In this putanga | issue of Reowatch:

With October bringing some much needed sun and warmth to my garden outside, I’ve been enjoying some fascinating reo Māori reflections as I shift my seedlings into pots and soil, and plant new ones (am I sounding like a proper gardener right now? Great, because I’m really not!).

Te reo Māori is a vehicle that carries everything I do. Even when I’m pottering around outside trying to figure out how gardens work, I’m debating with the caterpillars and weeds in te reo Māori. I think many people assume there’s nobody doing that in our society - that te reo Māori is just on signs and letterheads - but there are.

This month has taken me to agencies and businesses, new buildings and different cities. There, I’ve been lucky to observe how everyday people are building a life in te reo Māori - writing, publishing, singing, sign-writing, composing. Gardening.

I enjoy thinking time outside. It feels different when we’re glued to the couch because of the wind and rain winter brings. There’s nothing to spark a decent thought worth thinking about inside, so I don’t really do it.

I see anti-reo and anti-Māori sentiment as a particular political thought from people who are figuratively stuck inside in an eternal winter. I can appreciate how depressing and exhausting it must be. I can understand, to a point, how such people might spend so much time actively trying to erase a language that means nothing to them. Too much time in the winter cold, stuck on the couch.

Those people are also adults, though. As adults, there is a responsibility that comes with maturity, and maturity should urge people to ensure they aren’t acting inappropriately or unfairly. In Aotearoa, I think maturity demands someone work to unpack why they’re so angry about the existence of a language. It doesn’t have to be as big a deal as those who spend all day dreaming up prohibitions methods make it out to be.

I believe a lot of the negativity around te reo Māori that has popped up in political campaigns and government agencies is driven by social media. The more I think about how reo and rage is garnered online, the more I feel the actions of politicians and some agency staffers to be more representative of a drone I might see in a movie. Negative language interactions are driven largely by a fabricated AI algorithm, but they are producing real and tangible action in real life. Humans doing inhuman things.

What is real though, is the seedling growing outside. One prepared lovingly, just as I prepare anything else. In te reo Māori.

Te reo Māori is my language of calm, of maturity. It’s heading into a new spring. I can feel it. This issue reflect on a moment that feels pivotal - a writing festival, an end to rage-baiting stories and a Waitangi Tribunal report that validates what every speaker of Māori has been saying for months: government agencies are out of line. Those inflicted ought to reign their anti-reo sentiment in.

I’ve got a spring in my tepe! How about you?

Kōrerotia, waiatatia.

Vincent Ieni Olsen-Reeder

Kaietita, Reowatch