Te Kaikaukau/The Swimmer: I te Ao o te Reo
by Witi Ihimaera Smiler
Wow! This pukapuka is quite some dive! It is a whirly-gig plunge into all sorts of tangents, echoes, and non-lineal diversions, whereby a reader will be propelled through waves of emotion, adventure, candid self-reflection, political swirls, memoirs, whakapapa, as well as other swimmers who slither about and around our aquatic narrator, Witi Ihimaera Smiler. For example, a whole raft of fellow natators, and an erudite rōpū of instructors reverberate throughout these pages.
Ostensibly this is the recounting of Witi’s determined diversion into a full year immersion of learning how to improve his spoken and – accordingly – his written reo Maōri at Te Wānanga Takiura i Tāmaki Makaurau, and all the strenuous strokes he had to make to pass the course, sometimes near-drowning in the process, but finally able to keep his head above the surface and ultimately to succeed in this mission.
Yet, Te Kaikaukau is so much more. Whirlpools of Witi’s upbringing and personal history wash over us – for example the rationale to name himself more fully, thus Ihimaera Smiler. Always, very candid, Witi does lunge into great details about his whānau, his partners, his health issues, his past, present, concomitant, and future literary endeavours. In this hurdy-gurdy panoply his hopes and dreams regarding Māori language revitalisation and the profound urgency for this; for rangatahi Māori to be at the fore of such a renaissance, are never far from the surface. In essence, however, this pukapuka is a search and solution for the protagonist to cement his identity once and for all. As he so poignantly points out,
‘Recognise the loss of language and culture through generations of colonisation. Confess that ever since you were born, you have been living your life, and writing it, in the wrong culture and the wrong language. Acknowledge, therefore, that while you have asserted you are a Māori writer, you have never been truly and sufficiently present in that culture, let alone the reo’. His is a brave existential submersion.
Contrastingly, his studies do follow a straight ahead chronological pace, albeit in the form of determinedly Māori time terms tied to the lunar calendar rather than reo Ingarihi ‘months’ and ‘seasons’, and he depicts the fact that they become more and more onerous and that he has to speak Maōri for longer periods as to display his increasing prowess. Accordingly, the inclusion of longer te reo Maōri passages, and finally complete chapters, reveal themselves as this tide flows on. Inevitable, of course, because this nautical natural is swimming increasingly well, given a few sinkings, and therefore the accelerating incorporation of te reo Māori reflects deeply his progressive aquatic marathon.
I pointed out earlier that – despite the forward momentum of the studies – Te Kaikaukau is not a straight ahead anecdote, that it dips and dives all over the ocean that is the life of Witi Ihimaera Smiler. Which is exactly how it ‘should be’! For oratory in te ao Māori was and is, circumlocutory, digressive, reiterative, synchronizing past, present and future into a seamless and intertwined whole, and – in the same fashion – smoothly fusing the literal interplaying of man and ngā atua. The author achieves his goal of becoming infused with te reo Maōri as a living force. Te Kaikaukau – The Swimmer is an ouroboros, Witi Ihimaera Smiler becomes an amphibious aquanaut.
I will conclude with Witi’s own summation of his watery voyage –
‘The purpose of my going to Takiura was to learn how to write in te reo as well as to speak in it. I hope, very soon, to be able to do it...I will begin by telling a story for all our tamariki: Once upon a time...
Morimoria a tātou tamariki, ko rātou hoki te iwi o āpōpō.
Cherish the children of today, for they are the people of tomorrow.’
I iterate also that at the same time, Whiti becomes his essential completed self,
Tēnā koe mō tēnei taonga a Witi. He pono tēnei whakataukī – ‘Whakaotia te kete mātauranga’.
Morimoria a tātou tamariki, ko rātou hoki te iwi o āpōpō.
by Witi Ihimaera Smiler
Wow! This pukapuka is quite some dive! It is a whirly-gig plunge into all sorts of tangents, echoes, and non-lineal diversions, whereby a reader will be propelled through waves of emotion, adventure, candid self-reflection, political swirls, memoirs, whakapapa, as well as other swimmers who slither about and around our aquatic narrator, Witi Ihimaera Smiler. For example, a whole raft of fellow natators, and an erudite rōpū of instructors reverberate throughout these pages.
Ostensibly this is the recounting of Witi’s determined diversion into a full year immersion of learning how to improve his spoken and – accordingly – his written reo Maōri at Te Wānanga Takiura i Tāmaki Makaurau, and all the strenuous strokes he had to make to pass the course, sometimes near-drowning in the process, but finally able to keep his head above the surface and ultimately to succeed in this mission.
Yet, Te Kaikaukau is so much more. Whirlpools of Witi’s upbringing and personal history wash over us – for example the rationale to name himself more fully, thus Ihimaera Smiler. Always, very candid, Witi does lunge into great details about his whānau, his partners, his health issues, his past, present, concomitant, and future literary endeavours. In this hurdy-gurdy panoply his hopes and dreams regarding Māori language revitalisation and the profound urgency for this; for rangatahi Māori to be at the fore of such a renaissance, are never far from the surface. In essence, however, this pukapuka is a search and solution for the protagonist to cement his identity once and for all. As he so poignantly points out,
‘Recognise the loss of language and culture through generations of colonisation. Confess that ever since you were born, you have been living your life, and writing it, in the wrong culture and the wrong language. Acknowledge, therefore, that while you have asserted you are a Māori writer, you have never been truly and sufficiently present in that culture, let alone the reo’. His is a brave existential submersion.
Contrastingly, his studies do follow a straight ahead chronological pace, albeit in the form of determinedly Māori time terms tied to the lunar calendar rather than reo Ingarihi ‘months’ and ‘seasons’, and he depicts the fact that they become more and more onerous and that he has to speak Maōri for longer periods as to display his increasing prowess. Accordingly, the inclusion of longer te reo Maōri passages, and finally complete chapters, reveal themselves as this tide flows on. Inevitable, of course, because this nautical natural is swimming increasingly well, given a few sinkings, and therefore the accelerating incorporation of te reo Māori reflects deeply his progressive aquatic marathon.
I pointed out earlier that – despite the forward momentum of the studies – Te Kaikaukau is not a straight ahead anecdote, that it dips and dives all over the ocean that is the life of Witi Ihimaera Smiler. Which is exactly how it ‘should be’! For oratory in te ao Māori was and is, circumlocutory, digressive, reiterative, synchronizing past, present and future into a seamless and intertwined whole, and – in the same fashion – smoothly fusing the literal interplaying of man and ngā atua. The author achieves his goal of becoming infused with te reo Maōri as a living force. Te Kaikaukau – The Swimmer is an ouroboros, Witi Ihimaera Smiler becomes an amphibious aquanaut.
I will conclude with Witi’s own summation of his watery voyage –
‘The purpose of my going to Takiura was to learn how to write in te reo as well as to speak in it. I hope, very soon, to be able to do it...I will begin by telling a story for all our tamariki: Once upon a time...
Morimoria a tātou tamariki, ko rātou hoki te iwi o āpōpō.
Cherish the children of today, for they are the people of tomorrow.’
I iterate also that at the same time, Whiti becomes his essential completed self,
Tēnā koe mō tēnei taonga a Witi. He pono tēnei whakataukī – ‘Whakaotia te kete mātauranga’.
Morimoria a tātou tamariki, ko rātou hoki te iwi o āpōpō.
Review by Vaughan Rapatahana
(Te Ātiawa, Ngāti Te Whiti)
(Te Ātiawa, Ngāti Te Whiti)
Title: Te Kaikaukau / The Swimmer: i te ao o te reo
Author: Witi Ihimaera Smiler
Publisher: Auckland University Press
ISBN: 9781776712380
RRP: $45
Available: bookshops
Author: Witi Ihimaera Smiler
Publisher: Auckland University Press
ISBN: 9781776712380
RRP: $45
Available: bookshops
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