Ben Brown — Te pānui o Te Awhi Rito: Te hā, te kupu, te kōrero

Speaker

Ben Brown

Tauparapara o Te Awhi Rito

Ben Brown: Tuia tui tuia
Tuia te hā
Tuia te kupu
Tuia te kōrero
Tāu te māramatanga
Ko te ahurei o te tamaiti
Arahia ō tātou mahi
Hāpai te mōhio
Whakatū te mātauranga
Oranga mai me whai ake nei
Tihei mauri ora !

E ngā mana, e ngā iwi, e ngā reo, nau mai piki mai tomo mai ki te pāharakeke nei, ka mātakitaki ki ō tātou rau tūpuna e tū piritaha ana. Tautoko mai me ngā rau kaumātua e tū tonu ana, he ōrite, he aparua, kātahi rā ki te kaupapa, kia manawanui ki te mahi pānui, kia mau ki te whakapuāwai o te rito, i ā tātou tamariki, ō tātou rangatahi hoki.

E te minitā; ngā kaiwhakahaere, ngā kaiako, ngā pou tangata o ngā pukapuka tamariki, o te mātātuhituhi, te mātākōrero hoki. Tēna koutou e ngā Rangatira, e ngā Raukura hoki; ā mihi mai mihi mai mihi mai koutou ngā rangatira mā, ngā tangata kahurangi hoki, mihi mai ki tēnei pātaka mōhio i tēnei pō — ko whiro te pō maramataka, engari kāore tātou e haere atu ki waho mō te whai tuna. Kao, ko tēnei pō, ka kimi tātou i te ika rerekē i ētahi wā kei roto i te mārama tika, na reira tēna koutou, tēna koutou, tēna rā tātou katoa.

Born as dumb as a box of rocks

No matter our stage or status in life, whichever side of the blanket we were born on; regardless of province, position or potential, irrespective of race, colour, creed, spiritual dominion or godless ideology, whether we come laden as of birthright with individual freedoms and attendant responsibilities; whether we frame these ideals ourselves, each to our own personal expression of tino rangatiratanga or indeed, whether we feel instead the yoke of imposition weighing heavily of subservience and obligation to an ill-deserved authority beyond our apparent capacity to defy; whether any of it is real or we just imagined it after too much time down the rabbit hole. Either way or any other, we all started out every mother-born one of us exactly the same: Dumb as a box of rocks!

For a number of years thereafter our survival and well-being is entirely dependent upon adult versions of ourselves whose number seems to grow as we grow. Depending upon our circumstances, which please keep in mind had nothing to do with any of us at the time; we were loved, provided for, nurtured, treasured, neglected, beaten and further abused, spoiled, ignored, lavished and lauded, given away, taken away, thrown away, utterly corrupted, completely adored.

Our formative years

So we can say that the substance of these, our formative years; the sunrise and morning of our lives, was largely shaped by the minds and mouths of others; by mothers, fathers, parents, grandparents, caregivers; families, institutions, communities, villages, tribes and societies. Our teachers, leaders and heroes loom, recede, insinuate or remain irrevocable. Institutions of state contribute whether we like it or not; our schools and other places of learning purport to equip us appropriately for life amid the milieu.

Whatever the case, for a while at least, we naturally regard these other figures in our lives; these larger versions of ourselves and the stations from which they come, as integral, even fundamental to our existence as archetypes and examples, as models of who and what we are meant to be. So we will depend before we love, compelled by primal requirements to communicate and engage with these guardians and guides and providers of our every material need, just as these giants seem compelled to provide for, communicate and engage with us. Which is just as well because for a good few years, we’re useless at pretty much everything until mum or dad or someone shows us the ropes.

Showing kids the ropes

As a new parent twenty-five years ago with quite vivid memories of the wringer I put my own parents through on monotonously regular occasions, bouncing out of control and off the walls from one misadventure to the next; I actually spent a lot of time thinking about showing my kids the ropes and what that might actually look like. Mum and Dad worked really hard to show me what was what. Their intent, to me was evident. Eventually. I was just one of those ‘not inclined to listen’ kind of kids.

Mum was black and white about what the deal was. Her children had to be self-reliant —enough at least to sustain themselves out there in the world beyond the nest, to fend for themselves, feed and clothe and shelter themselves, keep themselves presentable. That was the bare-bones minimum requirement if you grew up in the Brown house. So mum set about equipping all her kids with her version of a sustainability toolbox.

She started training us up from ten years old in the practical matters of life. It’s why I got a watch on my 10th birthday. Engraved with my name and DOB on the back. It was my first grown-up present and would be the same for my sisters in their turn. Time to start putting away childish things. Managing my own time now became my first responsibility as a grownup. While the instrument with which to manage it was to teach me to look after things of value. Turns out I was fairly crap at both. But I learned that being late for school has other time implications and that losing a precious object hurts more than I imagined it could.

I was better as a cook though. On my tenth Christmas under heaven, I was shown how to put down the Christmas hangi. Mum told me, ’Sonny, first gather stones’. She also showed me the marvellous utility of an electric fry pan. By the age 12, I had the fry-up mastered and could smash a roast — gravy included — all in the pan. I could sew buttons back onto my clothes as well without puncturing myself too many times was expected to do so when required. I also knew how the washing machine worked, how to open a bank account in town, put money in that I had earn now. Good old days of pocket money, gone. Mum even taught me how to knit but I confess, I never finished the sleeve I started, let alone the jumper. And I have never knitted since. But often, as mum instructed, she talked about her own childhood at Waahi Paa in Kawhia; about the jobs and duties she was given and some of the old skills she learned and the traditions, the tikanga that came with the learning. And that was just some of what Mum’s input was.

I had the immense good fortune to be born into a context where both parents assumed the task of transforming a little box of rocks into a workable human being. They took the job seriously and they had to; some rocks can be difficult to work with, requiring a firm but measured approach.

Today, many of our tamariki and rangatahi struggle just to acquire the requisite tools of learning needed to unlock many of the fundamental skills and further opportunities that gave the rest of us at least half a chance knowing how and where to look, how to listen, how to think. Knowing how to ask, knowing what to ask for, knowing which words to use. Knowing who to ask. Knowing why they need to know in the first place. Today, one in five of our 15-year-old rangatahi are reading at or below the basic level required to fulfil further educational requirements and opportunities. I’m going to come back to that 1 in 5 fifteen-year-old in a little while.

For now, just understand that some of them will endure lives of complete dysfunction, devoid of any meaningful utility or value to themselves, which means by and large that society will probably reflect a similar assessment of them, at some future point of intersection. Consider as well that these 1 in 5 fifteen-year-olds are part of a growing generational cohort trending slowly but steadily higher. 1 in 4 by 2040 is right in the ballpark on the current trend. One last little thing to think about before I continue; it’s not all down to the 1 in 5 that they can’t make the cut.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the coin, if we were born into a nurturing familial setting formed around notions of kindness, trust and mutual respect — within an environment of relative peace and plenty — or at least enough — and where there was clearly an awareness that someone had to spend the time to show us the basics, then the odds are reasonable, maybe even better than even, that one day we’ll probably be okay, out there in the world beyond the nest. No guarantees. Nothing is these days.

But how we acquit ourselves thereafter will have everything to do with what we make of what we were given or exposed to coming up. It all depends, I would suggest, upon the quality, range and utility of our learned, lived and imagined experience, subject to every unknowable variable of consequence and circumstance that lies beyond the horizon of our immediate perceptions and the limits of whatever power we possess.

In regard to our children then, our tamariki and rangatahi sitting in classrooms today; starting Kindy next year, being cared for in a creche somewhere while both parents disrupt themselves on the wheel of Endless Undoing;

… I really don’t mean to offer this as some kind of painful elaboration of the painfully bloody obvious … but … building our kids into useful, hopeful, intelligent, optimistic, resilient, compassionate, independent, strong, capable, adaptable young human beings … well … that — is down to us.

All of us. The ‘Grown-Ups’ in the room who apparently run the place. The collective we who provide the examples as well as the substance of their formative years of dependence.

So who the hell are We, anyway? Well; ‘… there’s the rub’ … I love that expression. Only Shakespeare could make a ‘rub’ sound enigmatic and problematic all at the same time. We are the collected works of every story that in the telling led us here. That is who and what we are to the children in our charge.

Narratives of life

‘We are the narratives of first resort and the stories are always about life.’

Some of our narratives are epic, heroic, and operatic. Some of them are crude fictions of cynical intent. Some of our origin tales are bitter, resentful, born of disruption, upheaval, and a personal crisis. In some of them, Magic and mystery attend, but we cannot believe it impossible. There are legacy stories, narrative threads that bind and anchor and also release; allowing new stories to intercede. Some of our narratives are mischievous, even malicious, made up as we were carried along with someone else’s malcontent. Once upon a time, there was even a cultural narrative to which we could all cleve, back when number 8 wire could fix anything and the only expectation held by a laconic, self-reliant bloke with 60 million sheep was just a fair go, mate. But it forgot about 1840 and all the kerfuffle with that other lot. And the ladies who all brought a plate didn't get a mention.

The first version of ourselves was built on stories we were told by those we depended on for everything. If we were lucky, they understood that a narrative tapestry rich in content, woven around us every day would instil a sense of place and belonging. At the same time, they could challenge us gently with newness and mystery, extending our world by extending our narrative, building our story by the simple application and wonderful utility of words, of language, of discourse and dialogue and exposition. If you started here, you were indeed ‘home’ because these things were the bricks that built your house of well-being and imagination.

We imagine ourselves into existence

We imagine ourselves into existence and a universe comes with us.

This is the first and most important function of language, revealed to us ideally by mothers who love and fathers who fear but will never admit it, or even nannas who blitz us with chocolate and sugars and then give us back to their own with a cackle thinking, ‘it’s your turn now” but really, they love us more than life. Here within these origin stories and formative narratives our dawning comprehension sieves and filters to divine, if we have been so equipped, conceiving the limit of our perception and the extent of our horizon. We take on form and substance here. We may not always obey. We will certainly not always know. Again, it will depend on the story.

Wherever we stand as he tangata, he tangata, he tangata; whatever our arrangement might be with the world around us as we navigate the terrain, or within this great iwi, ko Ngāti Humanity; where human engagement is the most valuable currency of all — except when it’s the most destructive force that we can muster —whether we regard ourselves a Superman, he toa — a warrior, a citizen, a cog in a great big machine or just another bland consumer; it serves us well to understand that a constantly evolving narrative attends each one of us.

Our stories write themselves in the minds of others and in our own as we progress. In many ways, these narratives will steer or even predict our experiences. We will accumulate something approaching knowledge, ideally, built of an expanding anthology that gives us an ever deeper, richer more expansive meaning as a frame of reference. We come to know ourselves in the process. And the quality of that self-acquaintance will be in every way comparable to the depth and scope of our particular unfolding narrative. In knowing ourselves we begin to assess, compare and further engage with ‘others’.

We become a measure made of our own particular meaning.

I wonder though, are we forgetting the deeply formative place of story in our lives? Have we relegated the splendour of language to markings of bland utility in a techniverse that can render a million realities — calling every one of them virtual without even a hint of irony; or sit quite comfortably in the convenient accommodation of artifice with intelligence. Have we forgotten the source of our enlightenment, assuming a divinity in the machines that don’t even know what the fuss is about, or even that there is a fuss in the first place. Machines don’t know anything. They’re great at doing stuff. But there’s a difference. The machine doesn’t know it’s doing it.

The machine has no idea.

Life at school

I don’t remember a time in my life when I couldn’t read or write. I guess that makes me one of the lucky ones. Lucky in the sense that my parents ensured that all their children started school knowing the alphabet, how to count to ten, how to write their own name and in the process, a few other words as well; house, farm, mum, dad, dog, cat, yes, no. Words that began to give me a sense of place and meaning.

I also started school with a love of stories. Both my parents told stories as a matter of course. My father who grew up in the vastness of the Outback; a red heart South Australian who cut his teeth in the territory, as he called the North; where the self-taught young man devoured books to create for himself an even more expansive horizon. My wahine taniwha mother; Ngāti Mahuta, Ngāti Koroki, Ngāti Paoa — Kingitanga hard’ who’s universe was revealed and elaborated to her in kōrero and Purakau, that she could extend to her children in the two tongues of this land. Everything, it seemed to me, was explained as a story

If only school did things that way. I started primary school the same week pounds, shillings and pence became dollars and cents so at least the maths required to work out how rich I was never going to be would prove easier in the future, but ‘reading’ as it was taught to me from July 1967 seemed, for the most part pretty uninspiring.

The saving grace would be story time where teachers read aloud from chosen books and we drifted away in our heads to cause mayhem with Thing 1 and Thing 2 or had a party with Max and his army of beasts and then let the Wild Things clean up the mess. Sadly, it seemed that the older you got, the less important storytime seemed to become. Like imagination all of a sudden has to make way for — I don't know what? Buggered if I know. What could be more important to a reasonably cognitive kid developing full-on than imagination?

The memorable exceptions; the teacher who was also the strapper. But he loved reading stories as much as we loved listening to them. And watching them as he lunged and parried his way round the classroom, wielding his hickory golf shaft named the great persuader, written down the side, like it was an epee or a sabre — and he was a drunk Musketeer; ‘Un pour tous et tous pour un’! French even. Or sometimes; a relieving teacher there for just a day or two, or better yet, an afternoon. But savvy enough to know the easiest route through an otherwise testing ordeal with a bunch of feral country kids on the cusp of puberty was to pull out a book of sufficient adventure with a villainous narrator who brooked neither rudeness nor interruption. And all would be well for the duration.

Storytellers ruled the world

There was a time of course, when storytellers ruled the world because they were the ones who made sense of it, defined it, gave it shape and place in the universe, peopled it with heroes, villains immortals, gods and monsters that kept the stars in their place and gave everything a purpose, a cause and a reason. The storytellers told us how it was and why. They told us where we were meant to fit within all of it. And they told us what would happen if we didn’t — or chose not to.

It seems likely that our ancestors were telling stories before there were even words to fill in the details, to tease and intrigue with analogy, metaphor and irony, to add layers of beauty to pathos and tragedy or wisdom and depth to the comedies of life. To communicate knowledge. There would have been the dance, the enactment, the gesture, filled out with the primal grunts and utterances of emotion; fear, rage, happiness, confusion, utter bewilderment, deep despair, rejoice at overcoming. But words in their time would give the story teller infinite elaboration. A picture of the hunt on a cave wall may indeed paint a thousand words. But a thousand words from the story tellers’ mouth might tell you Everything.

If there is one constant to existence, to what it means to be; from the quantum minuteness of quarks and electrons to the spiral of galaxies and universes; it is, I believe, the impetus to communicate. The mass of a great celestial body communicates with similar mass through gravity, exerting influence, affecting outcomes over eons and epochs and unimaginable distances. Electrons communicate with electrons through the spookiness of entanglement. We communicate with reality simply by observing it, engaging with it, making it therefore so.

The flower talks to the bee. The bee obliges. A bird gives thanks to the vastness of the sky and ends up being eaten by a cat that cannot fly. The cat in turn will thank the Sky for not being edible to birds. Thus, Life and Death take turns in an eternal dialogue. But nothing tells the story, quite like a human. What we don’t know, we make up. What we make up becomes real. Sometimes simply by saying it — on certain occasions — just like this.

We who presume to be writers follow this legacy, telling picturesque lies that carry the gravitas of a truth, laying new legends to follow the old and out of date and better explain ourselves to ourselves or otherwise confuse, amuse, confide or confound; whatever our predispositions allow and our readerships tolerate. The last bloody thing we need is a diminishing pool of readers.

We could, if we choose, abide the anonymous preacher writing in the book of Ecclesiastes, and not bother reaching for an authenticity of ideas because ‘there is no new thing under the sun.’ So says the voice of the book. But to do so would seem to suggest that every story tells and ends the same, which I suppose it does in that particular anthology from which Ecclesiastes reveals itself. I don’t know though — no knew thing? I just think the idea lacks imagination. For all that, the volume in its entirety is still a hell of a rollicking read. Even when it repeats itself. Even when you know how it ends. Sometimes it weirdly reminds me of Vonnegut in places.

Of course, in no small way, that book brought literacy to my iwi. How simple it is to transpose a god of the book to a people of words ephemeral, whose symbol sounds are of wind and waves and the flowing of waters and the calling of birds, where syllables rest softly next to each other and the sound of every thought carries more than meanings, but essences and energies exist there as well, as vital as blood, as tangible as light. Where every sacred utterance of the manu kōrero is sifted for nuance and possibly deeper significance even as memory informs where perception can no longer fathom.

When Kendal the missionary provided 14 Latin symbols to represent te hā, te kupu, te kōrero, Te Reo; in 1814 up there in Tai Tokerau; Māori understood within the first examples shown to them, the power, the authority, the mana of written te reo; Hā Ka Ma Na Pa Ra Ta Wa Wha Ngā … There from the first, Hā, the breath, the voice, an essential force; Haka, the dances of vigour and life; Kaha; of strength; Mana of spiritual power and supernatural energies within persons places and, things… right there in the first 4 or 5 seconds … I’ve often wondered, if Kendal had turned up with a dictaphone or tape recorder; would Māori have bothered with the written word? I think so. Yes.

Māori eye for innovations

Māori have always had an eye for innovations.

Can you imagine an oral life imbued with words as living energies, with tangible spiritual power carried forth on the mauri of existence; defining human relationships with and between Te Ao, Te Pō and Te Kore; rendered in breath and rhythms as ancestral sounds of origin and the beginnings of whakapapa, until lost to the ephemeral certainty of echoing silence; leaving behind only the dream and the memory of what was spoken.

And then to realise in the moment of making the marks; the sheer implications of creating a permanent record of mana, breath and beating heart with thought and intention; even as those thoughts and intentions were made: to perceive and understand that descendants a thousand years hence could know the heart right now, as it spoke, simply by reading the letters.

No wonder Māori were signing a treaty a mere generation later, assuming that written words were the same as unbreakable promises; which in the Māori mind, they are. When you put your mana on paper.

Tell stories from the beginning

It would be fair to say that my appointment as inaugural Te Awhi Rito Reading Ambassador was far and away the most important thing to have happened in my life.

The obvious exception being to father two fine and beautiful children to an extraordinary woman mother and see them now walking the world as competent, intelligent, curious, compassionate, self-reliant young adults with, as the cliche’ rightly supposes, the world at their feet.

I’d like to think that telling and reading them stories literally every day from day one had some bearing on them attaining such aspects of character and potential. Actually, was day two for my son. Day one was something of an ordeal for him and his mother so the mid-wives in charge of the neo-natal unit at Nelson Public Hospital deemed it rest and recovery day for my exhausted little puru taitama e, alone and asprawl in his incubator hooked up to machines that go ping. Or beep, I can never remember which. An over-eager storytelling father would have to wait another day.

These early days of storytelling are not for the child, but the parent, the carer, the supposed bringer of light and life to this tiny part of themselves. If we are born anywhere near ‘cognitively normal’, which I would imagine has a baseline somewhere; and all of our organs and limbs and other bits and pieces are more or less where they should be — and in reasonably functioning order; as long as we are then tended by someone or two or as many as you like so long as they care and love and provide, we’re probably going to be ok. But the box of rocks is still valid, not for much longer, but language-wise — from the moment of birth to somewhere in our first half year, you are pretty much void of any linguistic faculty. You've no idea what the racket is. We can’t tell shit from sugar.

We gurgle and coo and burp and cry without knowing how or why or even who; we just do. And then we discharge and expel, then we do a bit more. Yet even here, in our language-less state, we somehow try to communicate. The animal always needs feeding. Even at one day old; surely we know we’re useless, we somehow know we cannot make it alone.

[Pause, Ben looks through his papers.] I could have just about got away with that…

Either way, you go tell little useless a story every single day. If there’s two of you — take turns. You are in training.

The great thing about humans is, we can train ourselves to do — well — almost anything. Not only that, we can learn to love pretty much anything as well. We must be the only animal that goes out of its way to find a life-threatening experience; just to get a buzz, because it's fun, because it turns us on! Some of us anyway.

That’s like a pig looking for the pig hunter, cos he ikes to play with his dogs. Mean pig if you meet him. More likely bacon though. Sitting with your child for ten minutes a night telling stories should not be a life-threatening experience. Surprising how many of us cannot find the time to learn to love it though, eh.

Don’t do that goo goo gaa gaa thing either. That’s not a story. That comes later with babbling. The stories you tell to your child in those first few days, weeks, months when they know nothing; those stories are for you. Like I said. You are in training. You tell your kids what their names mean, if you‘ve named them — Why you haven’t, if you haven’t. Tell them what the weather was like on their birthday. Tell them about their whānau, their heritage, what you hope for them. Which relatives to be wary of. Which ones will never let them down, starting with you. Tell them all your secrets… well, probably not all. Tell them how to be heroes. How to be brave enough. How to help when someone needs it. How to ask when it is them. Tell them always they are glorious, except when they are not. But even then don’t go too hard. Tell them kindness is better than being mean. But sometimes, being mean isn’t all bad. Maybe tell them that, when there’s a lot less rocks in the box.

Use the richest language you can. Enjoy the words. Learn to love these stories. It will come through in the telling. And you tell them over and over again, with elaboration as they grow. Between the books you read to them and with them as they age. They’ll come to know every one of those stories. They’ll remember and love some of those books. They’ll know when their narrative started because you’ll have told them. If you do this; there’s a pretty good chance, they won't chuck you into a shitty old rest home and forget about you when you’re old and angry cos you couldn’t be bothered doing the right when it was easy.

But don’t sweat it. And as to the goo goo gaa gaa thing. The kid will teach you that when the time comes. Though mum will usually pick it up first. Little Useless doesn’t stay useless for long. Once the eyes find the range; and the cry the right pitch, when the nose finally knows; they’ve got ya. By then, they’ll have a sense of you, by your voice, your tone, the shapes of the sounds you make. By the fact that they heard you every day or every other that told them, I know where I am. ‘This is where I belong.

’Once the babbling starts; the literacy journey begins. And you were right there with them. Please stay the course. Create a language-loving little human. And build an unbreakable bond with your children in the process. Just by telling and reading them stories. And don’t confuse reading them stories with ‘teaching them how to read.’ Just keep using the language to tell them and to read to them and express to them. You keep doing that, they’ll teach themselves to read.

Generally speaking; it is that simple —and that hard. Sometimes though — sadly — it’s just really really hard. It will take another keynote to address that particular point. Which I will try to undertake before 26 May 2023. Except to say this; clearly there are young and struggling wannabe readers who need structure, and there are young and switched-on readers who do not. There always has been. There always will. There are children who will start school not knowing how to engage with a book. Which side to open first? There are families who will not have a book in the house. There are principals and boards of trustees who don’t think school libraries are a particularly good use of the school budget. There are people who will always hate books. Some of them wish that they did not.

If that happens to be you — even now — dig deep within yourself. Remember the pig and pig hunter; you are a human. If you learned to hate books, you can learn to love them, or at least tolerate them enough to finish maybe a couple before you check out. Just know, when you go; you’ll be brighter and a little bit smarter than you are now. For the rest of it; why don’t we just put all the tools back in the toolbox and stop bitching philosophies like this way is better than that. If the kid needs phonics, give them phonics. If the kid needs complexity, give them Joyce from Portrait to Wake. If the kid just can’t see symbols, give them a copy of Sapiens: The Birth of Humankind, by Yuval Noah Harari, and tell them to follow the pictures. That book will show them a visual narrative of the wisest of the apes, all the way from somewhere like a beginning …

After that, let them watch a series or an episode of the Simpsons; the one called Homer’s Enemy maybe. Call it an example of juxtaposition, or irony, or that thing that sometimes happens in life that no one can explain except to say; … What the …?

Being a writer and ambassador

I was informed of my appointment to this role 30 years to the month after I’d made the conscious decision to be a writer and thereby make a life, with no plan B whatsoever. I know it was a conscious decision because I said it out loud to the future mother of my children, in the living room of our first little flat together, a one-room half villa with an 11 or perhaps even13 foot stud and ornate fireplaces; one in front of the couch where I’d been mulling my decision and finally announced it, one in the bedroom where I’d lie awake that night wondering what the... have I done.

‘F••• it, I’m gonna be a writer!’ I said.

‘Good luck with that.’ She replied. Or at least, that’s how I like to remember it.

But I was 58 years old in my 59th year when Kate De Goldi rang me up one rainy Sunday afternoon in February 2021. Which meant I’d spent more than half my life in the pursuit of this one thing, in the gathering up of words to tell the stories I wanted to tell, for the totally self-absorbed reason of thinking they bloody well should be told simply because I wanted to tell them so. In all honesty, I’d never really thought beyond that, except that my readers would surely love it, because I did. Thus we imagine ourselves humble, modest and generous of spirit.

I’d just completed a commission for Kate De Goldi and Susan Paris; for the second Annual; a children’s anthology of writing across the genre spectrum, with old-school production values creating an object of joy and enigmatic authority with a cover to last through the ages. My contribution was a poem recalling my younger days at kapa haka; After the first instruction. I was stoked. I thought I was going to get another commission.

But Kate, as she informed me, is a ‘woman of many hats’ and on this particular rainy Sunday phone call, the hat she was wearing was until that moment, unknown to me; the chair of Te Puna Foundation; an independent charity established to support the work of The National Library of New Zealand. Part of that work involved the administration, development and planning regarding a new literary role: Te Awhi Rito — The Reading Ambassador for Children and Young People.

To the kaupapa then. Excuse me (Ben has a drink of water). Te Awhi Rito is the seedling of a harakeke. The narrative that emanates from the harakeke is immense and of great significance, permeating in its wisdoms through every aspect of Māori life; as relevant now as ever. Threads of lasting truth inform us that unity has always made us stronger; that ancestry yields strength, that traditions of worth will last, that the finest cloak is twined one thread at a time.

Harakeke gave Māori the means to gather food, carry and haul, clothe and house and secure the people. Whatu twined and wove the muka; yielding fine cloths, korowai and kahu. Whiri braided leaf and thread, making chords and ropes, lashings and bindings, belts and straps, nets and traps and long lines for fishing up islands. Whāriki and Raranga made kete, mats and food baskets and other utilities. Muka bound the palisades, lashed the waka, made and raised the sail, ensured the anchor, thonged the mere to warrior’s fist and the sun to Maui’s bidding.

Everything is there in the rau tupuna — the great tupuna leaves — and the skills, traditions and practices of Te Whare Pora — the House of Weaving; A comprehensive philosophy on the tikanga of human engagement with the universe around us is there in the Harakeke and Whare Pora narratives. More a state of mind than an actual place; Te Whare Pora is guided by the atua; Hineteiwaiwa, daughter of the female element; she is the guardian example of childbirth; weaving and the transmission of all knowledge.

Te Awhi Rito is the supporting embrace of the new shoot. If you observe a young or juvenile harakeke, you’ll note a fan of leaves with a small vivid centre shoot. This centre shoot is the Rito. The metaphor is a child. The next leaves either side; these are Mātua — Parents. The next two leaves; these are Kaumātua — Grandparents. All the leaves beyond Kaumātua; they are rau Tupuna. These parental and ancestral leaves are Te Awhi — the embrace. Te Awhi Rito is not me; though the reading ambassador carries the title. Ambassadors represent. And they have Embassies.

As do I. In the first instance; te whare e tu nei, The National Library of New Zealand. Wellington. Operationally; it’s the mothership, National Library Stanley Street Auckland — where Melanie knows where I'm going and Kate and Jo and Elizabeth and a whole bunch of other folks up there do all the tricky hard stuff that I don’t have to.

If a National Library isn’t immediately to hand; the Library in whatever town I happen to be in will suffice to carry out ambassadorial duties. Tūranga in Christchurch is part of the broader whānau. We do some video production there. Online content kind of Tik Tok sort of stuff. Three weeks ago; the embassy was a classroom at Blaketown Primary School in Greymouth; where two kids told me ‘You remind me of my Grand Dad.’ after a storytelling session with their year 6, 7 & 8s.

I’ve never been compared to someone’s Grand Dad before. I have to say, it’s a nice feeling. We were 4 writers, one among us, being an illustrator as well but all raconteurs on a Storylines Tour of Te Tai Poutini, 5 days from Hari Hari in the South to Karamea — as far north as the road can take you where banana trees grow if you let them. I’ll say this though, in a lot of ways, they do it pretty hard on the Coast. A monument at the mouth of the river remembers too many drowned young fishermen, while nearly 140 coal miners have perished looking for something no one seems to want any more. And then there’s the weather. There’s ALWAYS weather on the coast.

This was the third storylines tour of the year for me; with Taranaki and a journey around the Maunga in September, and sometimes you’re up there for five days and can’t see the maunga and think it’s a trick, and then Tai Tokerau in far North in June. I believe these journeys are invaluable to writers and readers alike. It takes the writer out of their happy place into the real world occupied by their readership and brings both parties to a shared perspective in the work, making books seem more accessible and perhaps a little less daunting, especially when the writer goes off script on some random digression only to forget where he started from because somehow he got himself somewhere. . . and he didn’t know where that was. It can be good for readers to learn that even writers get lost sometimes.

Dunedin Public Library serves the literary City well. It’s a good place for a public conversation on the Te Awhi Rito kaupapa; the opening event and well attended, of a five-day visit to James K Baxter’s home town. In fact, I arrived in Dunedin exactly 50 years and 4 days after Baxter’s death rather suddenly; and actually, quite poetically, I suppose … Aged 46, when he keeled over on a stranger’s couch in the living room of a house he'd never even visited before in suburban Auckland. Just wandered in off the street so they say, after suddenly feeling well, a bit like he was dying, I suppose. Anyway, as the story goes, Baxter plonks himself down on the stranger’s couch, with the owner of the place just sitting there in his favourite armchair, probably having a cuppa; somewhat bemused I expect, and Baxter says; and not a lot of people know this, ’I’ve got a wife and kids in Wellington…’

And that’s it. Gone. Kua mate. Haere haere haere ki te po.

Baxter’s death always reminded me of one of his poems, about death obviously: ‘Winter unwraps a parcel of stones for old and sick and sad, and homeless walkers.’ Which very nearly sums it up really. It’s a short, quite unadorned and rather beautiful piece which ends;

‘…Hine Nui Te Pō,
With teeth of obsidian and hair like kelp
Flashing and glimmering at the edge of the horizon.’

But 50 years and 5 days later; I’m talking to Kate De Goldi on an evening as far away from Winter and obsidian teeth as a jealous Spring allows and I have to say, I could talk to you all Summer Kate. You are sage, feisty, energetic, fearless I think — and committed — and I owe you more than you know for your advice and your perspective on matters germane and unexpected.

We were in Otepoti — Dunedin the week before Greymouth. A Te Awhi Rito Task Force; Kate De Goldi, just in from Wellington that day; Kate and Elizabeth from mothership Auckland, with Alex Woodley from Point Research gathering data on Communities of Readers projects in Dunedin and Canterbury.

No one thought I reminded them of Grand Dad down in Otago, but Ministry of Education Dunedin, National Library South Dunedin and Dunedin City Council; Māori Partnerships & Policy Directorate made excellent hosts and they are all committed kaimahi ki te kaupapa. They too are rau tupuna . While there we engaged with several schools and the only kura kaupapa in Dunedin, where we kōrero’d robustly on the implications of a post-colonial narrative in 21st-century Aotearoa and how such a narrative might express itself in the usual forms, or in new forms. And who among them; fifty years after Witi Ihimaera published Pounamu Pounamu and Api Taylor raged as Tu the Freezing Worker; who might add a voice to this narrative? And what form might that voice take?

The senior kura is curious and hungry. The junior kura is excited and eager. There is real joy throughout the kura, and not just in Dunedin, in hearing and speaking te reo. That was I think, perhaps the 7th or 8th kura kaupapa where Te Awhi Rito came to korero — and this buzz; this tangibly uplifting energy; like a kind of ihi, hovers about all kura these days.

These are not Māori moments in isolation. To view it from another perspective; the only genre in the book trade to experience double-digit percentage growth year on year; for the past three years in Aotearoa New Zealand, according to Booksellers numbers; Te Reo.

Whakatāne and the fringes of Tūhoe welcomed us in May. Matariki was significant this year. A Māori narrative celebrating a National holiday that emanates from this land under that sky using tikanga to guide it. Aotearoa New Zealand matured a little bit more this year, I believe. And I agree with something I heard Dr Rangi Mātāmua, himself a Tuhoe, comment on; that Matariki could become, or in its way perhaps it already is — the biggest storytelling festival in the world, with a whakapapa that extends all the way to the gods. Before the first waka. A seafaring storytelling Polynesian history and a vast and expansive Austronesian pre-history place us squarely in the Pacific as a Nation.

I also met Tame Iti in Whakatāne. I’ve wanted to meet that fella for a long time. 50 years ago last month, Nga Tamatoa — along with the Te Reo Society at Victoria University and the Young Maori Students Association presented a petition to parliament with 33,000 signatures demanding Te Reo in Schools. And what do we see today, Te Reo incline towards a broader horizon crying out for more and more and more ngā pukapuka i te reo Māori.

Te Awhi Rito growing network of potential and support

So you can see that Te Awhi Rito represents a growing network of potential and real support; an infrastructure of institutions, initiatives and passionate committed people who will make it all function according to a multitude of contexts, settings and requirements. The intent, as far as I’m concerned, is to reignite a passion for reading, somehow. And to extend Te Awhi — to better nurture and support the new shoot, to give our children, our young people; Tamariki and Rangatahi the best chance we can give them of fulfilling their potential.

Te Awhi Rito’s infrastructure includes public and private entities and initiatives from a wide range of sectors and from all across the motu. National Library. Read NZ Te Pou Muramura. Storylines Trust. Te Puna Foundation. Creative NZ. Oranga Tamariki. Tūranga Library as noted is great support. Duffy Books has reached out. The Publishers Association of New Zealand of course has a long-term interest in the kaupapa. As do Booksellers, with a swag of bookshops involved in quietly supportive ways, often running their own community-based programmes encouraging kids to pick up a book and broaden their horizon. Publishers, writers, journalists who take an interest. Media outlets just by doing their job become part of Te Awhi Rito.

Phantom Billstickers put skin in the game with a public awareness poster campaign still in its infancy; but they gave us production and Nationwide coverage for nothing.

The Crusaders Franchise is starting a reading programme in the coming season, putting players into Christchurch and Canterbury schools. It’s not about Rugby for them. It’s about serving the well-being of their community simply by reading stories to kids. As former coach and playing great Robbie Deans commented in reference to something another high-performance NZRFU trainer — Dave Hadfield — once said to him;

‘We are the same people over time … other than the people that we’re exposed to — and the books that we read — in terms of advancement and learning and evolving… Expose yourself to the learning of others…’

The Highlanders have a reading programme in Otago. And I’m pretty sure there’s a little league club in Tokoroa that had, or maybe still has a reading programme — for its junior grades. If it does, its been going for a very long time now.

Huntly College Community of Readers are part of the Te Awhi Rito whānau. And so they should be. Their story is magnificent. It should be screened in every school in the country. A student-inspired reading programme in a so-called turnaround school. Among their first demands; revitalise our library. They were Ambassadors for reading a year or so before me. Check these young rangatira out on the Oranga Tamariki Hear Me See Me platform. And thank you Oranga Tamariki; Micha and your crew; you gave those Rangatahi a voice — tuia te hā — when you do that, it allows them authority. They deserve every bit of it.

School libraries

It does perplex me; when exactly did school libraries diminish in their educational value to such an extent that a library is at best, a discretionary spend out of a school’s total budget allocation. Discretion as to whether to spend money on books, a properly appointed room to keep them in, and a professional school librarian to look after them, in a school, just feels a little bit counterproductive mixed messaging to me. I used to think libraries were mandatory at every school until I noticed schools without them on Writers in School visits. Now I confess I’m not sure at all whether libraries have ever been specifically mandated as integral to a school or other educational environment.

How have some schools never had a library? Why isn’t a School library as sacrosanct as a classroom? Have we forgotten what libraries actually represent, why they’re free as public utilities and public spaces providing access to all the information vital to its citizenry? Free libraries are democratic institutions. Good democracies believe their citizens should be freely informed of all their freedoms, rights, responsibilities, obligations and opportunities.

School libraries are an extension of those beliefs and ideals and schools would seem the obvious place to present them. Especially the opportunities represented in being able to explore the scope, range and depth of human experience expressed with imagination and creativity. That's the opportunity. Consider as well that books can be out of reach as a purchase to a family bringing in minimum wage or the benefit. Wealth inequality always seems to correlate in fairly predictable ways with the trend lines revealed in measuring the usual battery of socioeconomic, educational, or health and well-being indicators, including those that measure reading and literacy.

Reading literacy levels

There is very real concern today that unacceptable numbers of our 15-year-olds — that’s year 10 — won't even be able to read to the basic level required just to fulfil their continuing educational requirements, let alone grapple with the apparent opportunities that may or may not exist for them or even some of their better-read peers out there in a world suddenly more inclined to disruption than to any illusion at all of an orderly ascent into a more inclusive future. One in 5 them are reading below this basic level. [ PISA ] Many of those 1 in 5 come from non-reading homes. They don’t see reading role-modelled. They don’t have books in the house. The school and the library may be their only access.

I know what illiteracy in our young people looks like. I’ve sat across the table from some of it — in Te Puna Wai o Tuhinapo; Korowai Manāki; Te Aurere ā te Tonga; Te Maioha o Parekarangi; the four main Oranga Tamariki Youth Justice residence facilities in Christchurch, Auckland, Palmerston North and Rotorua respectively; ironically, engaging the young people in writing workshops to create a narrative of their experiences. I’ll tell you one thing; I’ve never yet met a kid who wanted to be illiterate. But I‘ve met a lot of illiterate kids with powerful stories they’ve been trying to tell for as long as nobody would listen. We need to explore other ways to accommodate other vernaculars. If our children make it all the way through school, they’re something of a captive audience for 13 years. Not as captive as YJ though. Most illiterates are gone by year 11 and they are angry — mostly, because nobody listened.

That a kid can get to year 11 before NCEA requirements out him as illiterate says a lot about that kid’s natural raw intelligence. We might make some assumptions about other aspects of that kid's life based on mountains of research and statistics over past generations; not just educational, reading or literacy research; but socio-economic, health and well-being; lifestyle and leisure activities, whatever. Of course, we’ve always got the benefit of past experience. And what will it tell us? I think it will tell us what we already know. Usually; they are poor. and, for the last three or four generations, too many of them have been brown.

Talking to Claudette Hauiti of Radio Wātea

My very first media engagement as Te Awhi Rito was to be an early evening live-to-air interview with Claudette Hauiti of Radio Wātea. Around eight or nine minutes. It was a Thursday evening in May 2021. I’m in my hotel room at the refurbished Royal Hotel in Featherston. I was there for Booktown, triple checking my phone was fully charged with the volume up. It was nearly dark outside. I was really nervous and I tried to distract myself by a brief reminisce of the last time I was in the Royal Hotel in Featherston. That was over forty years ago. I was 18, I'd just left college and I remember, a jug cost a buck forty and the beer was kinda meh.

I’d been briefly briefed, which was okay, I had a media person, though since I've had journoes in my life, I much prefer not knowing what’s coming my way. Forming answers to questions you think you’re going to get seems like an easy way to come unstuck if the interviewer, either on a whim or simply responding to how you answer one question, might deviate from the known into a somewhere else of unfamiliar dimensions; which I should add is, I think, is probably an acceptable eventuality if it serves the kaupapa of the interview overall.

After a courteous Tēna koe Ben; and a brief intro as to my new role, Claudette asked me, I think, the best question I’ve ever been asked since journalists became an occasional part of my existence. And I wasn’t exactly expecting it. I’m relying on memory here, but I’m pretty sure it’s not far off the mark;

‘Tell me Ben, being Māori, from an oral tradition; how do you reconcile being our first Reading Ambassador?

’Claudette, you earn your money! To me, there was only one possible answer; ‘Just redefine what reading is…’

In that moment, the validity of an oral tradition, of kōrero, of storytelling as a fundamental foundation without which, a love of reading will almost inevitably subside was made real to me. It’s a realisation I may never have come to without such a kick-arse question. If the brief is to inspire a love of reading, it has to begin with our first and formative stories. Which means:

It has to begin, like everything else — at home.

How could it be otherwise? Pūrakau delivered orally has literary worth. Tauparapara is poetry. Whai kōrero demonstrates vast and deep complexities of meaning known differently, with aspects of indefinable quality except that you feel the wairua and the ihi within the speaker and the words in a tangible way. But all of us, Māori, Pākehā, Pasifika, Asian, Arab, Jew and Gentile; we all have origin stories. All of us came from somewhere else to here. We all started out as the same box of rocks.

Tell your children stories every day

This is why I say and keep on saying, tell your children stories every day, from as early in their life as you can, for as long as they will put up with you. Read them stories. Read them like you own them. Do the voices, pull the faces, show your children the utility and authority and beauty of language, the grace and power of story. Understand explicitly that everything that comes to them in their lives will have something to do with the words they chose to use at the time and how they chose to use them.

Show them by your example and you will have given them the best chance ever at fulfilling their potential. Thank you very much.

---

Any errors with the transcript, let us know and we will fix them. Email us at digital-services@dia.govt.nz.