Humiliation is not the path to understanding tikanga

Monday, 7 February 2022

Although they may be few in numbers, the kaitiaki of Kia Piritahi Marae on Waiheke Island are continuing to uphold tikanga Māori within the community, while also educating the many visitors from Ngā Hau ē Whā (The Four Winds).

Verity Johnson is an Auckland-based writer, business owner and weekly opinion columnist.

OPINION: Over Waitangi weekend, I was thinking about a show from a while back.

We’d just finished. I was chatting to the owner while he stacked up the tables. I’d been running in heels for seven hours and my feet were covered in hardened, bloody, burst-blister pus. So I sagged on to a nearby table, sitting cross-legged to remove them.

“You can’t do that!” came a piercing scream. A drunk white woman in a skew-whiff tiara and moulting feather boa marched out from the bathroom glaring at me.

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“You can’t sit on a table!” she hissed in a stage whisper as subtle as sandpaper. “That’s offensive to him! He’s Māori!” She jabbed a finger at the owner as if he wasn’t there.

Cameron Moratti teaches maths at Spotswood College, is not Māori but has undergone a significant educational journey to learn te reo and tikanga to ensure he is well-equipped to educate all young people.

I could see him debating whether to explain he’s actually half Māori, half Pākehā, and this was his club, with his rules, and his staff … But she clearly was more interested in saving him than in listening to him. So instead he said, with tight politeness from between thinly pressed lips,

“Why am I offended?”

The punter blinked. “Well, you know …” she flapped her arms inarticulately. He said nothing, civilly waiting for a reply. There was an ominous pause.

“Well….,” she sputtered, she was rapidly deflating like a punctured air mattress. Then she huffed, sighed, turned and flapped off drunkenly to the door.

Verity Johnson: “See, I know this girl’s type. Anyone who’s worked in a white collar office will. She’s the self-imposed Mother Superior.”

I jumped up, “God, I’m so sorry, I knew that! I just forgot, it’s just my feet,” I stammered…

“It’s fine. I know. Besides, that’s more in places where you eat,” he said heavily. He pinched the bridge of his nose, where decades of being patronised had clearly built up into a permanent tension headache. “No, the reason I’m mad is now you’re going to associate learning tikanga with being yelled at – and be too embarrassed to try.”

He sighed, exhaustion sticking to him like wet gym gear, and he began stacking chairs again with his head down in furious silence. I stood there, barefoot on the rum-and-coke soaked floor, drenched in sticky embarrassment.

I recognised this feeling from the early years after moving here, when migrants are forever stumbling down potholes of your own ignorance. And yes, you do learn. But yes, you sometimes forget. And then people look at you like you’re some kind of racist idiot, especially among overly culturally empowered Pākehā circles.

But mostly I was ashamed of her behaviour from one middle class white woman to another.

See, I know this girl’s type. Anyone who’s worked in a white collar office will. She’s the self-imposed Mother Superior. A curious, corrosive mixture of white fragility and moral rigidity. Someone who is forever sweeping around white-splaining tikanga or te reo to everyone – ignoring the Māori people standing next to them.

The real kicker is that the owner is right. Not only is this just wrong, but this form of public humiliation doesn’t make Pākehā try harder to embrace Māori culture in everyday life. It just makes them more scared. “Don’t jump into this,” a nasty little voice in your head hisses, “what if you get this wrong?”

The infuriating irony is that this isn’t even really about teaching tikanga anyway.

No, this is about some Pākehā using Māori culture to look more enlightened than other Pākehā. And all that happens is the quiet Pākehā withdraw, the loud ones shout more, and the Owner has to watch his culture being used as a way of suffocating the chance of real understanding.

It’s a small, everyday reminder for me of how very far we still have to come. Especially among white, liberal circles who like to think of ourselves as fixed.