When I arrived on the first day of my full-immersion course, Mum and I had just completed the big drive up from Ōtautahi to Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland), my new home.
All 23 years of my life in Ōtautahi were packed up in my little waka. Tāmaki Makaurau was so foreign to me. It was maybe the fourth time I had been here. I knew no one.
New city, new highways, new wānanga, new people.
When we arrived at the pōwhiri for new tauira, I had no idea what I was in for. The only thing grounding me was the knowledge I was about to meet other tauira as determined as me, all of us committed enough to give up a year's worth of mahi to learn te reo Māori.
My Nanny Hera turned up to the pōwhiri to tautoko and in her true East Coast style, she walked straight up to the front of the rōpū of manuhiri to karanga us on. I look up to people like her, and her support reassured me that this was where I was supposed to be.
First week of class, e hika! You don't realise how tiring full immersion is until you get to the end of the day and you're struggling to pull a sentence together. From 9am to 3pm, Monday to Thursday, we only speak te reo Māori, koirā te tikanga. It was overwhelming to think of the whole life I had left behind in Ōtautahi and how much I was sacrificing to be here. I had been through a few te reo Māori courses over the past few years, but I felt more pressure, and more responsibility, sitting in that akomanga on the first day, alongside my fellow tauira. Little did I know that this roomful of strangers would soon become a second whānau.
In the akomanga, we all had to go around and share our pepeha and our purpose for being here. I rarely cry in front of others, but I found myself tearing up as I began to reflect on my haerenga to learn te reo Māori, and the pivotal role models in my life.
As the weeks passed and we arrived at the middle of the first term, te kaupapa mātua, the main topic we were tackling was wetereo (grammar), and if you’ve learnt te āhuatanga o te reo Māori then you know how hard that can be.
Despite the weeks of classes and many hours spent learning and studying te reo Māori, diving into wetereo made me start to question if I even knew the language at all. I found myself expending a lot of energy correcting every hapa I made.
Whakapono ki a koe! These were the words in the back of my mind when I would question myself or when a kaiako would ask me, “Amiria, whakapākehātia tēnei rerenga kōrero?” in front of the akomanga.
All those hours wrestling over the many rules of wetereo slowly became worth it. Mā te hapa ka ako, mā te ako ka tika – through mistakes you learn, through learning you flourish and I sure have made enough mistakes over the past months to know I was learning.
As the months go by, things are getting easier. There are some days I find it hard to make connections with other tauira as we can only speak te reo Māori to each other, most of the time at a kōhanga level, if that. Those days feel rough. But then there are other days where kōrero i te reo Māori flows a bit easier and I feel just a bit closer to my future whāinga where te reo Māori is alive and thriving in my whānau
This dream of language reclamation is so much more than striving for perfection; it’s about putting in the hard fight now so that future generations don’t face the pain of a language that was so natural for their ancestors being completely foreign to them. For me, it’s about transforming that feeling of shame I felt when I was a tamaiti into the confidence to kōrero reo Māori i ngā wā katoa, and fufill haepapa such as tuku karanga on a marae.
It’s a humbling experience entering these learning spaces. I have learnt so much about myself. Each day brings new knowledge, reminding me of the never-ending journey of learning ahead. With time, pieces slowly start to align, and I remember the bigger picture. It’s not just about the details, whether it’s ‘i’ or ‘ki’, or trying to remember what a passive or stative rerenga is. Te reo Māori is a source of connection to our history and our tīpuna; their tikanga and their way of living. Wetereo is important, but only one part in this long haerenga.
Nā Amiria Reid
