The course was strutured in a very easy and understandable way - it was chunked out into smaller segments allowing the learner to digest small amounts of knowledge. We were grouped and had to practice and be accountable with our group memebers. I found this was the most valuable for me. I was grouped with other wahine that were located in the same time zone and residing in the USA or close. The relationship forged with these wahine was instantanously and I came to look forward to our nightly calls - my fears about prounouncing things wrong soon subsided as I was encouraged by these women, who were patient, supportive and offered just the right amount of humor as we grew in the 30 days. The lessons were great, useful, and practical as were the exercises and homework. I will take what I learned in the 30 days and continue to work on the lessons and my Te Reo Maori - I don't feel as if it is an unachievable goal anymore like I previously felt. So for that, I am extremely grateful.
Learning to speak and understand Te Reo Maori is something I've always wanted, but I've not been able to in the past - we left NZ when I was a child and growing up in the USA, there were no other Te Reo Maori speakers I could surround myself and my grandfather would send me papers and things, but again, no one to check my proununciation on things.The only thing I really knew was that I could sing (waiata) some Maori songs that my grandfather had taught us. So, because I was living in the USA and not close, I had given up on my Te Reo Maori journey and had accepted that I would just come to know basic words and phrases, but nothing more.
And not being able to speak Te Reo Maori, left me feeling hollow - disconnected and like part of me was missing and I yearned for this. I wasn't white and I wasn't brown - a mix of two cultures, but not feeling like I belonged in either. As a young child, I asked my mum why she didn't speak Maori and she said because it wasn't taught to her and that it was a different time back then. She then showed me a copy of a paper that a student had written about my grandfather and in it he spoke of his childhood and recalls his first experience with "christian" authority and being beaten for speaking Maori. In the paper, my grandfather states, "Forgetting one's Maori language and culture was a prime aim of the teachers at the school. They told Maori parents to discourage the use of the Maori language at home and that they would be beat at school if they used Maori while in school." He said this was common practice.
The first time I read this I felt sad for my what my grandfather had experienced. Yet as a child, you don't fully understand the reprecussions the effect it has generationally speaking, but today as an adult, it is felt. The stripping of one's language and cultural identify forever changed our family - my grandfather never passed our whakapapa (the core of our geneolody) - understanding where we come from, where we belong was lost.
And one of the assignments for the 30 Day Te Reo Maori bootcamp was doing your pepeha and it took me a while to work on it, but I did it and spoke it aloud, there were some mistakes in my prouncation of words, but I felt proud, I became emotional, and because we had to do it as a FB live video, I was self-concious, but I knew that if my grandfather were alive, he would have been proud as well. This course for me, showed that I can learn Te Reo Maori and has ignited the desire to continue this joureny of learning - it is as if I am reclaiming what was once taken away from my ancestors.
So thank you Grant for providing the opportunity and reigniting something within me that I had previously given up on. And most importantly, thank you to my accountability group (Karley, Kapotahi and Sarah) for your awesomeness in this journey with me - the laughs, the support, the encouragment and ending our nightly calls with the karakia. Kei runga noa atu koe!
I wrote this after returning from visiting Rawene for the very first time and seeing where my grandfather was born, where we came from, where the story began and I thought it would be a good opportunity to share.
“Walking, I can almost hear the redwoods beating. And the oceans are above me here, rolling clouds, heavy and dark. It is winter and there is smoke from the fires. It is a world of elemental attention, of all things working together, listening to what speaks in the blood. Whichever road I follow, I walk in the land of many gods, and they love and eat one another. Suddenly all my ancestors are behind me. Be still, they say. Watch and listen. You are the result of the love of thousands.” - Linda Hogan
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