Young speakers spoke about overcoming adversity at this year’s national Ngā Manu Kōrero secondary schools’ speech competition – marking its 60th anniversary, and winners include a defending champion and an award-winning singer.
Students from around the country gathered at Jubilee Stadium in Whanganui to hear what their peers had to say on topics around tikanga, identity, aspiration and ambition.
Pou Ariki Hemara-Daniels defended his national speech title at this year’s Ngā Manu Kōrero competition. The Sir Turi Carroll junior English speaker from Kaitaia’s Te Kura Kaupapa Māori o Te Rangi Āniwaniwa used “savage” humour and an energetic performance to deliver a memorable speech to describe his ‘Hawaiki’, loosely translated to mean his aspirational place or state of being.
When describing the general state of living in the Far North, it was by using “grim” labels about the impoverished region to illustrate the less-than-ideal reality of life.
“We are the closest to Hawaiki, yet the furthest away from Hawaiki hou,” he said, referring to the ancient homeland of Māori and comparing it to a brighter future of a ‘new Hawaiki’ – a catch-cry made popular by the Toitū Te Tiriti movement.
It was the only dark cloud in a speech full of hope and aspiration which made it all the more powerful in its delivery.
Last year, Pou Ariki's winning speech was on the subject 'We need more regulators', paying homage to the role models in his life and referencing a classic hip hop song, Regulate by Warren G.
Atareta Milne from Te Kura o Te Koutu in Rotorua delivered an impassioned speech about the value of growing up with te reo Māori as her first language in a fully immersed environment at home.
As the oldest mokopuna, she recalled being the “kini piiki” (guinea pig) for her parents’ language revitalisation strategies and initiatives within their whānau.
Her speech was a personal account of the challenges her parents faced, including the backlash from a New Zealand Herald article they featured in as part of Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori in 2013. The article detailed her parents' decision to raise Atareta – then a toddler – exclusively in te reo.
“Ko ngā tā kupu ā ētahi he kaikiri, he whakaweti, he whakahawea i a mātou,” she said.
(Some of the feedback included were racist, threatening and discriminatory against us.)
She said critics told her parents that she would never achieve or get a job. The worst described what they were doing as child abuse.
Twelve years on, Atareta can add the title of Te Rāwhiti Ihaka junior Māori speaker to her list of achievements, which already includes being an award-winning singer alongside her cousin Te Haakura Ihimaera-Manley of Te Nūtube fame.
Scott Picard from Wellington’s Onslow College delivered a powerful spoken-word-esque speech on growing up Māori – “never taught to be me, only taught to be them” – that saw him take out the Korimako senior English category.
He shaped his speech around the analogy of learning and being tested at school, skilfully comparing it to the challenges he faced in trying to learn and maintain his Māori identity in the face of oppressive external forces.
“They tell us to get over it but tell me what part should I get over first?” he asked at one point before reciting a long list of grievances made against Māori.
He rattled off sobering statistics of Māori suicide where the rate is 30 per 100,000 – three times higher than non-Māori, he said.
“Three times the grief, three times the pain, three times more lives stolen, not lost.
“And still they ask, ‘What is wrong with them?’, when the real question is ‘What is happening to us?’”
It was a confronting speech, but that was the point, he said. He wasn’t here to “play the victim card” or the next “stat”, he said, he was here to be “the next start of something better”.
Te Kahurangi Teinakore-Huaki of Te Wharekura o Kirikiriroa tackled an ongoing debate within te ao Māori about gender roles. Using poi as a way to drive her point home, she delved into tikanga around poi, whaikōrero, karanga, and karakia.
She explained complex concepts and outlined her arguments in a way that was reminiscent of a university 300-level tikanga paper.
For example, she spoke of the origin of karanga that stem from the traditional narrative of female deities Hine-ahu-one, Hine-tītama, and Hine-nui-te-po – generally characterised as the first woman created by Tāne, the first woman born of a womb, and the deity of death, respectively.
She said according to her female elders, karanga was only done by women because of their inherent connection to the three deities, as well as to Papatūānuku (Mother Earth).
“Ngā wahanga katoa me kapi te karanga,” she explained, “te whenua, te kaupapa, te mate, me te ora.”
(A karanga must encapsulate all these aspects: the land, the purpose of the occasion, death, and life.)
Her argument was that if men were allowed to fulfil women's roles, then the same applied for women to fulfil men's roles.
As all things must be balanced and equal, she said in Māori, stay in your lane or allow me to do the same.
Considering whaikōrero was traditionally a male responsibility, her win in the Pei Te Hurinui senior Māori section was especially poignant.
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