Hine Potaka uses the ‘natural world’ for te reo

Tu Tangata, Issue 9, 1 December 1982, Page 27

Hine Potaka uses the ‘natural world’ for te reo

Hine Potaka is a women with a fear many Maori people have the death of their language.

And she is doing everything she can to make sure that death never happens.

From conveying to Aboriginees a sense of pride in their identity to teaching Fijians that to continue culture and tradition you must first teach it to your babies, Hine Potaka is well qualified to say what should and shouldn’t be done to save the Maori language.

And for a long time she has been saying just that.

After many years overseas helping other native races struggling to save cultures threatened with extinction in a western world, Hine now lives at Maketu.

It is a small Bay of Plenty community near Te Puke and is the base from which Hine works as a Maori Education Foundation field officer.

She believes that to save a language and a culture the education of it must begin with babies not, as has become common, with secondary and tertiary age students.

In her first years with the foundation, which began only four years ago, Hine saw a need for more Maori education in pre-schools. She now travels around the country showing those preschools why there is a need and how to go about filling that need.

Her teaching though, is not all Maori orientated. European ideas and ways come into it.

“I have always believed that we must nurture both our indigenous languages, Maori and English, so that we can walk confidently together as New Zealanders,” she says.

“So I base my programme biculturally.”

Called the Maori Education Foundation family education programme, it aims at filling “the need to learn the Maori language and cultures”.

Hine and a “network” of 15 Maorispeaking women travel the Waiariki area from Te Puke to the East Cape promoting early childhood education and Maori culture, traditions and language among families, with a “bicultural/bilingual approach”.

And already three bicultural and bilingual kindergartens have been set up in the Rotorua area.

Much of her teaching of Maori values comes from the “natural world”.

“I believe there is a lot in the world of nature that we can use to teach children. Part of this natural world is people and people are creative. People dance, they sing, they move,” she said.

‘‘And I believe in the natural world to help children learn. I use all aspects of nature to teach them there is sand, there is wood, flax, stones. All learning concepts are in these natural materials.” “All these things help childen develop their senses of learning.” News of Hine’s programme has travelled fast since its national exposure at the Maori Womens’ Welfare League annual conference at Tauranga in May. Already she has travelled to Wellington to speak of it and has visited Turangawaewae marae at Ngaruawahia at the invitation of Maori Queen Dame Te Atairangikaahu.

Beginning with pre-schoolers as a means of preserving the Maori language, Hine says, is the best way to do it. “I think that this is the area where we must develop it firstly from our little children. It is important that people realise that the language of any people must begin with the babies and be nurtured among the family.”

Te Kohanga Reo, another Maori Education Foundation and Maori Affairs Department programme, is “tremendous” and Hine sees the programme she heads as complimentary to it. “It is very timely because you see, before they have been looking at teaching the language at the secondary and tertiary levels. For years no one looked at beginning with pre-schoolers.” Her most important qualification from which she draws her beliefs has, she says, come with the years. “While I have trained in pre-school teaching I believe that the most important thing that I have is experience as a mother and grandmother. As well as that she has had many years working overseas. In 1969 she lived among Australia’s Aboriginees promoting family edu-

cation and bringing back to them their lost sense of pride in what they are. “It was a challenge because there is a tribe of people whose lifestyle has been denigrated. They have lost their language, their culture. “Much of our work was portraying our own culture so that they may gain some sense of pride in their own and try and recapture it. “Having done that we were able to find their language and bring back this sense of pride in their identity.” For six years she worked among the Aboriginees until in 1975 she returned to New Zealand and received an OBE for her efforts. Her next overseas stint was in Fiji in 1976 where she was seconded to the Ministry of Fijian Affairs and Regional Development.

She had been sent to Fiji after its prime minister had expressed concern at the increasing number of rural residents moving to the cities. He feared a culture loss. “I enjoyed it there because the first language is Fijian not English. All we had to do was convey to them that they had to start the teaching of their culture with their babies.” Now at “nearly 60” Hine’s life hasn’t slowed and if she has her way it won’t. “I have had an exciting life really, working with people. The more I work for people the more satisfaction it gives me. “I want to work on the programme as long as my superiors allow me and as long as the people want me. “Because you see, if I can be the resource person to fill peoples’ need, well