Just some of the things that might be called a waka (Image: Tina Tiller)
Just some of the things that might be called a waka (Image: Tina Tiller)

PoliticsNovember 28, 2023

Don’t know what the word ‘waka’ means? Here’s a handy guide

Deputy editor
Just some of the things that might be called a waka (Image: Tina Tiller)
Just some of the things that might be called a waka (Image: Tina Tiller)

For our new deputy leader, the name Waka Kotahi is the ultimate example of the woke silliness he’s rallying against. But words having multiple meanings is not some modern perversion, and waka is no exception.

As part of his ongoing crusade to rid New Zealand of wokery, conniving cultural cabals, elite virtue-signalling and bulldust of all kinds, our new deputy prime minister is planning to make public service departments use their English names instead of their te reo ones.

Winston Peters has been flogging this particular policy pony since at least March, and it was one of NZ First’s big wins in its coalition deal with National, which was finally signed on Friday. When he’s spoken about the policy, Peters cites the potential for confusion: people might not know what a government agency does if they don’t understand its name, he reckons.

From the get go, there has been one agency name that particularly pisses off the NZ First leader. It’s not Te Whatu Ora, Oranga Tamariki, Ara Poutama or Whaikaha, though those no doubt irk him too. He’s reserved the bulk of his disdain for Waka Kotahi, AKA the NZ Transport Agency. Why? Because this organisation is focused on land transport, and you know what doesn’t travel on the land? A waka. A waka, as everybody knows, is a canoe. And a canoe, as everybody knows, is “a lightweight narrow water vessel, typically pointed at both ends and open on top, propelled by one or more seated or kneeling paddlers facing the direction of travel and using paddles”.

“How can you have a waka on the road?” Peters asked Heather Du Plessis-Allan incredulously on Newstalk ZB after the coalition deal was signed on Friday. Clearly not satisfied with her failure to answer this simple question, he tried a variation on reporters following the swearing-in ceremony on Monday. “Tell me this, how many boats have you ever seen going down a road?” he spluttered in what, ironically, was probably the least problematic comment of that particular stand-up. He then repeated, with extra exasperation: “How many boats have you seen going on a road anywhere in the world?”

In terms of getting an answer, Peters had more luck with his quest for knowledge back in March during an interview with Māni Dunlop on RNZ. “Why would you have a waka on the road?” he asked. “They belong to the sea.” Dunlop responded that waka was “an interpretation of a moving vehicle”. Peters pointed out that “the only vehicle they had at the time”, presumably meaning when te reo Māori came into being, “was on the water”. Dunlop said, with a sigh, “language adapts”. 

But Peters – not unlike Invercargill mayor Nobby Clarke, who is out to rid the world of metaphors – is clearly a literal fellow, and he didn’t buy this woke virtue-signalling “language adapts” business. 

Winston Peters at parliament with reporters
POV: you’ve just referred to your car as a waka (Photo: Getty Images)

Fair enough. Change is scary. And, while I acknowledge the problematic nature of a Pākehā upstart with a few night classes under her belt and a passion for online research explaining a Māori term to a Māori man, I thought I’d lay out a few things in case anyone else is as confused about it all as Peters. (After all, my Māori peers in the media might already have their hands full with this government’s many problematic policies pertaining to tangata whenua, so I figured I could take this one.) So here are all the reasons why having “waka” in the name of a transport agency actually makes a whole lot of sense.

Firstly, and most obviously, words can have more than one meaning. In addition to being a canoe, a waka can be a vessel or receptacle of some sort, for example a waka huia (a treasure box), or a waka atua (a person through whom a god is being channelled). It also means a vehicle of any kind. While the official word is motokā (from motorcar), it’s very common for people who speak te reo to refer to their cars as waka. I struggle to believe Peters doesn’t know this – surely if his mate Shane Jones, a fluent te reo speaker, said to him after a session at the Duke: “Winnie, hop in my waka, you’ve had one too many whiskies to drive yourself,” Peters would head to the carpark, not the shore? 

It’s not just cars: anything that moves will likely be called a waka. Waka rererangi: plane. Waka pēpi: pram. Waka rōnaki: roller coaster. This, perhaps, would be cold comfort to Peters, who has already taken issue with the concept of a waka in the sky and would no doubt think the fact rollercoaster had been given a Māori word at all was woke bulldust of the highest order. (It’s worth noting that this is a convention used in many Pacific languages: in Niuean, a plane is vakalele and in Sāmoan, va’alele. Both translate literally to flying canoe.) 

An Auckland bus lane at dusk
Cars, or waka, in action (Image: Getty Images)

But as much as Peters would like to believe this language quirk is a modern perversion, I’d wager that Māori have been calling cars waka since the first vroom vrooms arrived on these shores. Hell, even Apiranga Ngata, Peter Buck, Māui Pomare and James Carroll – to whom Peters refers on a weirdly frequent basis in an attempt to explain why things in the past were better – probably called them that.

You want proof, Winston? Take the example listed right underneath the word “waka” in Te Aka, the Māori dictionary (italics added by me): “Ko ngā tiriti o tērā tāone kapi tonu i ngā tū āhua waka o te Pākehā, mai i te hōiho kawekawe mīti a te pūtia tae noa ki ngā tū āhua katoa o te taramukā”. The translation given, with italics again added by me, is, “The streets of that town are full of all sorts of vehicles of the Pākehā, from the horse carrying the butcher’s meat to all sorts of tramcars.” The source? Not some woke government document from the 21st century, but a 1909 edition of Māori language newspaper Te Pipiwharauroa.

To bring in another of Peters’ interests, vaccine mandates, let us turn to an example from the 1913 smallpox epidemic, when all sorts of restrictions were placed on Māori and Māori only. This notice in te reo, printed in multiple newspapers at the time, said Māori could only travel on a “public conveyance” if they’d been vaccinated. Various forms of public transport are listed, such as railway, steamer and tramcar, with the addition “era atu tu waka ranei e tuwhera ana ki te katoa” – or any other “waka” that’s open to everyone.

I can go earlier and weirder to prove that “waka” has been more than a canoe for a hell of a long time. How’s an 1883 reference to a hot air balloon, or waka i te puruna, from Māori language newspaper Korimako, for you? 

Turns out words can have many meanings, or even just one meaning with many applications. Hopefully this little guide has demystified one of those words for you, dear reader, and for our deputy prime minister (for the next 1.5 years).

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Image: Tina Tiller
Image: Tina Tiller

OPINIONPoliticsNovember 28, 2023

Stripping child protection law of Tiriti provisions would be huge step backwards

Image: Tina Tiller
Image: Tina Tiller

What the new government is proposing is highly regressive and likely to cause harm to Māori children and families, writes Luke Fitzmaurice-Brown. But it will be fought every step of the way, and decolonisation efforts will continue regardless.

The appointment of Karen Chhour as minister for children represents a significant milestone, as never before has the holder of that position been a survivor of the state care system. Chhour knows the damage the system can do when things go badly and often mentioned children in state care in her first term as an MP. She has made restoring the independent oversight of Oranga Tamariki one of her new priorities as minister, but unfortunately, that is where the good news ends. 

The National-Act coalition agreement includes a commitment to repeal section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act 1989. That provision is the primary legal mechanism for recognising the Crown’s Te Tiriti o Waitangi duties in the child protection system. It outlines a range of obligations for Oranga Tamariki relating to Māori children and whānau. Those include reducing disparities between Māori and non-Māori children in contact with the state care system, forming partnerships with iwi, and prioritising the tikanga of mana tamaiti, whakapapa and whanaungatanga in policy and practice. 

The passage of s7AA in 2017 was the first time that Te Tiriti had ever been mentioned in New Zealand’s child protection laws. To be clear: it is far from perfect. The Waitangi Tribunal has said that far from fully upholding the Crown’s obligations in this area, section 7AA actually waters down those obligations. Article 2 of Te Tiriti o Waitangi assured Māori tino rangatiratanga over kāinga, which the tribunal clearly stated encompasses child protection issues. In practice, the protections enabled by section 7AA are far narrower than what Te Tiriti itself provides for. 

Nevertheless, those gains were hard-fought by Māori, and remain an important (though inadequate) source of protection for Māori children and families against the power of the state. As the Tribunal discussed, the child protection system has had a huge role in the colonisation process, removing thousands of Māori children from their families and systematically undermining essential Māori values and practices. Section 7AA was the most significant legislative change since 1989 aimed at addressing those problems, and the new government now seeks to repeal it. 

They will not be allowed to do so without a fight. In 2019, thousands of people took to the streets to protest the treatment of Māori children and families by Oranga Tamariki and its predecessors. Those protests led to six different reviews of the agency, arguably the most significant of which was the Waitangi Tribunal inquiry. All six reviews recommended widespread change, with several of them stating that the current agency would never be able to address the underlying problems driving child protection inequities for Māori. Even bigger protests are likely to result if the government follows through on the promises they have made to try to strip the Oranga Tamariki Act of its Te Tiriti provisions. Just as will be the case with any other anti-Tiriti legislation the new government tries to pass, advocates for Māori will fight those changes at every step. 

Protesters against Oranga Tamariki’s treatment of Māori whānau march on parliament in 2019 (Photo: Ana Tovey/RNZ)

As an advocate for a decolonised child protection system, I am given hope by that unwavering willingness in communities to oppose regressive reforms. But what also gives me hope is that far from just beginning, the decolonisation of the child protection system is well under way. Across the country, Māori have been rebuilding the capacity to care for our own for decades now. Sometimes it has been led by iwi, sometimes by organisations like the Māori Women’s Welfare League, and other times it has been individual aunties and nannies who are fiercely determined to ensure that not one more Māori baby be taken by the state. Section 7AA has often helped, but the decolonisation of the child protection system started before that provision existed, and it won’t just stop if it is repealed. 

What the new government is proposing is highly regressive and very likely to cause harm to Māori children and families. Section 7AA is not in the law as an empty gesture, it is there because upholding Te Tiriti in relation to child protection could significantly improve outcomes for Māori whānau. Upholding Te Tiriti is also the Crown’s most central constitutional obligation, and they cannot just legislate that responsibility away.

The good news for the new government is that there is still time to look at the evidence and understand the issues surrounding Oranga Tamariki in their wider context. Should they do so, they will see that removing the first and only mention of Te Tiriti o Waitangi in our child protection laws is a terrible idea. But the good news for the rest of us is that there is only so much the government can do. The law matters, and I would much prefer that our child protection laws continue to mention Te Tiriti. But changing laws is only one part of decolonisation, and often it’s not the most important part. Where outcomes for Māori have improved in the last few years it has usually been down to the work of dedicated people on the ground. Those efforts are an essential aspect of decolonisation, and those efforts will continue. The government now has a choice whether to support, or to oppose, that vitally important work. I hope they choose wisely.

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Anna Rawhiti-Connell
— Senior writer

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