I told him that it was so demoralising to see how far we have to go to create a country where being Māori is valued.
I didn’t say anything about how dispirited I felt until the next morning, and that was when I finally burst into tears. Thankfully, my tāne filled the gap and we stuck to undemanding topics of conversation until we could leave a couple of hours later. I hugged my arms to my stomach and looked down at the edge of the table, saying relatively little. Our sense of manaaki suggested it was better not to draw her in too.īut in the minutes that followed, I could feel that I was folding in on myself, physically and emotionally. At that time, it was early in the piece and leaving wasn’t an option there was a fourth person to consider and she hadn’t been present at the time of the exchange. The tāne and I knew that there was no point calling him out on it. Then he said something on another subject as if I hadn’t said a word at all. He who had delivered a taiaha straight to my heart looked at me, then away. He was equally appalled.Īfter I regained the power of speech, I said, pointing to my moko kauwae, and trying to keep my voice level, “You know I’m Māori, don’t you? And that I speak te reo and that it’s a big part of my identity? That te reo is an official language of this country?” I felt my lovely (Pākehā) tāne tense up beside me. Kotahi te whakakinokino ko tērā! I was dumbstruck.
He also made it clear that Māori were dodgy, except for the handful who were his friends. What’s the use? English is the language here.” Invited to spend time with someone I didn’t know well, a long-settled migrant to Aotearoa, I was dumbstruck when he said something along the lines of “I’m sick of all that Maori language s**t being forced down our throats on the news. You can’t always choose who you spend time with.
However, it’s another matter when prejudice is shoved in my face. Email provides a sort of arm’s-length safety net. The prejudice I cop usually comes digitally, to my work email, after I have written a column or been interviewed on a kaupapa to do with Māori self-determination. These are a very thin cover for the prejudices of those who still deny our right, as Māori, to thrive. I’m also not afraid to call out one of its current proxies, complaints about the use of te reo in mainstream news shows. But something happened recently to detail that plan.Īs regular readers know, I am not afraid to call out discrimination in my columns and media interviews. I had a different kaupapa in mind for this month’s column. Kaiako/Lecturer, Te Wānanga Aronui o Tāmaki Makau Rau/Auckland University of Technology
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