“I still have James’s letter. It became my conscience. It reminded me not to walk away from something I should be fixing. He asked me to come back, and I didn’t.” — Professor Welby Ings remembers a seven-year-old student he had taught in Ōtara 50 years ago.
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“Cultural harm was no longer just ‘sad but unmeasurable’. It had become economically quantifiable. We’d created a bridge between how we understand our losses and how legal systems work.” — Atawhai Tibble.
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“Pākehā being supportive tāngata Tiriti is more than just learning a language. We have to start with untangling our sense of entitlement to all that we can access.” — Kay Benseman.
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“Suppressing and belittling the use of Māori language . . . appears to be part of a small-minded and ultimately futile effort at returning our country to the state of race relations in the blandly monocultural 1950s.” — Mark Derby.
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“The dangers of digital colonisation may not be obvious yet because, on the surface, technology seems to be advancing our reo and our connections instead of suppressing them.” — Siena Yates.
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“The English were willing to borrow and absorb. When they saw a word that they needed, they took it and made it their own. They even took Polynesian words, like tapu (taboo) and tatau (tattoo).” — Sefita Hao‘uli, Tongan language advocate.
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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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“Being exposed to te reo in our everyday environments, including on our news channels, benefits both speakers and non-speakers of the language.” — Awanui Te Huia.
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“The full-time, full-immersion learning environment gives us a space where we don’t have to try so hard to be in te ao Māori.” — Siena Yates.
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“It’s right that Pākehā should speak Māori, and Pākehā engagement is important to the revitalisation of te reo Māori. . . . But, as a people, we must wait our turn.” — Andrew Robb.
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“Mainstream health hasn’t done wairua well, or whānau well. So we’ve developed our own Māori model of health care.” — Dr Lily Fraser.
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“That bridge tragedy in 1947 severed my links to my taha Māori. And only now, in my early 40s, am I reclaiming what was lost.” — Cornell Tukiri.
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“It’s only in recent years that I’ve even plucked up the courage to claim my identity, to proudly say: Yes, I am Māori.” — Siena Yates.
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“Ours is an oral tradition and that’s important because it’s not only how we share stories but how we transfer and transmit knowledge.” — Lee Timutimu.
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“For parents on our own language journeys, we need to bring our children along for the ride.” — Tainui Stephens.
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“I think had I stayed in Australia, I wouldn’t have been happy and my heart would’ve yearned to be here.” — Jeremy MacLeod.
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“I was often defined by that moment which was probably, what, a minute? I get it. I understand the importance of it, but it’s nice to be able to focus on new and important developments.” — Hinewehi Mohi.
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“I decided to enrol in an immersion course at Te Wānanga o Aotearoa, in South Auckland. My friends were impressed, commending me for my ‘bravery’.” — Alison Jones in her new book ‘This Pākehā Life: An Unsettled Memoir’.
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“My journey to speak Māori became an act of reclaiming my identity. I had to know who I really was, before I could speak Māori fully.” — Tainui Stephens.
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“Māori journalists see themselves as Māori first and journalists second.” — Atakohu Middleton on her PhD research into the influence of tikanga on reo-Māori journalism.
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“The hardest part about learning Māori, is learning how to think Māori.” — Tainui Stephens.
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“I knew of relations in Auckland, but not of any tribe. All that the old man had told us was he was from ‘up north’. Oh good, that narrows it down then!” — Tainui Stephens.
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“In my generation, many of us were brought up by our grandparents, especially if you were a mātāmua, or first born, as I was.” — Pou Temara.
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“Huirangi’s online memorial offered those of us still working on our reo a very rare gift: whaikōrero with English subtitles.” — Vanessa Ellingham.
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“I’ve always wanted to be confidently fluent and, at times, I’ve felt like it’s been within my grasp. But then I let it slip away.”
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“Sometimes we don’t appreciate what’s right under our noses until we go away from home. Then we tangi weto for our reo. And that’s the situation for some of our Aussie whānau.”
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“Rightly or wrongly, my father was trying to protect us from a world that treasured English above all else, that used English as a marker for intelligence.”
Read MoreE-Tangata is an online Sunday magazine specialising in stories that reflect the experiences of Māori and Pasifika in Aotearoa.
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