Te Wiki o te Reo Māori

Ata Mārie, whānau! It's Te Wiki o te Reo Māori - Māori Language week - and time for all New Zealanders to try out incorporating more te reo into their everyday discourse. www.nzhistory.net.nz has a fantastic list of the 100 words every New Zealander should know, including clear explainations as to how to use greetings in emails - a resource businesses all over the country should explore this week. Let's get rid of 'kind regards' and replace it with our own authentic sign off: "Nāku noa, nā (your name)."

Matariki continues - a time of reflection, re-planting and renewal. Seeing those gorgeous kites, like banners furled against intolerance, high above the Waitemata at Orakei, made my heart sing.

                                                                image credit: NZ Post

This Matariki event, which bookends Te Wiki o te Reo Māori, brings together so much that I love about this city and this country: Move Towards the Light is a collection of light installations that use the streets, buildings and other features of the waterfront walk from Britomart to Silo Park to tell the story of Matariki. It's a collaboration between the artists, Silo Park, Ports of Auckland and the Auckland City Council's various agencies. Love it! This is what public space, the commons, the agora is for.

We'll be there Friday night, wandering the streets of this city with the kids, rugged up warm, stopping off for fries and drinks on the way.

Perhaps this week we could all practise introducing ourselves to each other? When we meet each other face to face - kanohi ki te kanohi - and state our subject position, the place we come from, the place we stand - we understand each other better. Here's a neat wee guide to writing your own pepeha or greeting.

Mine might look something like this:

Ko Karioi toku maunga

Ko Waitematā toku moana

Ko Waikato toku awa

Ko Ellen Baird toku waka

Ko Ngāti Pākehā toku iwi

Ko Kate toku ingoa.

When I was at high school in the early/mid 90s, my Māori teacher encouraged me, as Pākehā, to incorporate as much real connection and feeling into mine as possible - hence Karioi, which is the mountain my dad's house is on the side of, rather than a generic UK mountain; Waikato rather than the Thames. Some Pākehā say Endevour as their waka, but we know that John Edmonds and his family came to New Zealand on the Ellen Baird, so that's my waka.

Here's the house he built for the family when he got here in 1834: some of you may know it as the Edmonds Ruins.

                                                                  Photo credit: Historic Places Trust

I like driving around Kerikeri and seeing all the drystone walls in those parts and thinking about John Edmonds, who brought his wife and 14 children here and, in doing so, transformed their lives. Or Bill Apperley, who left Gloucestershire in the midst of the Depression, having finished school at 12, and went share-milking and earnt enough to buy a farm. Two of his sons have PhDs - my father and my uncle Logan. That's the story of Aotearoa/New Zealand - people who were brave enough to leave all that they knew and embark on a voyage of discovery. Those are all our tīpuna.