Witi Ihimaera on learning te reo: ‘I wonder how the hell I survived so long'

Because of his proud Māori identity and many books about Māori subjects, many people assume Witi Ihimaera is fluent in te reo.

Last year, the award-winning writer faced the reality that not only was this untrue, he'd spent his life living and writing "in the wrong language".

"I would go home to my house in suburban Herne Bay and just realise that in many ways, I had been playing being someone who knew these things and been ashamed of that ... I wonder how the hell I survived so long," he tells Saturday Morning.

Witi Underwater launches on 16 June. From 5pm on Sunday 22 June, you can hear full episodes on RNZ National and also on Iwi Radio.

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Shortly before signing up for the infamously difficult, year-long te reo Māori course at Te Wānanga Takiura, Ihimaera says he had a troubling realisation at his cousin's tangihanga .

As the tuakana [elder] of his whānau, farewelling a relative in English or even “very limited” te reo was insufficient, he tells Mihi Forbes.

“The beauty of te reo, the ability for the reo to sing and to give dignity to the person who's just died eluded me, eludes me still.

"I will never, ever, ever let that indignity happen to my beloved relative in tangihanga.”

As a child growing up in the village of Waituhi near Gisborne, Ihimaera was taught te reo by his grandparents, but says that because he wanted to be a writer, the English language soon "rushed in" and replaced that early learning.

In the early 1970s, he became the first Māori writer to publish a collection of short stories (Pounamu, Pounamu) and then a novel (Tangi).

After the worldwide success of his 1978 novel The Whale Rider, Ihimaera was regarded as one of the world's leading indigenous authors.

“I used to think of myself as being a two-mouth tangata - a person who was very, very good at speaking with one mouth, but my other mouth - my true mouth, my tutu mouth, my Māori mouth - was not working well.”

In the new podcast Witi Underwater, Ihimaera speaks about how fearful he was turning up as a student at Te Wānanga Takiura.

When his shocked classmates asked what Aotearoa's best-known Māori writer was doing there, he told them that not only did he have a lot to learn, he would need their support to get through the course.

“There were times when I went home and I kept on sobbing and saying to myself, 'Why am I not getting my language back? What's wrong with me?'

“I had to get over myself, of course... I still have my bad grammar habits. I still have a problem with language retention."

Ihimaera now accepts that learning Māori syntax, grammar and verb variations will be a lifelong pursuit.

"I'm devouring every book I can about the structure of the language. I'm really looking forward to picking up Tūmahi Māori by Hone Waengarangi Morris."

After completing the Te Wānanga Takiura course, Ihimaera says he feels "much stronger and much more powerful as a person"

He's now catching up on the mātauranga [wisdom] embedded within the language that he was missing out on before.

"[Te Reo Māori] is a storehouse of all Māori knowledge and you can't really get at it unless you say 'Huakine hēhami' - Open Sesame - and you can only say that in te reo."

Although he'll never be "very, very good" at speaking te reo Māori, Ihimaera is now looking forward to getting into its "wairua" by writing a novel.

The rest of his life will be centred on writing and offering wisdom to young Māori writers, while also learning from them, he says.

"I do this work to whakamana [empower] the young.”

This October, Ihimaera will teach at a ten-day hui in Gisborne, hosted by the new Māori writing organisation Te Kaituhi Māori, which he chairs.

“As usual, for Māori, we're doing it on the smell of an oily rag. But we are managing really well. The fumes that can come off an oily rag are awesome."