High School and Māori Identity
Let's start with Māori identity and high school. I struggled for many years with my Māori identity growing up, until my late 20s. I had a love/hate relationship with who I was and this, in turn, impacted my self-worth and self-esteem. In high school, I wanted to fit in so bad and I thought I had to leave my culture behind to fit in. I associated being Māori with the 'naughty kids', and I was told this by Pākehā kids too.
At that time, my mother was doing a lot of advocacy mahi with Māori communities and organisations. As much as I saw the positive work my mother did, I also saw the other side of working with Māori. I saw poverty, poor education, teen pregnancy, overcrowded homes, and domestic violence. These had more lasting impressions on me than on the positives, and I didn't want to be connected to these issues. I didn't want to be bullied. So, at high school, I started to disengage with all things Māori.
When I think back to enrolling at high school I remember the admin lady asking me, "Would you like to choose Māori as a course subject?" To which I replied, "No, Geography, please". I wanted to be like the Pākehā. I associated being Pākehā with success and achievement. I didn't realise it at the time, but I knew this affected my mother deeply. She spent most of my childhood trying to show me everything good about being Māori. In her early 30s, she had gone through her own decolonising journey, learning te reo Māori at Open Polytechnic and immersing herself in rangahau Kaupapa Māori. In the 90s, my mother enrolled my older brother and me into one of the first schools to deliver bilingual education. So, I guess to see her only daughter actively disengage with all things Māori at high school would have hurt.
Even though I chose the Pākehā way, I still became stereotyped and got into trouble for stuff I knew was because I was Māori. The two most significant times I got into trouble was in my social studies class. The teacher told the class Captain Cook discovered New Zealand. I replied, "No, he didn't? Māori did." I went home with a letter for students who cause concern in the classroom. The second time was in my Geography class. I was one of two Māori students in my class and this day, in particular, I felt like I had added value to the class discussion. I felt confident in the subjects we were learning. After class the teacher asked me to stay back; I thought he would commend me on my class engagement. When everyone left, he questioned me on the tagging left on the desk in his classroom. I told the teacher, "I would never do something like this?" I swore to him; it was not me. He let me go and told me not to tell anyone we had this 'little talk.' Even though I tried my best to assimilate and conform to what I thought would not get me bullied, I was still a target of discrimination based on my cultural identity.
Provost (2016) states that ‘the disparity between Māori and non-Māori is too great, and too many Māori students are still leaving our school system with few qualifications.’ Furthermore, the Ministry of Education released a report stating that an 'investigation has established that teacher bias and low expectations are still a concern across the teaching workforce for Māori learners.’ As an adult. I now realise the disengagement from my taha Māori I experienced wasn’t the fault of my mother's mahi, but the direct impact of a system designed to fail Māori learners. The discrimination, suppression of my voice while in school, and being marginalised by Pākehā teachers reflects an education system that did not support me as a learner.
The love/hate relationship I had with my identity throughout my early schooling years; my struggles with self-worth and self-esteem have deep-seated connections to the impacts of colonisation. Now, in my 30s, I continue my decolonising journey in reclaiming love for my Māori identity.
