It was still early in the Te Reo Māori course at the Wānanga o Aotearoa. “I want you to work in pairs on this activity,” Mere announced. “Work out the dialogues together.”
Kauri turned to Haki on his right, but he had already buddied up with Anahera.
“Looks like it’s you and me,” said Cynthia on his left.
“Rongo hasn’t got a partner. I’m going to join him.” With that Kauri moved to the end of the row, where Rongo was sitting.
“We have an odd number of students,” Mere observed. “We’ll have to have one group of three. Kauri and Rongo please join Cynthia.” Mere closely monitored the class dynamics and her instruction was a reprimand to Kauri and a restoration of mana to Cynthia.
Rongo moved his chair next to Cynthia’s and Kauri begrudgingly returned to his place to join them. All had their text books and exercise books on the table. Kauri quickly drafted a two part dialogue with suggestions for Rongo. Cynthia suggested some lines for a third part, which Kauri ignored.
“Why don’t you want to work with me?” Cynthia asked Kauri.
“Why are you even doing this course?” he said. “Why do you want to learn te reo? It’s not your language.”
“I could say I’m doing it for professional development,” she said. “My employer, my school, wants all the staff to learn te reo. But anyway te reo Māori is an official language of New Zealand. Don’t you think all New Zealanders should learn it?”
“Every Māori should learn it,” Kauri said, looking around the room. “For Māori first. I’ve got a friend who missed out on this course because it was full up. You’ve taken his place.”
“I’m sorry your friend missed out this time, but I’m not going to apologise for being here.”
“You don’t need to,” Rongo said.
Kauri thought he meant she didn’t need to learn te reo but his complacency turned to chagrin when Rongo said, “You don’t need to apologise. You’re welcome on the course and good on you for doing it.” The older man had put the younger in his place.
“It’s not just another language to us,” Kauri said. “It’s our identity. You know why our elders lost their reo? It was banned at school. They were punished for speaking their own language. They were beaten. Isn’t that right Rongo?”
Some of the students nearby were casting furtive glances at Kauri, while they worked on their assignment.
“Ae, it’s true,” Rongo said. “My father was caned at school for speaking Māori. The boys were caned and the girls were strapped. But it’s not like the teachers were trying to beat the language out of them. It wasn’t just for speaking te reo and it wasn’t just the Māori kids. Any of the kids could get caned for speaking in English too, if they were speaking out of turn when they were supposed to be quiet. Or for not doing their homework. Or being cheeky or any little thing. My dad had no time for homework. He had chores to do at home and nowhere to do homework anyway.
“But isn’t that what they did?” Kauri persisted. “Why did the government make it a crime to speak te reo?” Kauri was indignant on Rongo’s behalf. Why was he not indignant himself?
“They meant well…” Rongo said.
Kauri couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“Apirana Ngata was in the government and he fully supported the policy,” Rongo continued. “Ngata said New Zealand was becoming a Pākehā world and if the Māori wanted to get on in the Pākehā world, we had to learn to speak English, and the best way to do that was to stop speaking Māori. Māori was for home. English was for school. It was a policy that most of our elders agreed with.”
“Are you saying they agreed with beating the kids?” Kauri said, tapping his pen on the table.
“No, not the beatings. But banning te reo Māori at school.”
Mere was monitoring the students’ activities to ensure they were on task. The trio were clearly off task but she was not about to stop their conversation. Rather, she joined in. “It’s true,” she said. “The ban on te reo Māori at school was a well-meaning, but ill-conceived policy. We now know the importance of maintaining the mother tongue while learning a new language. It’s also true it caused a lot of trauma and loss of culture and loss of identity. My grandparents went through the same thing. They don’t have fond memories of school.”
Kauri felt only partly vindicated. “You don’t know what it’s like to suffer the loss of your language,” he said to Cynthia.
“You don’t know me,” she replied. “My mother came to New Zealand as a child, from the Netherlands, and started school with no English and she was on her own, except she had a cousin in her class who could speak Dutch and English, but she wasn’t allowed to sit with her. Dutch wasn’t allowed. She just had to cope with English immersion and it was traumatising for her. One day she asked to go to the toilet but she couldn’t make herself understood and wasn’t allowed to leave the room. So she wet her pants. Her teacher thought she was stupid and naughty and she got the strap. So she learnt English, and Dutch disappeared from our family. My mother doesn’t have fond memories of primary school either.”
“At least they still speak Dutch in Holland,” Kauri retorted.
Mere was aware most of the other students had finished their task and had focused on the ongoing conversation. There was a bit of murmuring around the class and she could hear snatches of conversation: my grandparents too, English is the international language, English is a great destroyer of other languages, the Dutch were colonisers too. A learning experience had arisen spontaneously, in an exchange of views, that was more effective than any teacher led presentation. She decided not to pursue it any further, however, but rather to bring the class back to the task she had set. Cynthia had made her point and Mere was content to let Kauri have the last word and, resuming her tutor demeanour from the front of the room, she said, “So let’s not just make assumptions.” She scanned the scripts on the tables and said, “Now let’s hear some of these dialogues.”