(audience chattering)
(Māori chanting)
Shona was always the language that I was speaking
when we were living back in Zimbabwe.
I definitely see parallels
which draw between my own experiences
and in the experiences of Māori.
(Māori chanting)
And we are so, so, so incredibly excited to welcome
to the stage my friends, give it up, Ngā Hinepūkōrero!
(audience applauding)
Every time I speak, I hope to heal the wounds
that they suffered through, our tūpuna.
It's our time to speak
and we can hear how beautiful our language is here.
(audience chattering)
(smooth up-beat music)
(people chatting)
(laughing)
They viewed our language as the head of a snake.
Deemed useless because it wasn't written on paper.
It wasn't long until we were forced to speak.
In silence.
Ngā Hinepūkōrero basically means
the women who do spoken word.
(chatting)
Language to me, it's part of my identity.
So growing up as a Māori, who obviously has fair skin,
one of the ways that I would show people that I am Māori
is that I would loudly start speaking in te reo Māori.
Like I would walk into a room and I'd be like
"Ah mama, he aha tērā ki reira?" [Hey Mum, what's that?]
(laughing)
Hey Mark.
And I'd just be like, can I read your...?
(laughing)
My language is really important to me
because my dad didn't, like grew up without his language.
His dad didn't teach him.
I'm so grateful that dad put me through kura [school],
so I could learn my language,
and almost speak for him, you know?
(chatting)
(cheering)
(clapping)
You're a flying baller.
I feel so privileged that I can speak it nowadays.
People tell me they were whipped or beaten for speaking it,
and just like saying a single word.
We're holding on by a thread just to learn a language
that should have just been simply
and like easily be put into our lives.
It's just, it kind of makes me mad,
because I feel that so many of us Māori
do tend to have like identity crises
because they don't know te reo.
(laughing)
At the age of seven,
my family immigrates from Zimbabwe to Aotearoa.
I passed through customs,
but my culture is made to stay behind.
That's Takunda getting told off.
Look at you Takunda.
I was cute.
My name is Takunda Muzondiwa.
I'm 18 years old and I live in Mount Albert in Auckland.
My mother tongue is Shona and that's what we speak at home.
And then I have younger brother, Ben.
He doesn't speak the language,
but pretty soon he's going to Zimbabwe
for like three months, I think,
'cause we really want him to pick up the language,
and that to be a part of him as well,
'cause we think that language is so important.
That's rank. What are you doing?
(laughing)
You were eating dirt.
But it is like often really scary.
I think about what I would even,
how I would even identify myself
as an African if I was to lose the language,
because it's just such a powerful way
to immerse yourself in the culture.
(chattering)
(calm music)
Hey
(chattering)
Good, how are you? Good, how are you?
So today we're at the Grand Slam
for the Frontline Poetry Slam, and it's the finals.
Sit with us
(laughing)
So, what's the haps, how are you guys doing?
(calm music)
For me, it's just like a reminder
of how much our language has gone through.
From my own experience, like how I can synonymize to that,
is like my parents had their same experience.
Like in Zimbabwe you weren't allowed to speak Shona,
which is the native language, inside the classroom,
like English was the dominant language,
'cause in the Western world I guess that's what dominates,
that's what gets you success,
what can like get you to achieve
what you want to achieve in life.
I think that it's also like really important,
something that I'm starting to realise as I grow up,
is like how closely linked language and identity are,
and like about how important it is, for me
to have my language like in my household.
(screaming)
So you all speak your language at home?
Yeah.
How awesome, that's really cool.
What was it called again?
Shona. Shona.
Yeah.
(laughing)
I think it's like an interesting contrast
because in my family none of us,
well neither of my parents, speak te reo.
That's like me, I'm the only one
who speaks Māori in my family.
So, I have loads of conversations with myself, I guess.
Same, I literally start talking to myself
in the shower and stuff!
And my dad walks in and he's like
"Are you okay, who are you talking to?"
I'm like "Oh, myself."
(laughing)
You forget how to talk you know,
like you've got to keep it alive somehow.
Gotta do what you gotta do. Yeah.
Nowadays being fluent in te reo Māori is a privilege.
I've been told how lucky I am
to have it as my first language.
To speak patterns into the air.
Over time it's lost its ability to fly.
Language separated from tongue like root from tree.
Te harakeke
No, flax.
When I think about my ancestors
and the struggle they went through
with, yeah with colonisation
I feel so much love for them,
and I feel so grateful to them
for holding so tight to their culture,
and not letting it be lost.
For if I stay silent my tūpuna.
[Ngā Hinepūkōrero] No, ancestors.
Will find a way to pry my jaws open.
[Ngā Hinepūkōrero] No.
They'll weave baskets to catch our tears.
Being able to cross te reo Māori with English in our poems,
I feel like it's just an achievement,
the fact that we weren't allowed
to speak this language,
we were only allowed to speak one.
But to mix it both together
and to bring both of the worlds together,
you know, it's just walking, having a foot in both worlds.
Yesterday I was African, today I am lost.
Maybe I was blinded by the neon sign of opportunity,
failed to read the fine print which read assimilate,
or go back to where you came from.
I have been lead astray.
I am just writing some poetry,
kind of just do some free writing sometimes.
And I like set a timer
and just make myself like write whatever's on my mind.
I think that poetry like really allows a space for healing
and it's kind of a weird contradiction that I find it easier
to like express myself and just articulate myself
in metaphors rather than speaking in the like literal form.
To be a child of the diaspora is to battle two tongues.
Be forced to trade one for the other,
so much so that my articulation of the English language
now tastes like the unbirthing of my country.
(paper rustling)
I think that especially for young people it can be difficult
to like go up to your parents maybe and be like
"Hi, I'm having an identity crisis."
But like, so I think that poetry is a way of expressing,
for me anyways, I mean like a really good way of expressing
to the older people in my life,
particularly my parents the ways that I feel.
(speaking in Shona)
It's an emptying feeling to become foreign
to a country that was yours to begin with.
I'm beginning to forget the taste of my own language
and home has become just a memory.
The way that spoken word is different
from traditional poetry, where it's like written, right,
and te reo Māori isn't a written language.
Just like being able to be so outspoken
and out loud about our culture and our language.
Like in my culture as well,
it's just a natural thing that our people are like orators
and it's all about storytelling,
and kind of sharing experiences.
So, for me, whenever I speak Shona in my poetry,
I don't know, there's something that just I really enjoy
about it's kind of like telling untold histories, you know?
People want to wash away our histories so it's kind of like,
I don't know, in my own mind,
I take it as like an act of rebellion
or like self-empowerment in that saying
"I'm reclaiming my histories,
"I'm going to tell the story how it was."
(chattering)
Give it up, right, Ngā Hinepūkōrero!
(audience applauding)
I hate forgetting, had to teach myself the prayers.
No, karakia.
My parents didn't know, had to over-pronounce my words
so the condensed history within each syllable was heard.
We learned not to forget,
but to hide in our whispers.
(wind blowing)
One thing that they worry about
when they hear different languages
is the fact that they don't know what we're saying.
Like they, instead of trying to understand,
they try to blank it out, try to tune it out.
I think that's when that saying comes in,
knowledge is power, and to not know what we're saying
makes us have that power, which they don't like.
So tell us to be quiet and know that we won't.
This is our language.
We are reclaiming it.
We will speak it, because our bodies
weren't built for silence.
We will speak it.
Until every eardrum is bruised we will speak it.
In that sense I think that New Zealand
still has a lot of like progress to make in how we like
can fix all the internalised stuff that's still going on
amongst lots of minority groups.
My dream world for te reo is that I hear it normally
and be like "Ah yeah, that's the language of Aotearoa."
That's expected, you know, which is how it should be.
Māku tēnei reo e kawe
Mā tōku arero ngā kupu ā ōku tūpuna e whakatinana
Kia maumahara ai tō rātou mataora
Kia kore rātou e koroheketia
Ko wai koe ki te whākako i te poutāwhā ō ō mātou nei tupuna?
Patu ā kiri, rere ā toto
Anei rā ō mokopuna e tahuna i te ahi
Hei te pō, hei te ao
Anei rā ngā whenua i mōrehurehu i ōku tupuna
Ki ngā kino ō te Pākehā
Tēnei tōku reo e haruru ana i te whenua
(audience cheering)