Who's a plastic Māori?

So, here we are at the end of another wiki o te reo Māori. As always, it's a week that is something of a mixed blessing. You hear and see more reo than ever. You try to avoid any negativity as best you can (I basically didn't see any but then I've grown quite adept at dodging it). You silently punish yourself for not being a fluent speaker even though you weren't raised in a reo-speaking whānau.

Except, this year I have largely stopped doing that last one for reasons of sanity. Weird, huh?

I've written about it before, the strange stranglehold that my lack of competence with the reo has had on me for my whole adult life.

I have been trying to let go of the guilt that I feel for not being more proactive in my reo learning. This has been an ongoing project of several years and I hadn't really felt like I'd made much progress on it, to be honest. I still wasn't signing up for a te reo course. I still felt shit about it. And then earlier this week I was in the shower - the place of all the best thinking (and singing) - when the thought just popped into my head "you've got to forgive that little girl who didn't want to have anything to do with learning Māori. Put that down. Let it go". And, in the middle of washing my hair... I think I did?

What the fuck? I've been lugging this shit round for years and then it just... went? I mean, I still spent the following few days peering around emotional corners waiting for it to come back, but then later in the week I had another epiphany, this time while walking¹.

I've been doing "Māori" Outfit of the Day photos this week, as per the following:

There were a couple of reasons for this, one was the desire to do as the late Kiingi Tuuheitia suggested to "be Māori all day, every day" in the face of certain governmental factions that are pushing an anti-Māori agenda, another is that I just like doing outfits.

Anyway, this had involved a bit of me ferreting through my wardrobe and jewellery collection, picking out the more overtly Māori items like my "Manu is my homegirl" t-shirt (an appropriately reverent homage to one of the few Māori role models in the media I had as a preschooler... literally a plastic Māori).

But it did smack of trying a bit too hard, and as I was walking home one evening it hit me like a blinding flash - I don't have to try to be Māori, I am Māori. I am Māori because my father was Māori and he lives in my DNA, in my whakapapa. I DO NOT HAVE TO PROVE MY MĀORINESS TO ANYONE, LET ALONE MYSELF.

Now, I fully understand that that is a statement that is self-evident and very obvious and one that if you had phrased as a question, I would have said, "yes, of course" to, but here's the thing that's weird about people - we can understand something and agree that it's true but still not know it. Not actually know it in the core of our beings, in the bones of ourselves.

And I fancy I walked a little taller the rest of the way home, because I realised I don't owe anyone an apology for not being Māori enough. I will not be inwardly cringing at myself about this anymore (just about a bunch of other awkward shit).

The last few days I've been more gentle with myself on the reo stuff than I usually am. I'm not getting annoyed at myself for not knowing more, I'm just quietly stretching my reo muscles by throwing around a few extra kupu, and setting myself the challenge of learning a new waiata because I love to sing and this Anna Coddington track slaps².

If I do end up travelling further along in my reo journey it won't be because I'm trying to prove something to myself. It will be because I want to. It will not be motivated by guilt or a feeling that if I was just a bit better I would be good enough for some amorphous, unknown prize or tick of approval from the Tikanga Cops. If I never learn another waiata, whakataukī or kupu Māori it won't make me any less Māori. Buzzy, eh?

The plastic Māori doll that is pictured above was one that I bought from a tourist shop that sells those kinds of things, I think because I saw myself in her. There she is in her little outfit that she's maybe not that comfortable in, eyes cast sideways as if looking for an escape, very clearly a Caucasian face cast in brown plastic - so not one thing nor the other, a plastic tiki at her throat, eyebrows far too thin because she lived through the tweezeriffic 90s (okay, maybe not that last one).

But I'm not a plastic Māori.

I'm whatever kind of Māori or Moata I feel like being. And that's okay. In fact, it's fucking great.

Shout outs to

• This shitty racist government for forcing me to think about these things/galvanising me in a way that Tangata Tiriti real ones never could.
• The person on BlueSky who suggested Aho/Beams to me as an addition to my Matariki playlist which is how I happened upon it in the first place. It's currently my fave waiata and on high-rotate
• Isaac Martyn for his excellent one-man show, He Māori, which I saw recently and almost certainly helped nudge some of the above epiphanies into being - seeing yourself reflected in theatre - it's a somewhat novel experience!

¹ There's a great book about the benefits of walking that includes the brilliant way it gets your brain going called The Lost Art of Walking by Geoff Nicholson

² I started out thinking I would learn the reo version of Sway by Bic Runga but it was way more fiddly with the lyrics than I thought it would be so pivoted to something easier (and importantly, did not tell myself off for doing so). Respect to Scotty Morrison for the reo translation of Coddington's original song - it really works.