trout

Te Hokinga Mai

Tena ra koutou. We're hiring
a video camera to film our powhiri

at the marae on Monday. I'm busy practising
waiata, the hardest is 'tangi a te ruru ...'

I've been practising hard to remember not only
to greet the meeting house, the marae and my iwi,

but to point to each as I speak, and to sound
as natural as possible. Nan tells me not

to drag out words, that I'm over-pronounced.
It's koh-rua, not caw-rua, for instance.

I saw a video entitled How d'ya do Mr Governor
with a lot of different people saying a lot

of different things about the Treaty. One
of the panel said the Maori way of looking

at the world was that we are who we are because
of our past, and that we take that into the future.