{"id":7822,"date":"2023-09-13T17:09:14","date_gmt":"2023-09-13T05:09:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=7822"},"modified":"2023-09-13T17:09:14","modified_gmt":"2023-09-13T05:09:14","slug":"tearepa-kahi-i-want-to-normalise-te-reo-maori","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=7822","title":{"rendered":"Tearepa Kahi: ‘I want to normalise te reo M\u0101ori’"},"content":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Aroha Awarau<\/b><\/p>\n

The director of\u00a0Muru<\/i>, the highest-grossing New Zealand film of 2022, says it has helped normalise and showcase the unique te reo M\u0101ori dialect spoken by the people of T\u016bhoe.<\/p>\n

Four generations of reo T\u016bhoe speakers appear in\u00a0Muru<\/i>, which was inspired by the controversial police raids on the small community of R\u016b\u0101toki in 2007. Using new anti-terrorism powers, police responded to suspicions of a domestic terrorist camp operating in the Te Urewera forest.<\/p>\n

Writer and director Tearepa Kahi (Ng\u0101ti Paoa, Waikato-Tainui) says his goal with the film was to both tell the story of the raids and highlight the unique te reo M\u0101ori dialect spoken by the people of T\u016bhoe.<\/p>\n

“In\u00a0Muru<\/i>, we had four generations of reo T\u016bhoe speakers on screen, where kaumatua interact with their mokopuna and everyone in between.”<\/p>\n

Muru<\/i>\u00a0stars Cliff Curtis as a community police sergeant forced to choose between his badge or his people. It grossed more than $1.5 million at the domestic box office and was sold all around the world, including a lucrative deal with US streaming giant Tubi.<\/p>\n

\"Cliff<\/p>\n

Cliff Curtis plays Sergeant ‘Taffy’ T\u0101wharau in Muru.\u00a0<\/span>Photo:\u00a0Screenshot<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

As a result of the raids, 17 people were arrested and four later convicted on firearms changes. The police were forced to apologise after the Independent Police Conduct Authority found the searches in T\u016bhoe were unlawful, unjustified, and unreasonable.<\/p>\n

“I wanted the allegorical power of\u00a0Muru<\/i>\u00a0to be a conversation starter, allowing the central issue to return to the main stage, which is easily bypassed or forgotten.\u00a0Muru<\/i>\u00a0was a cultural and artistic attempt to protect our communities from ever facing that level of action or treatment again.”<\/p>\n

Kahi, his wife Reikura who produced\u00a0Muru<\/i>, and activist Tame Iti, who portrays himself in the film and was a target during the raids, made a commitment to each other to bring the T\u016bhoe dialect to the forefront. The T\u016bhoe dialect’s significant difference to other dialects is dropping the ‘g’ in the word ‘ng’ when writing and speaking M\u0101ori.<\/p>\n

“After our first screening of\u00a0Muru<\/i>\u00a0with T\u016bhoe kaumatua, the first responses were positive. They were telling us that for the first time watching a M\u0101ori film they actually understood every kupu spoken by every actor on screen,” Kahi says.<\/p>\n

\"Tuhoe<\/p>\n

Tuhoe activist Tame Iti and director Tearepa Kahi on set of feature film Muru.\u00a0<\/span>Photo:\u00a0Supplied<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

As more people are learning te reo M\u0101ori, some language experts fear that the language will become homogenised and the distinctive dialect from different iwi around Aotearoa could be lost.<\/p>\n

Kahi is keeping the conversation alive with his follow-up to\u00a0Muru<\/i>. He and Reikura collaborated with Iti and Ru\u0101toki-based artist and poet Ati Teepa to create a four-part companion documentary,\u00a0Into the Valley<\/i>. The series is currently streaming on\u00a0ThreeNow<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“Into The Valley<\/i>\u00a0was like re-shooting\u00a0Muru<\/i>, but without any actors,” Kahi says.<\/p>\n

He sat down with those impacted by the 2007 raids, including police officers, AOS officers and the children who bore witness to seeing their school bus boarded, their homes raided and their parents arrested.<\/p>\n

“Muru\u00a0<\/i>was a response to two raids against T\u016bhoe, a century apart.\u00a0Into The Valley\u00a0<\/i>is a factual and personal response to\u00a0Muru<\/i>, that centres around healing,” he says.<\/p>\n

“It invites the nation to understand the impact of that day from across both sides of the line and to experience what healing truly looks like, what overcoming trauma feels like. Children, 15 years on, have lived with the effects of that day, and seeing their strength will give us strength.”<\/p>\n

Kahi, whose previous films include\u00a0Poi E: The Story of Our Song\u00a0<\/i>and\u00a0Mt Zion<\/i>, is a proud father of four first-language reo M\u0101ori-speaking tamariki. He says all his work is focused on normalising te reo M\u0101ori, a key element seeded by his mentors and heroes, like fellow filmmaker Merata Mita and Iti.<\/p>\n

“The degree of love that we have for te reo M\u0101ori is evident in all the work, my wife and our wh\u0101nau create.”<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

VIA RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Aroha Awarau The director of\u00a0Muru, the highest-grossing New Zealand film of 2022, says it has helped normalise and showcase the unique te reo M\u0101ori dialect spoken by the people of T\u016bhoe. Four generations of reo T\u016bhoe speakers appear in\u00a0Muru, which was inspired by the controversial police raids on the small community of R\u016b\u0101toki in 2007. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":7823,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7822"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7822\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7824,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7822\/revisions\/7824"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}