PROUD TO BE THE 'OTHER'

The other night I was drawn into a conversation/debate with my family about why I choose to pursue Maori Studies. I was asked – ‘So, why are you at uni doing Maori and learning Te Reo? You should be taking French or Italian, there would be more job opportunities.’ It didn’t surprise me that they asked this because I had been faced with the same questions many times. It is not till quite recently with the enlightenment of education that I have been able to articulate a reply and attempt to explain the fierce passion I have for my culture, and the vicious desire I have to reclaim that knowledge which is so rightfully mine.
Let me start from the very beginning. My Papa was brought up on his father’s farm in the Far North, also known as Te Tai Tokerau, or that pointy bit at the top of the North Island. He spent a lot of time on the marae with his elders, absorbing the rich traditions and customs of our culture. My Papa and the people he conversed with spoke only Te Reo Maori (Maori language). He was sent to an Anglican Missionary school where they taught him to speak English and other Western values. Perhaps ‘taught’ is an inaccurate word to use, more like beaten into submission until he learnt to speak English. This story is all too familiar throughout Aotearoa. It is with this experience that my Papa abandoned his language. I was never privileged to hear him speak in his native tongue before he passed away. This is an example of linguistic neo-colonialism where the dominant colonisers actively suppress the language of the colonised. Shohat and Stam state that ‘the colonised are denied speech in a double sense, first in the idiomatic sense of not being allowed to speak, and second in the more radical sense of not being recognised as capable of speech’. In this way English is assumed to be the superior and dominant language over any other; it literally silences the indigenous voice and is a denial of political self determination.
Many people consider colonialism something of the past but I would argue that I have been directly affected by colonialism and still am. My Papa’s experience in school dictated his future actions. His culture and language were put aside in the way of conforming to social norms and western values of the dominant society. Stripped of my culture and robbed of my language I understand that colonisation and white imperialist ideologies are responsible. But what grieves me the most is that such racist discourses have pulled the wool over the eyes of some of our own people, including certain members of my own family. So blinded in fact that there is an invested belief in our culture being inferior to the dominant society and that we must abort it like an unwanted child. We are encouraged to discard our own culture and conform to a hegemonic society. If we appear to be proud of who we are or expressive in our culture then we are deemed to be deviant and radical.
I understand that our people are overrepresented in many low socio economic situations and I believe strongly that this is because of cultural dislocation. There has been a revitalisation of Maori culture in the past few decades, and I have jumped on that bandwagon. It is interesting that in a Pakeha institution where I am probably considered the ‘Other’ that I have found my own identity. So in reply to the burning questions of my family as to why I pursue Maori studies and learn Te Reo I say;
“I love learning about our history, I love our arts, I love our language and I can’t get enough of it”.
And then I ask; “I’m proud to be Maori, why aren’t you?”