Bill Bryson asserts in his book Mother Tongue that ‘hello’ comes from Old English hál béo þu (‘Hale be thou’, or ‘whole be thou’, meaning a wish for good health) in the same way ‘goodbye’ is a contraction of ‘God be with you’.
Nowadays, hello is what we use when we feel to uncomfortable saying kia ora. Because blessing someone with life and wellness is just a bit to spiritual. It also means thank you, and sometimes goodbye? So confusing for my western mindset. But though I can’t understand how greetings work, I’m sure I can gather all the knowledge I want from kaumatua and Tohunga from historical documents and share it online, right? I’m a New Zealander.
All words have history, all have whakapapa or etymology and knowing this history forms understanding and understanding creates knowledge. It’s the knowledge part that myself and all (yes, speaking on behalf of all my people) pākehā stumble over and refuse to understand. If you don’t think words matter just mention white fragility around pākehā and watch them either wither and die or become enraged and fighty. I’ll get to visual and cultural appropriation another time, we gotta break these things down to their parts.
Here are some of my thoughts.
When reading and researching early arrival of pākehā and tauiwi to Aotearoa, I’ve had to read between the lines from even the oldest texts concerning missionaries and settlers as they try to glean knowledge from first recorded conversations with rangatira and expert orators. Once I began, I found that they were softly whispering on the page, that not everything is for everyone. They sort of doublespeak and they knew how to do it. They’d tell small portions and only in part, they keep talking about connections and referencing things in context with other things, overlapping and circling back to another story, they seemed to stop and start, beginning in the middle of the story or cutting short a description. They sprinkle morsels of wisdom within their knowledge that is imparted knowing all too well, even back then, that it would be adulterated by less illuminated minds, schooled in an English tradition with God at the centre of their worldview. A world where time and people and plants and animals are separated and in order, top to bottom in the great chain of being. It would later be used to sell books and trade land for less than fair exchange. It would be manipulated to turn the gospel into a fable that would appeal to a tribal people ‘like those of Israel’. Let’s hope the Māori don’t get their hands on the New Testament, spoiler alert. Their knowledge would be taken and recorded, often incorrectly, condemned to a page and so could die there, especially when they are no longer allowed to practice traditional customs and knowledge systems because of sweeping laws that continue to ripple out today. Only hunting birds with firearms, no traditional medicines, only one God, call him Io if you like but he’s singular and a HIM and forget the rest, no marking of bodies, as it’s a crime against god. Native birds, so treasured by all New Zealanders, now at the edge of extinction with no-take rules discouraging Māori from even taking notice of te taiao that once sustained their existence. The Māori mortality rate still at an anomalous distance from their pākehā counterparts, I have a theory based on the weight of bullshit that Māori have to carry around from birth due to racism and cultural bias that is weighted against them causes weariness to set in at an earlier age. I know know this is far from the truth and it’s more likely improper treatment and care for Māori at all stages of care liked to negative unconscious bias of doctors, nurses, healthcare workers, teachers and phamacists. All karakia are linked through with mentions of god in trees, water, oceans, wind. So, forget those karakia and practice the lord’s prayer, in te reo is fine. And tā moko, though making a resurgence, is still met with stares and disapproval and the occasional entitled, ‘well-meaning’ comment, but they had such a beautiful face (before).
But this post is about the loss of knowledge or giving it back, whatever is less painful.
Not about the Māori loss of knowledge or pain, I can’t speak to that, but of the end to pākehā having access to everything Māori and ending a kind of silent trauma. We’re gonna hate it and it’s gonna feel like a loss because we’ve had access to it for so long that it feels normal and to have it limited is gonna feel like loss.
I get it, because I come from the great lineage of idea gatherers, knowledge collectors, customs adopters, language mergers, land acquirers* (wink), people observers and profit makers. I was taught that everything can be yours, at a price or with enough hard work or perseverance. That the expectation of knowledge is free and available, to a mind that thinks it can carry the weight of generations. I read in old books and find online, knowledge that was shared in confidence yet used in the quest for greater dominance. I start to think that if there were other white men, who cared enough to enquire got the goods, then I somehow deserve even more of the share, because oh, I haven’t told you yet, but I’m a better pākehā than they were.
I’m really good at reading and I can find all sorts of connections to te ao Māori on Wikipedia.
But I’ve noticed something about this kind of thinking and reading and “knowing”. It’s always from the outside looking in. It’s not Know-ledge is Learn-Ledge, (that’s ugly, but you get the point I’m making). That’s because it costs me nothing to type in a word or open up an entire whakapapa line, to lay it out in the open and carelessly let it dry in the sun. To unpick whakatauki and use it to bolster my Instagram post. To stumble over pronunciation or sing waiata out of tune only hurts my ego and does not pull on the whakapapa ties that connect Māori to everything else in the universe.
I continue to read and learn and listen, but I’m quieter now, and humbled by what I have been given. But I’m working on the loss part, how do I describe the loss? It’s not a death, the knowledge is still alive, marae still gather, tangihanga continue with the utmost care. It’s more like having hunger pains but the tin of biscuits is in the other room on a high shelf. However, I’m in the kitchen and the fridge is full. That’s my best extended metaphor I can come up with.
There are doors, or jars, that will never be opened for me. Because they’re not for me.
So, when you’re next around your Māori mates or walk into a room where maybe a few of your Māori co-workers are talking and they suddenly grow silent it might not be because they think you’re a bad pākehā or not trustworthy, it’s just that they’ve got their entire ancestry resting on each of their shoulders and they need to keep a little bit back to help them bear the weight. Maybe they were talking about something a grandparent said or telling a story of what they just learnt when they went up the river or to the marae, went for a hīkoi or gathered some food with an aunty. Maybe you long to ask follow-up questions; but how do they prepare the karaka berries? Where is the best uku in the banks? How does that waiata go? What’s the best rēwana recipe?
You might feel left out, or that you’re on the outside of a club you’ve always wanted to be part of but maybe, but just for now, and only for the next 250 years, you can be a supporter and just put the jug on and ask if anyone wants a cup of tea. Keeping in mind the colonial project brought tea to the English colonies via the East India Company who used not-quite slaves of the lower caste in India, ugh, it never ends. But that’s another story.
*to be written about in another post.