Background to research: The impact of my early years

My passion for te reo Māori me ōna tikanga1 _{a passion that underlies and informs}

the research reported here, began in my childhood and, in particular, in my upbringing by my mother's parents. It was them, Ani, tōku karani māmā (my grandmother) me tōku karani pāpā (and my grandfather) Taukiri Aperahama (Abraham) who planted within me that love for te reo Māori that was to become an enduring part of my identity. There is no magical story concerning the reason why I was given to my grandparents. It had nothing to do with the tradition of giving the first child to grandparents. I was my parents’ third child. Perhaps it was because I was also the third girl or perhaps it was because, as my siblings often used to joke, I was a peculiarly ugly baby. Whatever the reason, I have always regarded myself as the fortunate one. I was the one who, most of the time undeservedly, was cared for, loved, and cherished in that unconditional way that most of us associate with grandparents. Ani and Taukiri were native speakers of te reo Māori and were born and bred in the rohe (district) of the Far North, in the papa kāinga (homestead) of Te Hapua, the Ngāti Kurī people. Each of their three children, Wiremu, Eti (my mother), and Raiti, were also born there.

According to my grandmother’s account, my grandparents were among the very first from their rohe to leave their rural setting and papa kāinga to move to the big smoke of Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland). Most of those who moved there did so as part of the urbanization process that followed World War II. This was not the case so far as my grandparents were concerned. My grandfather made the decision to move following a tragedy that resulted from one of his orders being disobeyed. A man of few words, he simply packed up the family’s possessions and made the life changing move away from his papa kāinga and into the unknown in an attempt to escape the memory of that tragedy. The first move was to Ponsonby, the next to Newton and then, finally, a move to Pt England, a small part of the suburb of East Auckland that was called Glen Innes or, simply, GI. It was there that they lived until they both passed on and there that I spent the first seventeen years of my life.

1 _{I have thought carefully about the issue of code switching and have, in general, decided not to}

incorporate Maori words and phrases into English sentences. This section is, however, an exception as it felt uncomfortable and inauthentic in what is a very personal account to refer, for example, to funerals rather than tangihanga. I have therefore sometimes used Maori words and expressions in this section with, where I believe it may be necessary, translations in brackets.

My very first experience of the papa kāinga, this place called Te Hapua, was when I was about seven years old and we had to travel back to the tangihanga (funeral) of a relative. Well, it seemed like an eternity to get there and the dirt roads from Kaitaia did not help. Even to this day, the last thirteen kilometres to Te Hapua is on an unsealed road. It was dark when we arrived. We stayed at the home of my grandfather’s sister (known affectionately as Gunny Les). Her home was, in reality, little more than a shack, an abolition structure with no electricity and a long drop - quite an eye opener for a child used to very different conditions. However, what I was greeted with in the morning more than made up for that initial disappointment - the stunning view of the Parengarenga harbour in all its glory and the silky dunes of Pāua (made of white silicone sand) which, to a seven year old, looked like lofty mountains. These are among my enduring memories of my first trip to Te Hapua.

Throughout my childhood, we would return to Te Hapua occasionally - generally on the passing of a relative. At the beginning I would sometimes be left behind to attend school but I soon learned how to get around my grandparents and persuade them to take me along. What I missed in terms of formal education was more than compensated for by the experiences I had with my grandparents on these occasions, travelling, listening to the old stories, being welcomed, and embraced by members of the whānau (extended family). These many trips helped forge my close connection with the papa kāinga of Te Hapua.

At the papa kāinga my grandparents were in their element. Everyone was excited to see us - Taukiri and his family from the big smoke. My grandparents were different in this environment - more relaxed, at ease and comfortable. The people there had huge respect for my grandfather, this man of very few words. Our trips generally lasted only a few days at a time because of work commitments but I made the most of every one of these days, especially the opportunity to miss school. Surrounded by the love of the whānau, I thought I was the cat’s pyjamas.

When we returned to the city, my grandparents changed once again. It was almost like moving into another world - the hustle and bustle of the big smoke, the commitment to a full time job, to paying bills on time and buying groceries to

survive (instead of fishing in the Parengarenga Harbour). What I was most aware of was the switch from speaking te reo Māori at the homestead back to speaking English most of the time, except, of course, when speaking on the phone to whānau members. A standing joke in our family was that we, the grandchildren, could always work out who was on the phone, a member of the whānau or some representative of a government department on the basis of which language our grandmother used. She was a queen of both languages.

Both my grandparents were very religious people. We belonged to the Rātana faith and my grandmother held a position in the church as a kaiāwhina (helper), putting on her purple dress and white hat just before church, and taking them off after the service. Every Sunday at eleven o’clock without fail we would attend a service. These services were, in the early days, held at someone’s house; later, they were held at a more permanent site. I remember resenting having to go to church every Sunday because it prevented me from playing or sleeping in. Even so, one thing that I did find really special about our religious services was the fact that they were always held in te reo Māori from start to finish, including all of the hymns.

When I was very young, I found nothing particularly odd in the fact that my grandparents would use te reo Māori in certain places and at certain times but would then revert to English. Nor did I find it odd that they always spoke te reo Māori around me but never directly to me. It was only later that I began to appreciate how sad and astonishing it was that in a household of adult native speakers of te reo Māori, the children (grandchild in my case) could not speak the language of their ancestors. As we grew older, we children, my siblings and I, would often wonder why our grandparents and indeed also our mother (who is also a native speaker of te reo Māori) would not speak te reo Māori to us as we were growing up. It seemed to us that they were attempting to protect us from some kind of harm. It was only much later in life, after I had begun to learn te reo Māori in a formal educational setting, that I began to fully understand the impact of colonization on families such as ours. Only then did I begin to understand what our elders feared and why our beautiful language had become subject to disruption of inter-generational transmission.

When Benton (1977) observed that the number of domains in which te reo Māori was spoken had become restricted to the marae, the home and the church, he could have had our little family in mind except for the fact that it was beginning to be lost in our home environment, something that signalled the beginning of the next stage of language loss.