The Last Word

By Te Ngaru Wehi | Posted: Wednesday September 13, 2017

Tīhei Mauri Ora
Torona kei waho!
hoki mai!
kōwai te kura e tū ake nei!
ko Ōtākou te kura e tū ake nei hi!

(silent haka)

Kia ora!

Now you’re probably wondering, what the heck is this fella up to?

We’ll for you that didn’t notice that was a part of our school haka, without words of course!

You see without words our haka becomes less meaningful, our haka becomes less rousing.

Now some of you in this very room are gonna be Tall Blacks, Black Sticks, All Blacks no doubt. But without Te reo Māori there will be no Tall Blacks haka, there will be no school haka, there will be no All Blacks haka which is performed.

You see without Te Reo Māori there will be no New Zealand haka and no kiwi culture.

Now, you’re probably thinking allgood, we’ll leave it to the Māori’s to revitalise our reo, they’ll keep our language alive!

We’ll I am very sorry to inform you that only one in ten Māori speak Te Reo Māori fluently, and only one in every 100 kiwis speak Te Reo Māori.

This brings me great sorrow, because most of us don’t even care about what happens tomorrow, or what happens to our reo in the next 100 years time.

So Te wiki o te Reo Māori, Māori language week, is it for you? I say yes!

It is us that needs to make a stand, uniting together like a tightly woven strand, fighting for our reo hand by hand, do you or do you not understand? Te Reo Māori is on the brink of extinction, along with our culture!

So even if you start your day off with a bit of a “Kia ora”, with a bit of a “Mōrena”, with a bit of a wairua, it can make a difference to our country, to our haka, to our people and most of all to our beautiful reo. But anyway whānau, before the last applause I challenge you to fight for this cause Te wiki o te reo Māori, Māori language week, the floor is now yours. 

Kia ora!