Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke, the country’s youngest member of parliament in 171 years, proudly declared at a pre-election debate in 2023, that the kōhanga reo generation is here. For more than 40 years, since the first kōhanga reo was opened in 1982, Māoridom has been steadily growing a sector of the Māori population grounded in te reo Māori and tikanga Māori, strong in their Māori identity, and firmly implanted into the physical and spiritual landscape of Aotearoa and beyond.
They are unapologetically Māori. This is the future I envision for my children.
Neither myself or my partner are part of the kōhanga generation. We were both born and raised in areas where Māori language immersion schooling options were not available until we were halfway through our education. We missed out. But we are determined that our children will not. We have worked on our reo proficiency, our knowledge of tikanga, and our comfortability to actively participate in our Māori world for over 35 years. We are part of the reclamation generation. Still unapologetically Māori — but we just got there in a different way.
Our daughter did not go to kōhanga reo. We made a decision to send her to a bilingual centre instead — mainly out of convenience — but still being exposed to te reo and tikanga. We both strongly believe that the role of te reo Māori and tikanga Māori proficiency is not solely the responsibility of a kōhanga reo or kura kaupapa Māori. That is our job as her parents. In hindsight, our job as parents would have been made infinitely easier if we had sent her to a kōhanga, but nothing about being a parent is easy.
I work in Māori studies at the university. When my daughter was three months of age I started back at work and she came with me. She was surrounded by kaupapa Māori passionate minds who knew the journey we were on and they eagerly joined in. We only spoke Māori to her. She only watched programmes and listened to songs in te reo Māori (we resisted Cocomelon!). We only read her books in te reo Māori. We slept marae styles every weekend to prepare her for wānanga life. We took her to every kaupapa we could, both locally and nationally. She came to every hui I had and every conference presentation I did. We did everything we could to prepare her for her kura kaupapa Māori journey.
But I did not prepare myself.
Our daughter started at Te Kura Kaupapa Māori o Ōtepoti at the beginning of Term 1. And what a ride it has been already. Aside from the usual daily "school’’ grind of making sure she has a clean uniform, a packed lunch, and adhering to much stricter drop off and pick up times — made even more difficult because it includes a commute to Fairfield twice a day — no-one warned me what being a kura kaupapa Māori parent would be like. It is full on. There are so many things that this kura does that mainstream schools would not even dream to do.
Day 2 and pāpā was already part of a planning hui to support the reo proficiency of kura whānau. Day 4 and our daughter was at a noho marae for three days. The last couple of weeks have been spent preparing to host a hui for all kura kaupapa staff based in the South Island. And I know that other parents spent their summer holidays painting buildings, reupholstering chairs, building fences for the playground and clearing the maara kai (garden).
We were not allowed to be involved in her bilingual centre at all. They have a strict "no parents’’ policy — ironic for a centre that claims to promote and strengthen te reo Māori and tikanga Māori. So I was completely unaware of how much time I needed to commit to the kura. I am so time poor. I already had to recruit an aunty to sub in for me for swimming lessons! It is only the beginning and I need to reorganise my priorities to place the kura at the top, but I am more than willing to do so.
But what I was most unprepared for was how to raise a child of the kura kaupapa generation. We do not have one child at the kura, we have more than 50.
We must make sure that we normalise te reo Māori, being Māori, and thinking Māori for all of them. But the first thing I need to do is to buy a sleeping bag — pink of course — for future noho marae.
