It lives with you, boy: Tom Roa on his journey to keep te reo Māori alive

Thursday, 8 September 2022

Te reo Māori flowed from Tom Roa as a child, but that changed when he went to school.

Professor Tom Roa (Waikato, Ngāti Maniapoto) is a highly respected kaumātua and academic who has worn many hats within te ao Māori and te ao Pākeha. Roa is an eloquent reo speaker who had to fight to reclaim his language within a school system determined to rip it from him. Here, he recounts the story of his te reo Māori journey, as told to Katie Doyle (Ngāpuhi).

This has been edited for length and clarity.

There's been quite a bit written by a number of people on the loss of language, the loss of culture, and the intergenerational trauma that continues today.

Read this story in te reo Māori and English here. / Pānuitia tēnei i te reo Māori me te reo Pākehā ki konei.

Many people have borne witness to what they see as the effects of having lost their identity.

* Aotearoa, walk with me

* Dream of a bilingual nation - what will the linguistic future of Aotearoa New Zealand look like?

A young Tom Roa, front row, second from the left, performs a haka on the steps of Parliament on September 14, 1972.

* Learning te reo Māori 'like going home', says fashion designer Kiri Nathan

From personal experience, I'm told that as a preschooler, I used Māori naturally.

Then I went to school and the natural use of Māori dropped away. By the time I got to secondary school, I didn't speak Māori, I couldn't understand.

When my parents or our elders spoke to me in Māori, I would respond in English, and oftentimes, be told off by the old people, but then laugh it off.

The messages that we got from school and from schooling was that Māori language and Māori culture was dying, and was of no use to anyone.

I wanted to take Māori as a subject when I got to secondary school, but was told, “No you can't, we don't have a teacher.”

Having spoken with others, I said “I can do it via correspondence,” and the response was “No, we don't have anybody to look after you for that.

“So you've got a choice. You can, if you want to pursue language, you can take French and Latin,” so I did. I took French and Latin and right through to University Entrance.

Meanwhile, fewer and fewer of my generation were even able to understand Māori.

Indeed, I remember when I was a sixth former and I went to a tangi at home and the kids were playing and laughing.

One of our older uncles told us off, because he was angry that we couldn't understand what he was saying.

Those of us who did understand what he was saying wouldn't reply to him in Māori. At that time, it struck a chord with me.

Te Ouenuku Rene led the contingent into the halls of power in September 1972 to present the Māori language petition.

Those of us who did understand what he was saying, myself and another cousin, we sat with our uncle and said: “We know what you're saying, but we just don’t know how to speak Māori back.”

Uncle said, “Well, you should know, you’re Māori.”

At that time, I think he was absolutely right. So when I left home and went to university, I decided for myself that I'd learn Māori.

I became involved in a group called Te Rōpū o Reo Māori at Victoria University, and then got involved in the [Māori Language Petition] in 1972.

So there was a generation gap. There was anger in some people that the younger ones were losing our Māoriness.

Then there were some of us, as young people, who were angry because we felt that it was no fault of ours that we couldn't communicate in Māori and that we were robbed of our culture.

So these intersected with, dare I say, other feelings of division where groups like Ngā Tamatoa grew from, asserting that the promise of the Treaty had been broken.

I’m reminded that people concentrate on the three articles of the Treaty and ignore the fourth, the freedom of speech and the freedom to practise things Māori.

Waikato University professor Tom Roa has translated Alice in Wonderland into Māori. His next project is The Hobbit. (Video first published January 10, 2021.)

I think that in the late 1970s and significant protest action in the 80s might have turned the tide. But, I think that statistics today are still showing that Māori is a dying language.

That there is still not a sufficient native-speaking population to ensure that the language survives as a living language.

I'm reminded that, at the time of the Māori Language Petition, we invited the Ngāti Toa kaumātua, Te Ouenuku Rene, to be our kaumātua and to lead us into Parliament.

From my recollection, he said to us: ‘When I die and go to my creator, what can I tell him if he asks me what has become of this treasure that I gave to your ancestors and passed on to you?”

Because of the relationship between Ngāti Raukawa, Ngāti Toa and Ngāti Maniapoto where I’m from, [Rene] said to me, ‘It lives with you, boy.’

Of course, he was speaking Māori. Others who heard that thought it was a huge compliment, but I took it as a challenge.

Man, what a responsibility to put on us! I mean, we were just young kids, really. In 1972, I was only 19 years old.

That responsibility put on us, I think we took it with both hands. I’m proud for myself and my wife that Māori is our lingua franca.

All of our children speak Māori naturally, and all of our children's children speak Māori. Of course, each speaks according to their experience and age.

More and more people, with events like this 50th anniversary of the signing of the petition, are recognising what a treasure te reo is.

It’s amazing what is happening with our young people with kapa haka and the language that is flowing.

It's a very exciting time, but it hasn't come about because people have just let it happen. It's happened because people have worked hard to make it happen.