Please don't ask me to prove that I'm Māori enough

My whānau has never questioned being Māori – so why do I have to prove my Māori "blood" to Pākehā – and sometimes even feel the need to prove myself to Māori too? By Lauren Keenan.

The first time someone asked me how "how much Māori blood have you got?" I was eleven. The question made no sense. What was Māori blood? I’d seen my own blood before, and it was always some shade of red, regardless of what cut, scrape or nostril it seeped from.

That year 1990 had just passed – 150 years since te Tiriti. There was a special red and white logo to mark the occasion, and an ad on TV featuring two boys – one Māori, one Pākehā – running down the beach. Race relations issues also sat front and centre at my school in the rural Manawatū, triggered by the school erecting a Māori carving at the entrance. The carving had kōtuku at its base, deliberately carved to mirror the symbol used for the 1990 commemorations. But most of the kids refused to walk under the carving.

Their rationale for doing so was mixed: they couldn’t decide if it gave you "Māori cooties" or "Māori legends all through you". The school eventually planted bushes to stop people circumventing the carving, but it didn’t help. For most of my classmates, cuts on one’s legs were better than visibly supporting anything related to Māoritanga. It was a girl in my class who’d asked the question – let’s call her Becky. The conversation came after Becky’s dad and my mum had a loud argument on parents’ evening. Her dad claimed the reason Becky couldn’t spell "February" was because of the "Māori stuff" taught at school. Mum’s retort was that her daughter could both spell February and knew basic te reo, so perhaps it was Becky who required extra help? For me, the only thing Becky needed help with was being less of a weirdo. That blood question was case in point. Of course I didn’t know how much Māori blood I had. So, in the end, I simply walked away – under the carving, because I knew she wouldn’t follow.

But alas. This was far from the last time I’d be asked by non-Māori to give some sort of numerical percentage to my whakapapa. My first ever boyfriend said: "but you can get away with not being Māori. So why say you are?" Or, a former flatmate: "I bet you’re not even five percent, are you just angling for scholarships?" The question can be accompanied by incredulity (why would you care so much about being Māori when you don’t have to be?) or surprise (but you don’t meet my assumptions about what it means to be Māori!).

And, sometimes, outright racism. "You’re not a real Māori," someone at university said. "Your family is way too educated." These are the kinds of comments that blindside you so thoroughly you don’t think about the perfect comeback until long after the conversation is done, if ever. Not to mention the confusion, because I’m just not that good at maths, so have know idea how "Māori?" I am. If I cut eight pies in half, one in quarters and another into eighths – or is that actually quarters because I don’t have whakapapa information for that branch of my family tree – how many pieces do I have in the final pie that is a mongrel mash-up of all the other pies? No idea.

While questions about "blood" have only come from non-Māori in my experience, there are also certain Māori who have strong views about what it means to be the real deal. Some of this, I understand. For all the racism I’ve experienced, I’ve never been racially profiled in the way far too many of our people are. I drove a Mazda Demio, one of the country’s most nicked vehicles, for years without arousing suspicion from our sometimes racially biased police.

But there are other attributes that can be used to determine what it means to be Māori. I am from a whānau that has never questioned being Māori. But each whānau manifests this in different ways. When I was a kid, the focus was on our history, our whakapapa, our wāhi tapu, and the raupatu (confiscation) that Te Ātiawa suffered. But not all Māori share the same cultural shorthand. I did not grow up speaking te reo. I can’t go back in time and attend Kohanga or convince my parents to give me a Māori name. Nor can I play the guitar well enough to support a waiata tautoko – my attempts to learn peaked at How Much is that Doggy in the Window? I struggle with mōteatea, the word ai (which has no English translation), and the different ways to pronounce "t". And, unfortunately, there have been times I have been made to feel less-than by Māori who haven’t looked past those things when making a judgement about who I am and what I can contribute.

The end result can be not feeling like a "real" Māori, but not a "real" Pākehā either. That space between cultures is a strange and uncomfortable place, where you watch the two boys running on the beach in the ad, and not identify with either. At first, this comes from other people – the Beckys of the world, as well as those who've been willing to dismiss my whakapapa after watching me struggle through the actions of a waiata everyone else seems to know. But it’s what comes next that is even harder: the shame. Shame at having to stand in the back row and follow another person’s hand actions, shame at referring to cue-cards to kōrero. Shame at not really fitting into any proverbial boxes, because none are filled with people like you.

I saw a great meme recently by @jade_maipi responding to the claim that all Māori are "watered down". "It doesn’t matter how much milk you put in your coffee," read the reply. "It’s still coffee." Indeed, you have whakapapa, or you don’t have whakapapa. Besides, whakapapa is not an either/or – you can be of more than one place. And an individual’s identity is deeply personal. It’s rude to probe about someone’s finances or how often they change their bedsheets. So why is it okay to appoint yourself supreme chief of the Whakapapa police and make judgment calls about things that might sit at the heart of their identity?

Māori are now 17.8 percent of the population. In 1896, the Māori population was at its low point of 42,000. I was looking at some whakapapa records from around that time, and counted 14 Keenans from my whānau who died of disease in a single year, such was the level of devastation. Now there are almost a million of us Māori. And, within that number sits an immense amount of diversity. Many of those will know mōteatea, how to pronounce the different ‘t’ sounds, and how to use ai – which is awesome. But some of us are still on a journey, and have other things to contribute.

Over time, I’ve learned the only way to coexist with that awkward space between is to remember who your tūpuna were, and to stand tall in that knowledge. It’s important to walk through that carving without shame, and ignore those who insist on scurrying around the edges – even when it means cutting their legs on the bushes. Identity is rarely simple – for anyone. Let’s not make it harder by asking questions that require a level of mathematical ability and genealogical knowledge that few of us posses – and are silly in the first place.

I might be more flat-white than espresso, but I’m still a tasty caffeinated beverage, made from the same beans. Whatever that might mean for my blood.

Lauren Keenan's novel The Space Between (Penguin Random House, RRP $37) is out now.