A couple of weeks ago, I headed to Tāmaki Makaurau with some close friends and colleagues for the 2022 Kea World Class New Zealand awards, where I was given the incredible honour of being named the 2022 Friend of New Zealand.
I was in extraordinary company for the evening; the other 2022 WCNZ recipients — Zion Armstrong, Guled Mire, Arama Kukutai, Miranda Harcourt, and Katie Sadleir — are all doing spectacular work, and to be recognised alongside them is incredibly humbling.
Kea, the organisation that runs these awards, is also doing spectacular work; imagining New Zealand not as a land mass, but as a borderless country that includes all Kiwis wherever they — we — may be. Huge respect to Kea board chair Phil Veal and CEO Toni Truslove.
Below is the video from the award Kea so generously gave me. I've shared the mihi (Māori greeting) from my speech, along with its translation.
First, though, I want to acknowledge the road to that mihi.
I love learning languages, and have been blessed with a facility for them. I speak Spanish, French and Italian to varying degrees of fluency, and can deliver a few highly creative curses in Greek and Yiddish.
But it took me more than a decade of living here before I said my first words in te reo Māori (the Māori language) on a stage. And that’s because te reo Māori isn't like those other languages.
Learning te reo Māori, especially as a non-Māori, isn’t just about learning the nouns and verbs. It's about learning its whakapapa (history, ancestry, literally “the layers that create”).
It’s learning how it was actively suppressed and discriminated against: how the 1867 Native Schools Act required all written and spoken instruction to be conducted in English. How it was utterly disregarded and considered to be of no importance: how, in 1930, Director of Education T.B. Strong wrote, “the natural abandonment of the native tongue inflicts no loss on the Maori.” How children were beaten for speaking their native tongue — something for which the Crown has yet to apologise. How close it came to dying out.
It’s learning how people like Hana Te Hemara (Te Āti Awa, Ngāti Raukawa), Lee Smith (Ngāti Kahungunu), Rawiri Paratene (Ngāpuhi), and Syd Jackson (Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāti Porou) fought to turn the tide, organising more than 30,000 signatures for Te Petihana Reo Māori (the Māori Language Petition) and delivering it to Parliament.
It’s learning what Te Petihana led to, as Te Taura Whiri, the Māori Language Commission, explains:
“That day — 14 September 1972 — became Māori Language Day which eventually expanded to what we know as Māori Language Week. Their peaceful protest also led to the successful WAI11 Māori Language claim to the Waitangi Tribunal and the enactment of the Māori Language Act 1987. The Act recognised te reo as an official language of our country and also created our whare.”
It’s learning how people like Hana O’Regan (Kai Tahu), Scotty Morrison (Ngāti Whakaue), Anton Matthews (Te Rarawa, Te Aupōuri), and Melanie Taite-Pitama (Ngāi Tūāhuriri) continue the mahi (work) of revitalising te reo to this day, and encounter anti-reo racism to this day. How generously they share their knowledge.
It’s learning how, because of this history, many Māori feel whakamā (shame) for not speaking te reo, a feeling Siena Yates wrote about with searing honesty:
“I recall attempting to reclaim my reo when I was in university and a (so-called) friend said something along the lines of: ‘Oh, look at you trying to be a real Māori’ in the tone you might use to humour a toddler. I didn’t ‘try’ again for years.”
She goes on to share her full journey, including this heart-wrenching insight: “Over and over, people I look up to drummed it into my thick head that it isn’t my fault I don’t have the language. It was beaten out of my koro and his before him, and used against following generations as a weapon which marked us as stupid or criminal.”
(Including the link again because the whole piece is so worth reading.)
It’s learning how much of a privilege it is for me, as non-Māori, to be able to learn it and how mindful I have to be to tread carefully, lightly, respectfully in a space with so much mamae (pain). It’s learning how to learn appropriately.
Kei te mihi nui ki a ratou — I pay my great respects to them all: to everyone who has laid this path, created this space, and welcomed me into it. Thank you.
Now, the mihi:
E aku nui, e aku rahi, tēnei te mihi maioha ki a koutou (To the many people here of great esteem, my warm respects)
E Minita Nash, tēnā koe (To Minister Nash, greetings)
Ki te whānau whānui o KEA me tēnei kaupapa whakanui i ngā mahi ā ngā tāngata o te motu nei, me ngā tini haumi o Aotearoa, tēnā koutou (To KEA and your mission of amplifying the work of the people of Aotearoa and her many allies, greetings)
He mihi ki hau kainga o tēnei rohe, ara ko Ngāti Whātua Ōrakei (My respects to the sovereign tribe of this area, Ngāti Whātua Ōrakei)
He mihi ki a Kīngi Tūheitia, me tōna whānau (My respects to King Tūheitia [the Māori king] and his family)
He mihi ki hau kainga o taku kāinga noho ki Ōtautahi, arā ko te hapū o Ngāi Tūāhuriri. Nā rātou ahau i tiaki i ngā tau, me te ātaahua o te manaaki mai i a au me aku kaupapa maha (My respects to Ngāi Tūāhuriri, the sovereign tribe of Ōtautahi, where I live. They have cared for me, and have supported and nurtured my work)
E te māreikura, e Hana. Tēnā koe mō tō manaakitanga me tō whanaungatanga ki a ahau. He mihi whakawhetai tēnei ki a koe (To the esteemed Hana. Thank you for your hospitality and your friendship. Much respect and gratitude to you
Ki tōku taupuhi, e Gareth, nā rātou ko āku tama whakaangi tō tātau whānau i whakakotahi. Nōku te whiwhi. Tēnā rawa atu ki a rātou (To my darling Gareth. With my stepsons, you have made us a family. I am so lucky. Thank you all).
Nō Horana me Porana ōku tūpuna. I tipu ake ahau ki Niu Loka City, engari he hononga hoki ahau ki Aketina (My ancestors are from Holland and Poland. I grew up in New York City, but I also have connections to Argentina)
Ko Aotearoa te kāinga ināianei. Kei Aotearoa te whānau ināianei. Kei Aotearoa taku ngākau ināianei (Aotearoa [NZ] is home now. My family is in Aotearoa now. My heart is in Aotearoa now)
Ko Kaila Colbin tōku ingoa. Na reira, mauri tū, mauri ora, tēnā koutou katoa (My name is Kaila Colbin. Greetings to you all)
I care so deeply for this country I now call home, and feel so lucky to live here. Thank you to everyone who turned out in support, to Michael O'Dea for bringing me here in the first place, to Ian Taylor for nominating me, and especially to my partner Gareth for making our family a family and our house a home. Nā reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa.
