For me it's knowing that when my Mum went to school her classmates were beaten in the classrooms and playground if they were heard speaking Te Reo Māori. Knowing that whole generations grew up silenced, and the children of those generations lived in the shadow of fear and a feeling of inferiority fills me with such terrible sadness and shame.
We are all in this canoe together, NZ 2020, we rise through adversity, we pull together, we celebrate each others strengths, we support and lift each other when we stumble or tire. It's time now to allow everyone to have a voice. I'm taking the first steps to learn and speak a language to open a doorway to understanding and appreciation. I'm grateful to have a choice to learn Te Reo Māori which is a treasured gift and not just language it's an art form, a celebration of life.
The discomfort I feel stumbling over my first words of Te Reo will never be as painful as the beatings those children received and the emotional scars they wore. Every journey starts with one word, then two......we can do this New Zealand. What's stopping us being 1 in 5 million?
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