FINDING OURSELVES

Mokopuna Rapaere Karu Kamira spent 45 years finding and helping our people in Australia move from a state of ngoikore (weakness) to one of toiora (wellbeing).

In 1995 he came home to ask advice from his kuia and kaumātua, and deliver a warning: the number of Māori turning up in Australian prisons, he said, was rising.  What could the whānau, hapū and iwi at home do to help change the emerging pattern?  Implicit in his question was the knowledge that Māori were losing their identity in Australia. 

This pattern was first seen during the so-called urban drift of Maori from our rural kāinga (settlements) after World War II.  Its warp was woven when Maori who migrated with hope ended up becoming just another minority lost in transit. 

But at the same time a matching weft pattern was woven by those Rangatira Maori who saw the holes appearing in our social fabric, and worked hard to stitch and mend it. 

Although written from the perspective of one such kāinga, Melissa Matutina Williams’ recently published book, Panguru and the City: Kainga Tahi, Kainga Rua: An Urban Migration History, captures the warp and weft of that migration pattern with clarity and compassion.

By 1995, Moko’s kuia and kaumatua had seen and lived through several such migrations.  So their advice to him was simple: teach te reo me ona tikanga to our people in Australia so that they may remember who they are and where they come from.

Although still relatively young at the time, Moko was like a living Ark filled with the mita o te reo me ona tikanga (the rhythm, intonation, pronunciation and sound of our language, and the customary system of values and practices developed over time and deeply embedded in our social context). 

As a former film stuntman he also had a showman’s charm and cheek, but tempered with morals and mana.  In short, he had what it takes to do what his kuia and kaumātua advised him to do. 

Although he worked fulltime as a Funeral Director, Moko never stopped helping Māori who had become lost in Australia to find their identity.  He was not the only one. 

To this day, others like him are teaching and strengthening Māori identities within the social fabric of Australia.  But as recent developments have revealed, since 2001 they have been really up against it.   

This facebook post captures some of that:  “Australians are more upset that their cricket players didn't shake some Black Caps hand than they are that their government is shaking down thousands of kiwi taxpayers.  Advance Australia Fair?  Yeah right.”

Twenty years after he first put his question to them, Moko and most of his kuia and kaumātua are dead.  Yet the question he asked in 1995 remains the same:  What can we do to help?  So too does the answer: te reo me ona tikanga.

Without them, we are likely to become or remain ngoikore.  With them, we can achieve toiora.  And it all begins and ends with finding ourselves.