Māori language week moment...

Ngā mihi atu kia koutou katoa i tenei wiki o te reo Māori. Nau mai, haere mai, piki mai, kake mai...

(Translation: Acknowledgements to you all in this week of Māori language. Much welcome to you...)

Yesterday, I participated with members of my online morning class in an initiative during our Māori language week celebrations which is from Sunday 12th September to 18th September.

Working at Te Wānanga o Aotearoa (Maori tertiary higher learning institution) has given me real insight and an appreciation of what NZ's indigenous people have survived through during colonization and with the revival of the language.

Our language moment took place yesterday at 12 noon when those who wished to participated were encouraged to enrol on the website and then take part in a reo (Māori language) activity be it a singing a waiata (song/s), saying a karakia (prayer/s) or whaikorero (saying speech/es) etc.

Our online class finishes dot on 12 noon and my chosen activity was to recite our usual karakia but another member of our class suggested a waiata of her choosing. So we did the countdown until 12 noon and then proceeded to sing our waiata of three verses and then finished our class with a karakia.

I took a photo of our class Zoom and then later uploaded it on the website as our registered activity. If I heard it correctly, I think the organizers were going for a record of over 2 million activities as last year there were some 1 million activities registered.

I haven't yet checked to see how it went but it was neat to play our part in participating and also in keeping the language alive. It's also neat because now I count it as my third language that I'm learning after my first language which is Samoan and my second language as English.

It's also been a real challenge for those of us who are non-Māori but who live in South Auckland to learn the language in being able to support our Māori cousins in their bid for 'tino rangatiratanga' which is self determining rather than the colonised view of assimilation.

But it is exciting to see our non-Māori news readers, particularly on mainstream news, learning and using Māori kupu (words) in their greetings and in transitioning between breaks. Even our Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has learned to speak in te reo (the Māori language) and is modelling to many NZ'ers that it is an important part of our heritage plus it is our third official language as well as English and NZ sign language.

Kia kaha Aotearoa - (translated) be strong New Zealand...