Matariki Cribb-Fox (Ngāti Pikiao, Ngāti Rangiwewehi, Ngāti Apa)
Shakayla Alapaki-Andrews (Waikato-Tainui, Ngāti Mahuta, Pare Hauraki, Ngāti Paoa, Kāi Tahu, Kāti Māmoe, Waitaha, Niue)
When people think about Te Reo Māori, they often imagine one neat, uniform language – a singular “correct” way to speak. Coloniser debris clinging to the only Indigenous language of this country… Surprising? Hardly. That mindset is as on-brand as Luxon swerving a hongi (greeting) with the Australian Prime Minister – paru AF. Truth is, te reo Māori lives and breathes through mita (dialects), each carrying its own rhythm, seasoning, and whakapapa (genealogy). Think about Spanish being spoken across South America, or English between Britain, North America, and this side of the equator – same language, distinct flavour. English-speaking Americans lose it when they hear a Kiwi accent, and te reo Māori is exactly that: one tongue, many voices, and endless flavour.
M.I.T.A = My Iwi, Their Attitude
For me, that flavour meant swapping Rotorua geysers for the Kawakawa bakery – every word I learn is a bite of my partner’s home, a taste of his whakapapa. Mita isn’t just sound – it’s genealogy and style. But growing up, I had no clue it even existed. I was stuck in a mainstream (gross) English-speaking bubble, with language trauma buried somewhere between Jump Jam warm-ups and that cursed Bad Hair Day song. My only exposure to te reo Māori was tagging along to watch my siblings at practices for Te Kapa Haka o Ngāti Whakāue – I’d like to add that after they won Te Matatini, suddenly everyone was ‘from Whakāue.’ Moving on.
Back in Vegas, Te Arawa (Rotorua), te reo Māori felt sharp, polished, and like it walked straight out of a grammar textbook. But no one ever called it “te mita o Te Arawa”. I didn’t even know mita was a thing. As it turns out, every rohe (region) comes with its own flavour. For example, Wanganui drop the “h” like it's hot, Ngāi Tahu are famously known for replacing “ng” with “k”, and my partner’s tribe within Te Tai Tokerau (Northland), Ngāti Hine, are all about transliterations, like pēnowhā (bend over). No wonder they’re branded the ‘naughty north.’ Stack on the humour, the idioms, the side eyes while you speak – and suddenly, mita isn’t just about how you sound; it’s the personality of your people. Which makes things awkward, considering Te Arawa and Ngāpuhi once clashed in battle. My koro even made me promise I’d never marry a Ngāpuhi… oops. Still, learning my partner’s mita is how I choose to lay down the musket – tasting his words is how I savour connection over conflict. And the more I listen, the clearer it gets – mita is the connective tissue that links our stories, our whakapapa, and our people.
Drop the H, Keep the Heat
As it happens, it’s not just me figuring this out. Matariki Cribb-Fox told me straight: mita isn’t just about dropping or swapping sounds. Born and raised in Wanganui, and now working as Research Project Manager at Te Atawhai o Te Ao, her iwi stretches the entire awa (river) – all 290 kilometres of it. Their signature? The missing “h.” But here’s the kicker: even that’s not simple. There are at least five variations of this, from softening it so it’s barely there to cutting it completely. In other words, mita isn’t a gimmick; it’s layered, nuanced, and tied to the whenua (land) just as much as the tongue. Matariki is quick to push back on the surface-level take. “A common misconception about my dialect – and dialects in general – is that they are limited to the omission or alteration of consonant sounds,” she said. She explained that her own mita includes a region-specific lexicon: the tone, the timbre and intonation, as well as colloquialisms and phrases specific to her iwi. “Our natural environment informs the way we speak – my reo Māori is akin to my river: sometimes slow and steady, sometimes swift, and always shifting up and down as if my very voice were the tides of Wanganui.” That’s where mita stops being just mere speech and becomes a landscape. In Wanganui, it’s not just about dropping the “h”, but also carrying the “f” sound, weaving the current of the awa straight into their voice. What sounds like a quirk to outsiders is, in reality, a whole identity. And that’s a truth felt far beyond Wanganui.
For Shakayla Alapaki-Andrews, mita is but one step towards reclaiming whakapapa. Known to many as a Tahu News reporter, she’s a familiar face bringing Te Reo o Kāi Tahu – subtle, bold, and a little bit spicy – to our screens. But off-screen, her journey has been tied up in disconnection and the ridicule that comes with being “different”. Reactions to her mita, Shakayla says, are always split down the middle: half the room loves it, the other half cringes – “Kāi Tahu mita is yuck.” For descendants of the South like Shak, those kinds of comments cut deep. “Wouldn’t it be offensive if I walked into other rohe and said their mita was sour to my ears?” she asks.
Swap It Like It’s Hot
Like Wanganui, there are natural variations of the mita within Kāi Tahu: some hapū (subtribe) and rūnaka (tribal council) lean on the prominent “k” while others use the more generic “ng”. But those differences are theirs to carry and debate, not for others to ridicule. Shak also pushes back on the tired stereotype that Kāi Tahu are somehow “less cultured”. During her time at the University of Otago, she remembers the running line: you weren’t legit unless you were a “Kotahi Mano Kāika kid”. Her response? Wrong. “There are heaps of whānau who didn’t go through Kotahi Mano Kāika but are still thriving [and] upholding practices within their own rohe,” she says. Matariki adds, “I find that people like myself who were raised in their own dialects have no issues sticking to our mita, no matter who we speak to.” That confidence throws Aotearoa’s double standards into sharp relief. We can cut down our own reo Māori, call Kāi Tahu mita “yuck” or a “K for Kaka,” but the second we’re offshore, we suddenly turn into connoisseurs of Polynesian dialects.
That hypocrisy hit home when I travelled with Te Kapa Haka o Waerenga Te Kaha to attend the Heiva i Raromata’i Festival in Rai’ātea, Tahiti – one of the birthplaces of our ancestors, and a place where French still overshadows their native Te Reo Māohi. Yet there, under the golden hour of the Tahitian sun, nobody wrinkled their nose at how it sounded. Dialects weren’t judged, they were celebrated, woven together like verses of the same waiata. Even the Chief of War has Māori lapping it up, saying it’s fine that heaps of Māori are stepping in as Kānaka Maoli, because “tāua tāua.” The similarities in language are certainly striking – but not nearly enough that we can “tāua tāua” them and “kaua kaua” our own for the slightest variations, then scarf back buckets of Tītī, flaunt their pounamu, and gallivant off to Queenstown. But unlike the tourist version of “Polynesian pride” we plaster on Instagram, Shak doesn’t get to pick up her mita at duty-free and drop it when it’s inconvenient. She wears it everywhere – newsroom, uni, wharekai – which means every “yuck” aimed at Kāi Tahu reo lands squarely on whakapapa.
Difference vs Deficit
While Shak is hopping up and down the motu (country), making moves and turning heads, it wasn’t always a given that she would end up working in a bilingual environment, carrying Kāi Tahu mita into every broadcast. That path was shaped by history: her whānau were once disconnected from their kāika (home) and language. Colonisation forced some to move north, while those who stayed often lost fluency and connection to their Kāi Tahutanga. For Shak, who realised she didn’t sound like her cousins that spoke in the mita of Kāi Tahu, she made a personal vow to not only learn but uphold its subtleties: little things, like saying “kai” instead of “kei”, “hai” instead of “hei” – all those nuances that make her dialect noticeable.
For Kāi Tahu, every vowel shift and dialect choice is whakapapa repair – a way to bring their reo home. Dismissing it as “less cultured” or “not legit” isn’t just rude, it’s a slap in the face to generations who fought to keep their reo alive, and continue to do so. That’s why northern assumptions sting so much, particularly when outsiders dismiss Kāi Tahu reo as “lesser”. “You don’t know where we’ve come from, [or] how far we’ve gotten as an iwi to get to this point for you to make a comment like that.” The message is simple: don’t confuse difference with deficit.
Because the truth is, this isn’t only about Kāi Tahu – it’s the same setup all over the motu. Let’s zoom out. The beef we inherited about rival iwi (enter Ngāpuhi side of stage) is absolute BS, and was never ours to begin with. It’s the same tired colonial playbook that worked elsewhere: look at the Mongols, North American Indigenous nations, Pacific peoples – different lands, same scam. But indigenous peoples aren't the problem. The system is. Here’s the gag: the mita I once saw as “the enemy’s” turned out to be a bridge. Twisting my tongue around someone else’s vowels felt like sampling history itself. The North-South beefs, musket wars, land grabs – all the bitter notes still linger, but the sweet ones, like Nanny Em’s motown beef, overpower them. They have to, because te reo Māori carries more than war. It’s also the sound of karakia at dawn, cousins cracking up, and knowledge that predates any colonial musket. Our tūpuna already fought, so why the fuck are we still swinging?
Mita vs Monolith
Here’s where mita flips the script. For Ngāi Māori, speaking the reo of old rivals isn’t just pretty – it’s resistance. It says: division dies here. Dialects aren’t fences; they’re stitches pulling iwi back together, thread by thread. That’s reconciliation at its rawest: carried on the tongue, in the breath, in the sound. It’s not just about words, but about relationships, stories, and the whenua that shaped them.
“One Māori language” is too small a box. Te reo Māori isn’t a monolith, and it sure as hell isn’t some factory-standard hoodie. Skip the polished textbook kupu – go after the slang, the throwaways, the swear words that make mita pulse. The jokes, the nicknames, and the cheeky digs across the wharekai – that’s where the heartbeat is. Whether you drop the h from whānau, swap “ngāti” for “kāti”, roll your vowels like Matariki’s awa, reclaim the subtleties of Kāi Tahu like Shak, or own life as a Vegas Brat turned Valley Gewl like me, do it with intent. Carrying those sounds means you’re not just speaking te reo Māori – you’re spitting history. One tongue, many voices, endless flavour.
As for me, I’ll keep learning my partner’s mita to bridge that division in our whakapapa. Kei pōhēhē koutou – it’s not about ditching my own flavour, but about adding a new one, side by side. When he speaks on the taumata (bench), you bet I'm right there, echoing his Valley's flow. Somebody tell him to put a ring on it, spoilt shit.