WITCH DOCTOR

At the beginning of last week, a former Reserve Bank governor and National Party leader called Dr Don Brash posted to facebook, “I am utterly sick of people talking in Maori on RNZ in what are primarily English-language broadcasts.”  In a followup interview with RNZ he made it clear, “I don’t want to hear it [te reo Maori] ... I don’t want to learn it ...” 

When I listened to Dr Brash, I chuckled because his words took me back to 1982.

When the then five minute Maori news segment, Te Karere, first hit the airwaves on TV1, there was strong resistance from two of my fellow Nurses’ Home residents to my watching it instead of Top Town on the only other channel at that time, TV2.

“You Maori have got your own news.  Where will it end?” asked one.  “It’s a barbaric language and I don’t want to listen to it,” said the other.  But the cincher was. “There’s already too much Maari on TV as it is.”  When I asked how five minutes of te reo Maori out of 720 minutes of daily broadcast could be considered too much, the response was, “You’ve got On the Mat too.” 

I laughed.  Then I switched over to TV1.  When they realised they didn’t have the power or authority to ban Te Karere, those two removed themselves from the TV room.  I wonder where they are now. 

Which brings me back to the end of last week, when a poet and musician called Rob Ruha spoke these words to a dinner gathering of Iwi and National Party leaders, “Are you someone,” he asked them, “that can heal our people?  Or are you a Spin Doctor? ... Do you just say that you can heal us, and do nothing but sit on your hands?” 

Then he paused before asking further, “Are you someone who enacts and enables this thing called māuiui whenua?  Mauiui whenua is what Hori Keeti explained as our disconnection from our maunga, from our awa, and from our whenua.  And when we’re disconnected like that, ka māuiui te iwi.  Engari, ka ahu mai tera māuiui i te whenua. (The people become sick, and that sickness extends into the land as well.)”

Then he concluded, “Pena ka ora e te Atua te māuiui tangata, ka ora ano huri ia ia te māuiui whenua.  (Healing the people will lead, in turn, to healing the land.)  He aha tēnei mea te māuiui whenua?  Ko nga ture e nga kati e te kakī o te Mana Maori Motuhake.  (What is this thing that afflicts the land?  It is the laws’ stranglehold on the throat of Maori and our self-determination.)”

As 2017 ends, everyone inside an iwi should ponder Rob Ruha’s questions about leadership.  As for Don Brash, he’s just there as an object lesson and reminder to us all on what leadership isn’t.

Nga mihi aroha ki a tātou katoa.  Ka kite ano i te tau 2018.