Listening with open hearts
If you click this LINK you can read the poem from the book The Art of Walking Upright, which along with the words of Aunty Rangi, have inspired me to write this post.
It is funny how the universe conspires to work in our favour and brings to us provocations that deeply touch our hearts and minds. This poem and the following words from the book Still Being Punished have done that for me this week. The words of Aunty Rangi reminded us of how paradoxical we can feel here is Aotearoa for both Tangata Whenua and Tangata Te Tiriti.
Context to the following words is - a pakeha relative was encouraged to whaikōrero at the marae. This act made Aunty Rangi cry. This is the explanation she gave in the book: “When she was a child at school the Pākeha teachers strapped her if she inadvertently or accidentally forgot the rules and spoke in her mother tongue, te reo Māori. As she watched this young Pākehā man stand on her marae, pace forward, begin his tauparapara, the irony and the pain hit her in the chest and she wept. How, she asked, could the mokopuna of those teachers now stand on our marae and speak in our language, the language that she had lost because of their rules, their actions, their attitudes to her and her whānau? How had we come to the point where they themselves stood on our marae and spoke our language, the language which had been beaten out of us with straps, canes and the hand of the Pākehā teachers?”
Her feelings and her emotions were mixed. I thought that these words worth sharing. The words of Aunty Rangi are not a judgement, it should not make tauiwi defensive but rather it should touch our hearts to feel the pain, the angst and the confusion for tangata whenua. The poem from the book The Art of Walking Upright written by Glenn Colquhoun is also a reminder that we are all living inside a world that often feels paradoxical.
Recently I have been intrigued with the power of pūrākau and ngā kōrero o neherā which held the historical accounts so that the knowledge and wisdom of tūpuna became part of everyday life. I wonder if this is the key to keeping our hearts open to enable us to really listen, without out judgement, without being defensive, but to listen to understand.