Identity as an urban Māori

Young Maia growing up in Wellington. Source: Maia Aramakutu. 

*Name has been changed. 

Content warning for discussion of racial discrimination and corporal punishment. 

The urbanisation of Māori is a phenomenon that began with the addition of urban centres in Aotearoa and is still happening now. Urbanisation is when Māori move from rural, iwi-based areas into urban centres such as Christchurch. 

Moving to urban areas meant Māori gained more opportunities. However, it also meant assimilation into Pākehā culture. This is because Māori moved away from their iwi, whenua, and whānau. According to the Ministry of Social Development, 82% of the Māori population live in urban areas. 

For many Māori that have grown up in urban centres – which are home to a predominantly Pākehā population – it has created complex identity issues.  

This is because you are disconnected from your culture, and you are assimilated into a society that will try and isolate you, while also having your identity constructed for you – and your identity as Māori constantly questioned. 

This has been my experience growing up in Wellington. When I was in primary school, we had probably 10 or so Māori kids. When I was in year six, in 2014, my school did a matariki event where we got to pick between a range of different matariki-inspired activities, including kapa haka and making artworks to display. 

I chose to do art and got put into kapa haka along with every other Māori student at my school. When I expressed that I did not want to do kapa haka, I was told that I was Māori, and it was my culture, so I had to do it. 

Although they were not intentionally harming me by doing this, up until that point, me being Māori was barely acknowledged – and was something about myself that made me different, but not unique. 

So I was confused when I was being shamed and judged for not wanting to do something they deemed should be done by a Māori, when me being Māori had never been celebrated and was barely acknowledged. 

And honestly, no Māori person is going to force another Māori person to do kapa haka. But they felt strongly that I needed to do it because I was Māori, and they forced me to perform. Which made me hate kapa haka until last year. 

And I am not the only one with these experiences. 

Tyler, a UC Māori student who grew up in Wellington, found that in high school, “I was used as a dictionary in my geography class,” as “whenever a Māori term or concept was used, as the only Māori person in the class, I was the one they turned to translate.” 

Area in Wellington where Tyler and Maia went to school. Source: Maia Aramakutu. 

Although Tyler was taking te reo Māori through NCEA, he had not grown up speaking the language. He said that when he did not know what a word meant, he felt judgment from his peers and the teacher. They assumed he knew te reo because he was Māori, which is a completely unfair assumption. 

This is because the colonial government tried to erase te reo. In 1967, under the Native Schools Act, te reo was banned from schools and the children who spoke the language faced corporal punishment. It wasn’t until the 1970s that te reo was unbanned due to the Māori language petition. 

According to Statistics New Zealand, in 2021, only 7.9% of Māori in Aotearoa could speak te reo fluently. 

Language doesn’t just come back because the government has unbanned it. Māori have suffered generations of language loss. A lot of our grandparents can’t even speak Māori as it was beaten out of them and our tīpuna. 

So expecting Tyler to know a language that has been historically removed from many whānau made him “feel as I was not Māori enough, especially because at the time I didn’t know the history behind te reo, so I thought not knowing the language meant I was not Māori.” 

Especially since Māori people will view you as Māori if you whakapapa Māori. If you whakapapa Māori, you are Māori – no questions asked. 

Tino Rangatiratanga flag. Source: Maia Aramakutu. 

For Ariana*, another UC Māori student who grew up in a town in the Canterbury region, she grew up feeling the need “to reduce her Māori identity to a percentage or a fraction”. 

This is the idea that you’re “15%” Māori, or “half” Māori, for example. This construct doesn’t exist in Te Ao Māori, because if you whakapapa Māori, you are Māori, no matter what percentage or fraction. 

She identified that in doing this, she was trying to assimilate further into colonial society – she said this idea is a “colonial construct”. It also lets Pākehā know that you are not all Māori, which in a way can make Pākehā more likely to accept you, rather than isolate you. 

Which is not something Māori people need to be doing.  

To finish off, I just want to say that if you are Māori, you are Māori, no matter what anyone says. In the words of Rawiri Waititi, “You might not know your reo but your reo knows you… you are good enough because your tīpuna made it so.”