“My fellow students thought I was that person, the Ihimaera, when I was really this person, Witi Smiler. Witi Ihimaera was really a construct, somebody I had created to do the mahi he does.” — Witi Ihimaera Smiler, in an extract from ‘Te Kaikaukau / The Swimmer’.
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“My book deals with grief and loss, because wherever there is colonialism, there is grief and loss. But there’s also strength, endurance, intelligence, wit, and just really hardworking, hard-case people doing their best in terrible and unjust circumstances.” — Nadine Hura, author of ‘Slowing the Sun’.
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“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 Ihimaera, on learning te reo at 80.
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“I speak the reo like a newborn. I make shapes with my mouth and hope the correct sounds will come out. I’m now eight weeks into this journey, and it’s been a rollercoaster ride of ups and downs.” — Michelle Campbell.
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“Going to kura reo for the first time, I remember feeling completely out of my comfort zone. Driving there, parking up, stepping out of the car, going to the pōwhiri — that was really, really hard.” — Hēmi Kelly.
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“I had no idea during that first class that I was about to embark on a path which would see me return to the classroom every year. I’d finish at one language institution and move to another.” — Renee Karena.
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“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.” — Tainui Stephens
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“It’s filled from cover to cover with the version of te reo Māori that my cousins and I speak in the kitchen while we’re washing dishes. The words, the sentence structures, the expressions, the adulterated versions of famous whakataukī, and the jokes.” — Airana Ngarewa on his new book Ngāti Pātea.
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“The whakaaro I share so staunchly in everything I do is: ‘You are enough. You’re enough as you are, with what you have right now.’ Our stories and mātauranga tell us that.” — Qiane Matata-Sipu.
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“As life got harder and more things started cropping up, it was the reo that kept being put on the back burner — something I swore I wouldn’t do.” — Siena Yates on life after full-immersion reo learning.
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“When the specialist tells me that I have only three months, I tell him: ‘Don’t talk to me like that again. I’m not going anywhere. I just want to know the plan. Let’s talk about the plan.’” — Dr Ēnoka Murphy.
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“I had a lot of ideas. But every time I tried to turn them into a sentence in te reo, it amounted to: ‘Māori good. Colonisation bad. Matua smart. Me dumb.’ And also: ‘Me tired. Want nap.’” — Siena Yates.
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“The reo journey is hard and confronting, and a lot of the time you just have to push through. There’s no skirting around it, especially if you’re Māori and carrying the language trauma that many of us do.” — Siena Yates.
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“The kura reo is specifically designed to challenge you, to push your limits and demolish any concept of a comfort zone. But it’s done in a way that is manageable for you, and with aroha.” — Siena Yates.
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“Every time I went to any Pākehā space, my reo disappeared.” — Siena Yates, on challenging herself to speak only Māori during Māori Language Week.
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“Sometimes, it doesn’t seem to make sense. Sometimes, it’s unbearably hard and you want to quit.” — Siena Yates.
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“Once you’ve started to kōrero Māori with your kurī, there’s no going back.” — Siena Yates.
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