Mauri ora e te iwi!
Whoop whoop, here’s your other Māori rep, to talk more about Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori! I’ll keep this pretty paku because the week’s already over – but the celebration of te reo Māori will carry on forever.
AsI write this piece, we are already halfway through my favourite week of the year. Last week, my co-Prez Jarna talked about how embracing Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori might just help you figure yourself out, and following on from that we’re gonna chat about what it means to truly carry this week forward – “mō ake, ake, ake” – for everyone.
For one week, we saw te reo everywhere. On campus, in our socials, at events, in classrooms (and hopefully in our conversations). But what happened today? The posters came down, the events finished, and life carried on for the majority of us. Last week's theme vanished from our minds.
But te reo is a living language. The future of our reo isn’t determined by what happened last week, but what we continue to do from this week onwards. And this isn’t just on me and my Māori metes – it’s on all of us. Te reo Māori will struggle to thrive and survive if we aren’t all working together to make it normal.
So, with coming off last week and continuing on into the rest of Mahuru Māori, I hope you all enjoyed the celebrations and made an effort to get involved, have a kōrero, learn something new and make space for te reo in your lives. But don’t leave it all within last week (or even this month).
Keep the kupu you’ve picked up.
Keep using the reo you know.
Keep making space for others to learn.
And if you forget something, get it wrong, or realise you’ve been saying it wrong for the last six months, kei te pai! In the words of my tuakana, Riama Pekama – KARAWHIUA!
Kia kaha te reo Māori mō ake ake ake!
Nā,
Sami x
