“My sister used to get embarrassed by me speaking to her in Māori in supermarkets,” she says. “In the supermarket, everyone stares at you and that’s what she doesn’t like. I told her, ‘Do you know what one of my good friends who is from Nicaragua said when she first moved to New Zealand?’ The first time she went to New World and the self-checkout machine said ‘Kia ora’ to her, she cried. That is not a reality she can ever imagine in her own country.
“The only way our language will survive is by normalising it in everyday life. If you won’t let me speak to you in Māori in the supermarket, you are never going to normalise it, and when your kids want to learn Māori, they are going to have to learn from me because you can’t and I don’t have time for that.” - Talia Ellison
Ōtākou | Otago | Dunedin City | 2010-19 | Story is by tangata whenua
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