The connecting journey of learning te reo Māori

Friday, 20 September 2024

Whether it’s connecting generations, cultures or identities - learning te reo Māori is a journey of relationships, reporter Karanama Ruru discovers.

Daniel Organ’s reo journey began in 2014, when he started kura pō, night time classes at Unitec.

Learning reo Māori was “energy-draining” for him, he says, so after two-and-a-half years, he stopped attending.

His reo journey might have slowed, but it hadn’t ended. After all, Organ had a growing son, with a deepening knowledge of te reo, to kōrero with.

Organ (Samoan, Pākehā) was one of a group of learners who spoke to Puna for Te Wiki o te Reo Māori about their journeys of discovery in our indigenous language.

He said the main reason he learnt te reo Māori was to connect with his son.

Speaking “beautiful reo” was a non-negotiable for his son’s mother, Organ said, something she insisted upon for their son before he was even born.

It wasn’t until their son was at primary school, however, that Organ realised how much he wanted to communicate with him in te reo Māori. That’s when he joined that first night class.

“It’s a long, slow journey. It’s not like The Matrix where they plug it in the back of your head and you have it the next day,” he said.

Instead, he embarked on a series of online wānanga provided by different organisations, such as his son’s kura, to keep up his reo mahi.

“It’s long, slow, constant practice in very slow increments, and sometimes you plateau for a while and you start to lose a bit of confidence or even some of your excitement around it, and then suddenly you’ll jump up again.

“You just have to keep at it, day, after day, after day.”

After some encouragement from his son, Organ returned to study at Te Wānanga o Aotearoa in 2022.

He said being able to have conversations with his son in reo was “amazing”.

“Sometimes I’ll talk to him in te reo Māori, he might reply to me in English… but now I feel like we’re starting to open up and have more in-depth conversations together,” he said.

“Sometimes when we’re out, or we’re travelling, we can have personal conversations in te reo Māori without people around us being able to hear what we’re talking about.”

While Organ proudly claims his Samoan heritage, he said te reo Māori is the language of his home.

Reo by the numbers

Data shows more people have been taking up the challenge of learning te reo Māori and, perhaps surprisingly, there are now more non-Māori in tertiary classrooms than Māori.

Between 2014 and 2023, enrolments in tertiary reo classes rose from 24,095 to 40,895, Ministry of Education figures show.

Reo classes include universities, Te Pūkenga, wānanga and private institutions.

Of the 2023 figures, 23,400 identified as NZ European, 21,475 Māori, 3045 Pasifika, and 2445 as Asian.

The learning journey is tough at the best of times, but for Māori there are additional challenges, says Dr Sandy Hata, a kaiako of te reo Māori at Auckland University of Technology.

Her rōpu, Te Ara Poutama, runs te reo Māori courses in the evenings.

In her experience as a kaiako, she said connection, or reconnection, was the main reason people enrol to learn te reo Māori.

“For us as Māori, a lot of the people that have actually come to learn Maori here at Te Ara Poutama, they're wanting to reconnect with who they are, with those people and places of significance,” she said.

“But it's also about reconnecting with who they always should have been. So learning the language is about finding out who they are and where they come from.”

Hata said many Māori who study reo feel whakamā (embarrassment), “as if they actually should already know something, but they don't.

“If they're of my generation, if they're a more mature student, they've actually had bad experiences at school,” she said.

“So on top of learning a language, they're also having to rediscover who they are, and that in itself can be quite a challenge for them, as well, because then they're also having to work through those barriers of not feeling good enough.”

For non-Māori, who make up most te reo courses at AUT, Hata said it was also about connection.

The connection, Hata said, was about acknowledging the place non-Māori “now call home”.

“Or if they were born here, it's about acknowledging the communities, the places that they live and connecting with those places in a very special and unique way.”

Through te reo, Hata said, non-Māori can understand the connection to the whenua and with significant people and places.

Reconnecting to the kāinga

One of those joining the growing number of learners is Kathryn George, who has whakapapa to Taranaki iwi.

George said her grandmother “probably” spoke Māori, but the connection was lost over time.

“As with many families, it was seen that English was the way to go, to get ahead in life. She married a Pākehā and lived a Pākehā lifestyle,” she said.

She said her father would occasionally use Māori words in conversation, but only small words like “āe”.

“It wasn't until he reconnected with our hapū that I saw things in a different light. We weren't just a family with Māori ancestry, we whakapapa Māori, and there's a living connection, and my siblings and I are proud to be Māori.”

That connection was rediscovered when her father decided to explore their family ties to Taranaki.

“My father, uncle and older brother went on that journey and found out we have whakapapa to Ngā Mahanga and Ngāti Haumia,” she said.

From that whakapapa connection, the urge to reclaim her language grew, and George started learning te reo seven years ago.

She highlighted the importance of having support, such as classmates, while learning, as the reo journey can be tough.

“Learning reo, I was very fortunate that my employer supported us. We had a cohort, and I got to know those people as well… for me it was inspiring, in my work, in my private life, I think differently about the world,” George said.

“We supported each other. If you’ve ever been on that reo journey you know how hard it can be and how you can easily think, ‘I’m not good enough, I can’t do this,’ and the people that you’re with, they’re on the same journey, so if you’re feeling a bit vulnerable they’ll help you out and vice-versa.”

George said her rohe organises annual whānau days, an opportunity for her to make connections, meet whānau, and grow familial supports as well.

Speaking te reo in public was a step she was yet to take, but Te Wiki o te Reo Māori was a good confidence boost for learners, she said.

‘Once you start, the love of the language grows’

Sam Elworthy is the director of Auckland University Press, and he’s has been learning te reo for around four years.

Growing up in the South Island, there wasn’t a lot of exposure to te reo, Elworthy said, so his reo journey has allowed him to connect with a completely new world.

“[Learning te reo] really started out of work, because we published Māori language books. First by Dr Wharehuia Milroy and Sir Tīmoti Kāretu… and it went on from there,” he said.

“I realised quite quickly that a Pākehā with no language was pretty useless in this endeavour, really, so Te Huia Cowell joined us in the office and started teaching us once a week. We still have those lessons once a week, which is marvellous.”

What started as something for work, quickly evolved into much more.

“Once you start, the love of the language grows… for an old man, as I am, to be learning stuff is really exciting.”

Elworthy said learning te reo opened his eyes to te ao Māori, a whole other world.