I want to make sure that when my ancestors say to me: ‘Kia ora, nau mai, haere mai,’ I won’t say to them: ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t speak te reo.’”

Witi’s haerenga at Takiura is captured in a new five-part documentary podcast, Witi Underwater, which will be broadcast on RNZ this week, starting tomorrow, June 16.

Along with mātanga reo Te Aomihia Tumai, my co-producer Adam Dudding and I were allowed to follow Witi and his hoa akomanga (classmates) in the class of their kaiako, Sharmain Hancy, under the guidance of Takiura’s revered leaders, Tāwhiri and Kaa Williams.

While thoughts of the future had motivated Witi to sign up for the intensive course, throughout the year, he was also forced to confront the past. Learning a language that he had grown up hearing but never learning came with heavy emotions: mamae and whakamā, hurt and shame.

“I was brought up at a time when Māori wasn’t spoken at school, wasn’t spoken as widely as it is now,” says Witi. “I think it surprised the class that I don’t know anything.”

During interviews for the podcast, he referred to his “damaged” reo. “Damaged by colonisation, damaged by trauma,” he said. It sometimes left him feeling inept, even angry.

He spoke of times in the classroom, where the only language is Māori, when he became frustrated that he couldn’t contribute because he didn’t feel his reo was up to scratch.

That was particularly so when conversations would turn to pūrākau, many of which he is extremely knowledgeable about — after all, this is the man who wrote Navigating the Stars, which told the story of many Māori kōrero tawhito for a 21st-century audience.

“I keep thinking, ‘If only I could speak in Māori, I’d be able to tell them,’” says Witi. “But because I can’t, I just shut down. There’s nothing I can do about it except to say to myself, ‘Sorry, if I could, I would do this for you, but I can’t.’”

For others in the class, the pain was generational.

It’s a theme Sharmain Hancy sees year after year in her class.

For many tauira Māori, she says, they’re not only there to learn a language — they have come seeking a taonga left in the past. The reo of their ancestors has been lost from one generation to the next.

“He tino hiakai, he kōwhao i roto i te ngākau,” says Sharmain. There’s a great hunger in them for the reo, a hole in their heart.

“And I can play a part to help,” she says. “Ka mirimiri tērā kōwhao.”

But it’s not just Sharmain helping tauira. Hoa akomanga are helping hoa akomanga, too.

In Witi’s class was Harry Dowling (Ngāpuhi), a 25-year-old lawyer who had taken a year out to study at Takiura.

Although they were many years apart in age, Witi credited Harry and other young classmates with helping him through moments of doubt.

“If it wasn’t for people like Harry, all of them, I could have drowned many times,” says Witi.

Harry, of course, was on his haerenga as well. Growing up in Kirikiriroa/Hamilton, he did one year of te reo Māori at school before switching to other subjects.

He went to Auckland University, where he initially studied for a conjoint degree majoring in law and economics, but then a significant life event led him to switch courses.

“My dad passed away in my second year of uni and he was kind of like the māngai for my whānau on my marae and one of the only ones who could speak Māori.”

Harry’s father had been through his own struggles, coming to terms with the pain of picking up a language that had been lost generations before.

“He was still learning, so that definitely encouraged me into learning more about te ao Māori and tikanga Māori — and to be able to kōrero in te reo Māori as well and lead my whanau in that direction.”

Harry switched economics for Māori studies at university, but knew he needed more if the reo was to stick. So he and his wife both decided to go to Takiura to make sure reo Māori became the first language of their home, and for any children they might have.

Throughout the year, it was abundantly clear that this loss of language, this generational trauma, was tied to external forces. And as the classes continued, those forces rumbled on in the background.

Government policies seen as an attack on te ao Māori, on te reo Māori, were a frequent topic of conversation — how could they not be?

And the echoes of the past were never far away, either. Especially so with Papa Witi in the akomanga.

“I was there for the presentation of the Māori Language Petition,” he told us. “I knew Hana very well,” he says of Hana Te Hemara, who famously presented to parliament the petition calling for reo Māori to be permitted in schools in 1972.

“I don’t tell anybody any of this because, in many ways, it’s their history, it’s not my history,” says Witi.

Throughout his life, he has borne witness to many of the great struggles that sought to push back against the century of subjugation of te reo Māori.

It formally started with the 1867 Native Schools Act, then carried on, government policy after government policy, crushing the language like a giant colonial steamroller.

This kicked off a vicious circle where many Māori parents were manipulated into thinking their children would be better off focusing on English.

As the product of those policies, of that thinking, Witi says he spent decades chasing acclaim in the Pākehā world.

“I was climbing the wrong poutama to success,” he says.

At Takiura, Witi was not only trying to learn a language. He was also trying to find “the voice of the boy that existed 70 years ago”.

“When I became a writer of work in English, I started by writing about my childhood,” he says. “[Being at Takiura] has taken me back again over the last 70 years, and so I’m back at the beginning.

“But this time I’m going to do it in te reo.”

 

Witi Underwater will be released daily in the lead up to Matariki from Monday, June 16 at rnz.co.nz/podcasts, as well as on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. All episodes will also be broadcast on RNZ National and will later be available on Radio Waatea. Made with support from Te Māngai Pāho.

Eugene Bingham (Pākehā, Ngāpuhi) is a freelance producer and writer. He has been a journalist and storyteller for 35 years, reporting and producing news and current affairs across newspapers, television, digital and podcasts. He is a reo Māori learner enrolled in Te Aupikitanga at Te Wānanga o Aotearoa this year.

E-Tangata, 2025