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Image design: Archi Banal
Image design: Archi Banal

ĀteaMarch 14, 2022

Te Korimako 94.8FM – keeping the Taranaki dialect alive

Contributing writer
Image design: Archi Banal
Image design: Archi Banal

More than any individual voice or message it amplified, the radio station has been a megaphone for te mita o Taranaki, the unique dialect of the region’s eight tribes.

Te Korimako – 94.8FM turns 30 next month. And like many Māori born and raised in the shadow of Taranaki Mounga, I grew up bathed in its kōrero. It was probably 94.8 that was playing when my sister crashed Dad’s burgundy Celica and when I crashed Dad’s Mitsubishi Gallant and when I put Dad’s big red van through the back of the shed, writing off not only his van but the shed too. If it wasn’t Engelbert Humperdinck’s ‘Ten Guitars’, it was 94.8 playing every year Koro took us to Hawera’s A’n’P show, cruising past a hundred families walking the long walk to the Egmont Racing Club’s front gate because Nan had a mobility parking permit. And I know for a fact it was 94.8 where I first heard Shaggy’s ‘It Wasn’t Me’ sitting in the passenger seat of my uncle’s four-wheel drive. A memory that, while not life-changing, has endured 22 years. ‬

The station itself is only a little older than I am, established in 1992 on the Bell Street campus of the Taranaki Polytechnic by the late Dr Huirangi Waikerepuru and Te Ururoa Flavell, the latter since serving as the co-leader of Te Pati Māori and chief executive of Te Wānanga o Aotearoa. It began as a three-month trial run entirely by volunteers, a collection of pioneers with the foresight to see what the future could bring. Pitched as “your tribal pulse” and reaching radios across the region, 94.8 went from strength to strength, moving in 1993 to the Rangiātea campus and away again in 1996, amplifying the message and voices of so many pou of our rohe including Archie Hurunui, Tamzyn-Rose Pue and Te Poihi Campbell.  

Te Korimako has always been a beautiful mix of new and old, te ao tawhito and te ao hou, in the morning covering current affairs and in the evening talking through different purakau and karakia. Sown among the kōrero is a soundtrack that perfectly matches this mix, the two songs playing back to back as I write this: K.C and the Sunshine Band’s Boogie shoes and Te Matatini Ki Te Ao performed by an array of modern Māori talent including Pere Wihongi and Rob Ruha. 

More than any individual voice or message it amplified, the station has been a megaphone for te mita o Taranaki, the unique dialect of our region’s eight tribes – Ngāti Tama, Ngāti Mutunga, Ngāti Maru, Te Ātiawa, Taranaki Iwi, Ngāruahine, Ngāti Ruanui and Ngā Rauru Kītahi. This was a part of the vision from the jump: Te Korimako, beginning as many kaikōkorero, returned home to the Taranaki Polytechnic, its Rangiātea campus quickly becoming a Māori hub of sorts with 94.8, Kohanga Reo and Kura Kaupapa all on-site. In the words of one of its founders, Dr Huirangi: “Ko Te Korimako o Taranaki kua whakatūria mō te reo o Taranaki.” Te Korimako o Taranaki was established for the language of Taranaki. 

In truth, it wasn’t until I was a teenager that I even recognised Taranaki Māori had an accent, that our brand of reo Māori was in any way different from the rest of the motu. Key features of the mita include the absence of the h sound in kupu Māori; the wh in powhiri being pronounced closer to the wh in whine than the typical English f sound; some unique regional spelling, mounga instead of maunga; and a number of distinct regional kupu – tauheke for old man in place of the more widely known koroua. It must be said that there are many dialects in Taranaki, Dr Huirangi noting that each iwi sounds like the environment that surrounds them. Still, speaking broadly, the key features noted above are what make te mita o Taranaki distinct. As with so many letters in English, I never questioned why the reta h was silent. Not there for decoration but to make clear that wai meant water or river or stream and whai, while sounding identical in the hustle and bustle of a conversation, meant follow. 

The reinvigoration of te mita is one of 94.8’s most important contributions. The waiata and the current affairs and the kōrero tuku iho that sail across its airwaves are not without great importance, but the mita itself is what distinguishes 94.8 from every other frequency. Like te reo Māori contains within it a history, its structure and ingredients revealing how Māori have understood and interacted with the world, so does te mita contain within it the history of Taranaki Māori. 

Take Waitara as an example. Its name, while commonly interpreted as meaning mountain stream, may instead be a reference to the magical journey of a son in search of his father. Waitara really being Whaitara pronounced without the h. As ethnologist Percy Smith tells it, Ngārue was a man of great prestige raised in Taranaki, the whanaunga of Te Moungaroa, the chief and priest of Kurahaupō waka. One day, he ventured to Kawhia where he married Uru-te-kakara. After a run-in with the locals where his mana was insulted, he returned to Taranaki, the now pregnant Uru-te-kakara refusing to go with him, Kawhia being her home. When her baby was born, he was named Whare-matangi and grew to be a strong lad, frequently the winner of games, including teka, where the goal is to throw a dart – sometimes a toetoe reed and sometimes the stalk of the bracken fern – as far as possible. 

Then came a time when, provoked by his peers for being a bastard, he asked his mother where his old man was. She took him to a high ridge near the coast and told him he lives below that snow-clad mountain whose name is Taranaki. Whare-matangi grew a little older and more adept in the ways of a Māori man and decided it was time to find his father. With the blessing of his whānau and having been gifted a magical dart that would be his compass, he set out, throwing the dart and following its lead. After every throw, the dart glided for miles until eventually it fixed itself into the side of his old man’s whare much the same way I fixed my old man’s van into the rear wall of his garage. For this adventure the river was blessed with a new name: Whaitara-nui-a-Ngārue. Or, as it’s remembered today, Whaitara – the path of the dart. 

And so Whare-matangi’s journey has been written and passed down through wānanga. A whole history hidden behind a silent reta, apparent only to those with the proper codex. Te mita o Taranaki: the accent of Te Korimako – 94.8FM, your tribal pulse.

Airana Ngarewa is a Māori political affairs reporter, creating public interest journalism funded through NZ On Air.

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Image: Supplied/RNZ; additional design by Archi Banal
Image: Supplied/RNZ; additional design by Archi Banal

ĀteaMarch 14, 2022

Is poisoning pests the Māori way?

Guest writer
Image: Supplied/RNZ; additional design by Archi Banal
Image: Supplied/RNZ; additional design by Archi Banal

Some of those opposed to the use of 1080 poison to control pests say it’s ‘un-Māori’. Tame Malcolm unpacks these claims, arguing that to the contrary, protecting the environment is at the heart of whakaaro Māori.

When it comes to animal pest management in Aotearoa, there are a few controversial topics. Simply asking about some of these on social media can erupt into full-blown debates. For example, will we eradicate possums, stoats and rats by 2050 as per the predator-free government’s goal? Should cats be controlled? Should deer and pigs be considered a pest or a resource? Should Aotearoa look to gene-editing technology?

But in my opinion, none is more controversial than the use of 1080 toxin to control pest species, which has spawned countless rallies and protests by the small number of those opposed to it, not to mention damage and threats caused to those who support 1080’s use. 

Amid the noise of the 1080 debate is one message that I absolutely loathe – something along the lines of “you are not Māori if you support 1080!” There’s only one answer to such a nonsense notion: if you have whakapapa Māori, you are Māori. 

Some opponents, meanwhile, say that using 1080 isn’t a Māori way to manage pests. Is there a specific way of doing Māori pest management? Is it following traditional tikanga and kawa to control pests? Is it using the ways of our tūpuna, ie pre-European Māori approaches? Or is it simply just being Māori and managing pests? 

I think we can all agree that trying to define a “Māori” way would be difficult. Māori culture has evolved from the time when our tūpuna left Hawaiki, to their arrival in Aotearoa, the hundreds of years spent living in this ecosystem, European arrival and colonisation, right up to now with all this new technology.

So what is it about the use of 1080 toxin that is deemed un-Māori? Is it the fact that it’s using a toxin to kill an animal? Some say that adding a poison to our whenua is unnatural, and therefore un-Māori. But Māori history and culture has many examples of toxin use. Kawakawa, for example, was used to kill insects. A known insecticide, it would be buried in the ground around kūmara gardens – adding poison to the whenua to deter insects.

Photograph of heart-shaped green leaves with holes (kawakawa plant)
Kawakawa was buried around kūmara gardens to deter insects (Photo: LazingBee/iStock/Getty Images Plus)

Some readers may be thinking “kawakawa is from our whenua, whereas 1080 isn’t”. But the active ingredient in 1080 – sodium monofluoroacetate – can be found naturally occurring in pūha in small amounts.

At some pā sites around the country, meanwhile, our tūpuna would line their kūmara pits with rarauhe (bracken fern). Kiore that would try to burrow into the kūmara pits would have to gnaw through the toxic plant to get to the kūmara, thus get poisoned.

Another aspect of the use of 1080 often called upon as an example of being un-Māori is the fact it gets into water. Now, the science shows that 1080 breaks down in water very readily, and what’s more, toxins in water were not something foreign to our tūpuna. In some iwi, tūpāpaku were buried in lakes and rivers. This would result in a rāhui being placed on that area, and, for physical and spiritual wellbeing, no food or water was to be taken from there.

As you can see, our tūpuna were no strangers to toxins. They knew how to mitigate the effects of toxins in plants like karaka, which could then become a food source, and would also translocate ongaonga – stinging nettle – and place it in areas from which they wanted to deter unwelcome visitors.

Recently, there was research into using the toxic native tutu species as a toxin. Not only did the research show it was possible, but it also garnered interest from Māori communities who were keen on using our own mātauranga to address the pest problem.

Ongaonga (Photo: John Braggins)

Some have argued that the mass killing of pests that comes with using 1080 toxin is also un-Māori-like. But this argument doesn’t really hold up, in my opinion, because our tūpuna would catch large quantities of fish using nets. Tāruke (crayfish traps) and hīnaki both operate on the premise of catching en masse.

Perhaps it’s the fact that 1080 results in large quantities of dead lying around. Again, this is not something new to our culture. After battles, our tūpuna would lay out dead bodies, such as on the large rock Te Aroaro o te Rangi Ka Awatea on Mokoia Island in Lake Rotorua, where the dead were splayed out to dry. 

Then there are those who argue that using 1080 means whānau can’t go into the forest, and that access to the forest is our right as Māori. This argument forgets that rāhui were commonplace for managing resources, as well as protecting the people and the mauri of the forest. 

Finally, there are some who claim the use of 1080 isn’t whakaaro Māori because it means whānau can’t be employed to trap. This argument confuses me because at its heart, it’s putting people’s needs first: that is, the need for employment is the first consideration. If I have learnt anything from my kaumātua and whānau, it’s that the environment is number one. If you don’t take care of the environment, it will not take care of you. 

So I end by saying that perhaps the most Māori way I can think of to manage pest animals is to put the needs of the environment above the needs and wants of humans. After all, it was human greed that got us in this mess.

Ātea