Interviewing each other on Māori and Pasifika people who have made a significant contribution to Aotearoa New Zealand

Kia ora Ngā Here Kahikatea ākonga

I hope you have all been getting lots of rest, cooking delicious meals and making progress with your online learning.  Since we last met in person, we've been continuing our research into a Māori or Pasifika person who has made a significant contribution to the life of Aotearoa New Zealand.  I've encouraged you to read and watch widely to get ideas for who you would like to focus on.  We started out with the idea that we would present our learning as a speech.  Now that we are in lockdown, I've shifted that to creating a podcast - I will share more about that tomorrow.

I have emailed each of you with the meet code for tomorrow.  We will share what we have been learning from our research, and learn how to be an interested and effective interviewer to draw out the stories of the person we are interviewing.

I have been reading and thinking about Hone Tuwhare (Ngā Puhi), one of Aotearoa's best poets.  He writes about the rain in ways that feel especially relevant living on the West Coast:

His artist friend Ralph Hotere (Te Aupōuri) liked the poem so much that he made a painting using the poem.

I've been inspired to think more about Hone Tuwhare's legacy by the release of a film by his great granddaughter:

I think this film is beautiful, in so many ways. To see the return of Te Reo Māori in the beautiful korero of Hone Tuwhare's great granddaughter Manaia Tuwhare-Hoani, as she observes how Hone learned to read English by reading the Bible, and she learned English by reading Hone's poetry. Her poetry and Hone's make a beautiful dialogue across time. But also, I think it speaks to everyone who identifies strongly with a family member they never knew - the longing, and the piecing together the fragments, and the clues and rewalking the places they walked.

I then started researching Manaia, and found that she attended the te reo Māori immersion programme, Ngā Puna o Waiōrea, at Western Springs, and was in a hugely successful spoken word group, Ngā Hinepūkōrero, that has won awards in Aotearoa and internationally.  Their spoken word performance about the way that Te Reo Māori was stolen from their grandparents is stunning:

Who would you like to teach me about today?