Aotearoa is what?

Tu Tangata, Issue 36, 1 June 1987, Page 25

Aotearoa is what?

Young Pakeha people leaving college with little knowledge about their New Zealand-tanga are on a collision course with their Maori peers. That’s the sad conclusion reached by Tu Tangata editor, Philip Whaanga after spending a day in total with sixth form students of Wellington’s Onslow College. He’d been asked to speak in a liberal studies programme called Scope, and had followed speakers from the Intellectually Handicapped Society and Unemployed Workers Union. Most of the one hundred and twenty students had a real ignorance of the Pakeha and Maori history of New Zealand and seemed to have no sense of belonging to this country. A discussion about what made them distinctive from say, Australian students, turned up nothing. More felt it irrelevant to think of themselves as having a particular New Zealand identity. A few however, who had travelled, realised other countries saw them as having ‘Kiwi’ identi-

ty, but whatever that was remained a blank. The students’ opinion of Maori people was gleaned mainly from the media, and their own parent’s views. A few had picked up bits and pieces from contact at school and Maori friends. Even allowing for the self-centred nature of youth, the depth of their ignorance was shocking. To the majority, who all expressed themselves in one way or another, Maori people were irrelevant. It did not concern them whatever happened in the past, and the future was not something to think of. Probably familiar themes for those working with young people, but still a recipe for disaster for this country. Mr Whaanga played them a tape of an interview he’d just done with a young Maori songwriter, Ngahiwi Apanui of the band Aotearoa. On it Apapnui told of the purpose of the band, to encourage young Maori to be proud of themselves. And then a song followed,

‘Stand up for your people’. With lyrics such as “Don’t stay down, don’t stay under, stand up tall, we are the stronger,” the message was clear. Apparently too clear for some students. “How can they say that, that’s racist.” O yes the complacency was burst then, as the students reacted to being excluded. This brought from one student the memory of leaving a Maori language class because of bad vibes from the Maori students. The lively discussion got quite tangled up in the notion of free speech as long as it didn’t restrict others. When confronted with the reality of what some young Maori are only at this stage singing about, the Onslow students got a wee bit indignant. But not really threatened. As one observant student put it. “That person confirms what we know, that young Maori don’t speak Maori and it’s dying that doesn’t concern us, that’s for the Maoris.”