Editor’s note: The author has chosen to remain anonymous because of the close proximity they have to the subject matter. Writing about these topics necessarily implicates the family and thus there are not many safe ways to do this, without the protection of anonymity. As someone who can relate to this topic, it was initially very triggering. This piece delves deep into the topics listed above, and brought back memories I’ve minimised all these years, as my coping mechanism. I had to read it in multiple sittings. However, I came to find some relief in at least having some language to articulate my conflicted and shameful thoughts; and some comfort, in knowing that I’m not completely alone in this.

*

This is a biography of my paternal grandfather, a man who has indecently assaulted all of his granddaughters. He is technically guilty, though may die without ever being officially charged, of incest, rape, sexual assault, and child molestation. Unavoidably, this is also a story about my family.   

The evils closest to us, the ones raised in the same domestic spaces as our virtues, are difficult to place at the clinical table of analysis. To pluck out these evils means wrenching away, alongside the cancer, so many other vital organs. Imagine my bony hands, my gloved forefingers and thumbs, rubbing through latex to feel for lumps across the bloody oesophagus of your childhood. Now, near the heart, I am prodding that fond memory of the Christmas when you received the Barbie doll you wanted, the one with the grocery cart. Here, parallel to the trachea, your first pet dies, and now your first day at school, you were so good that day, you sat on the mat without even being asked. Finally, at the top of the throat just before the mouth, lodged within the image of your father tucking stray locks behind your ear over and over (“my little angel,” he keeps saying), is your grandfather forcing his way in through the locked bathroom door to come and watch you, still a vulnerable idiot with your pants hanging over the sides of your little shoes, as you sit on the toilet. Recall how your mother would lovingly comb the tangles from your hair in the shower of that same bathroom.

In conversation, I’ve found that the topic of child sexual abuse (CSA) struggles to get beyond the bounds of “children can’t consent” — consent, that golden word — child sexuality being all but totally non-existent until the very sudden age of sixteen, a view that sometimes worsens the shame felt by victims of CSA. To obfuscate further, perpetrators of such domestic evils are treated as monsters — we fear their existence to the extent that few are brave enough to comprehend child sexual abusers, or those who enable them, as humans, that is, as our friends, our family, as woven into the fabric of our society.  

A Family Monster

After the consecutive breakdowns of the two sisters, one in class and the other during a test, the German teacher of the local high school was overheard confiding quietly to another staff member:

“There is something wrong with that family.”

Civilised, dipping their biscuits in watery coffee, the other staff in the religious department construed the teacher’s deduction as harmless intuition, and though for a while they thrilled from the new gossip, eventually the issue was politely, correctly, forgotten. Inquiring about the family of the two sisters was sensitive, and it might have brought the school into an array of difficulties — grudges, cultural particularities, and possible accusations of over-stepping boundaries.

Fear, monsters teach us, is remarkably constructive. Whole societies are built, not only by need and desire, but by terror — by walls and weapons, by jails and mad houses. More insidiously, fear prescribes many labyrinths of evasion, seemingly benign, like bureaucracy, or denial.  

The catalyst had been a text message, then still an exciting novelty. One propitiously warm afternoon, Reginald had sent a confession to one of his granddaughters. “I cant b around u anymore…” he wrote. Alarmed, the granddaughter dropped her books in the locker room and texted back “why?” His reply was quick — almost premeditated: “because if I c u again I am afraid that I will have to kiss you… I am in love with you”

Mama was the first adult to be told about what was happening to her daughter. Reginald is her husband’s father, the head of that model family who laughingly regard her as a superstitious housewife, while she, from the lowly position of the kitchen counter, resents them. Troubling though it is, it is conceivable that Mama felt — burning white at the centre of her outrage — a little triumph.

Mama arranged to meet Reginald’s two daughters at a café, where she unsteadily recounted what had been said by her daughter, seeking calm in their educated, liberated presence. She assumed their neutral expressions for composure or intellect, but when she finished speaking, they laughed.

In stories we read as children, it is always the marginalised who are the earliest to admit the possibility of the monster’s existence, while the better positioned members of a community, those who have benefitted from the structures where the monster feeds, are the last to cede through recognition.

Mama tells me they said that she was crazy and that their father was probably just “joking around.” He’s just a funny old man with a penchant for incest jokes. At the time, they didn’t know that their own children had been molested as well.

The Immigrant

Evil induces incomprehension, a terrifying Otherness straining the many ethical philosophies hinging on our human responsibility to each other. Yet, part of being good, at least among the aspiring progressive milieu, is being open-minded about those unlike you, a generosity which is favourable for immigrants like me, and like my grandfather. The oft omitted truth of immigrant families is that there will be members who hate their new home, and a degree of alienation inevitably attends the status of the foreigner; the phantom itch of a mother tongue torn out because its language has no currency here, among other ills.

In hindsight, one might have predicted that Reginald would someday become a lonely man; it was only a question of how. Poets are often lonely. He thought of poetry when he walked. He always loved to walk, and would do so for long hours, travelling many miles by foot, the distances lengthening as he grew older. He could have kept going one day, headed all the way to central Manila and caught a bus, a plane or boat, to Boracay, to Dumaguete, to Davao. Freedom. 50 years ago, he could not have guessed where loneliness would come about.

This proud man, the perfume peddling charmer, harried away from the sultry climes of that far off archipelago to live out his last years in the sterile, dry chill of the antipodes. New Zealand: where hardly anyone speaks Tagalog, where loud laughter is berated and silence is so precious that conversing too avidly on the bus warrants glares from other passengers. Everywhere, white faces staring with their grey eyes, speaking in slow cluttered gibberish to him, a poet, presuming him stupid and poor. Sometime earlier in Reginald’s life, I cannot pinpoint precisely when, an ecstatic lack had taken root, and it finally erupted into flower in this strange climate. Evil thrives unchecked.

Open-mindedness improves society — it allows Others to become Us — but it requires the ability and willingness to participate in social norms, our laws, our ways. Falling too far outside of these revered tenets marks you as deviant or insane. Positively correlated with just such social exclusion are, to name a few: poor mental and physical health, substance abuse, crime, lower living standards, and suicide.   

James Baldwin once spoke of how a Negro father has no authority over his son, because “his past has disappeared.” Something similar might be said of the fathers of immigrant children, or at least those in my own life. What knowledge can my father, or his father, impart to me about how to live in this foreign land, this modern world, that shares with them only a mutual incomprehension? Equally, a man who shares no history with a place might see no reason to obey its laws. In the case of Reginald, he wilfully tests the law, routinely committing petty crimes — shoplifting, trespassing, and destruction of property — which are passed off by bemused authorities, open-minded men and women, as the quirks of a strange old immigrant. His Otherness endows him with a little freedom, a bit of wiggle room, when it comes to social norms. Later, a digital camera he had stolen from the mall would be found with hundreds of pictures of young women on it.

A Patriarch

The immigrant patriarch occupies the position of the weak and the powerful simultaneously. According to Papa, Reginald’s despotism had softened since middle age, or so everyone believed, and as their frightful memories of his temper softened into bucolic pastorals of childhood discipline, nostalgia became a cloak for his actions. Slowly, Baldwin’s quote inverted. It was exactly because my family’s collective past had disappeared from their daily lives that my grandfather, a symbol of that history, managed to secure so much filial power.

The marriage of my paternal grandparents, Reginald and Felice, was an unhappy one, and looking at the two of them now, you might suppose that they had never been in love — indeed, it is easier for me to imagine that my grandfather had raped Felice to produce his offspring than to picture them linking hands.

Before my mother and father were forcibly married, Felice told Mama that she and my grandfather had not had sex for 30 years. Despite the barren state of her marriage, Felice persisted in its preservation because it was ordained by God, and she has always had an affinity for God’s wrath. Nowhere in the bible does it specify “thou shalt protect thy grandchildren from the molestations of thy husband,” and Felice apparently took this omission literally. Even after it was revealed that Reginald had, indeed, not only professed his romantic feelings for one of his granddaughters, but had periodically molested each of them, my grandmother made it her wifely duty to ensure that order was upheld at family gatherings, at which my grandfather continued to be present, commanding all of us to kiss our monster, to press his hand against our foreheads as a show of our respect, our allegiance to him and to God.

Papa visited Reginald last summer. My grandparents share a government-funded home, one cornered by four replicas of the same design at the end of a cul-de-sac in Taita. Papa and I sat in Floridita’s together with my grandmother, who picked at her risotto for the duration of our meal. Papa told me that Reginald had been diagnosed with dementia and had suffered several strokes, resulting in paranoia, a short temper, loss of appetite — imminent death something of a pleasant subtext. Felice, at several points during the conversation, interjected that Reginald has been threatening to kill her for a long time. “He tried to kill me,” she said. He had — he had tied her to the bed and left her to die.

A woman gagged and bound to a bed is pornographic, and sex has as much to do with this story as loneliness. Manhood in my family is defined in opposition to the womanhood of its daughters and wives, their subjugation and subjection. Mama used to tell me that sex is something only men enjoy; your body and its unused nuptial “gifts” belong to your father until he gives them to another man. These are my father’s ideas. Owing to the same attitudes, my grandfather believes his granddaughters’ bodies are his possessions, and that he has done everything within his rights.

Asian immigrants are shown to have markedly lower numbers of reported CSA than most other ethnicities, though researchers generally assume that the statistics do not imply a lack of CSA incidents in Asian communities; instead, it is believed that the families are less willing to disclose it. To this, I can only offer my own experience. Though my father and his siblings wear their New Zealand citizenships with pride, I find them, even in the face of monsters, stubbornly clinging to vestiges of home. The importance of these relics only mounts as time churns on, eroding my family’s ability to recall and, indeed, ever return to their home as it once was.

My family has not, and likely never will, report what my grandfather has done.

Trust

Evil, moral philosopher Susan Neiman writes, “shatters our trust in the world.” True; experience has led me to question the legitimacy of so much of what we are told is important. Family, love, loyalty, and belonging are, to me, all synonyms for ownership. Likewise I question the values of individualism, the worth of authenticity, freedom, and personal feelings, given how ethical duties so often require their suspension. But I would not regard my trust shattered, so much as reshaped. Some might describe me as cynical, especially when it comes to how people relate to children, or whether people should have children in the first place. But ponder the statistics that mean that when you are in a room with three or more women, it is likely that at least one of them has been sexually abused as a child. The same is the case in a room with six or more men. Of 16 men, you may be looking at least one who has raped someone before. How misshapen, then, does trust begin to look.

When I was young, my father used to brush my hair after my shower, and he would say, with each stroke, “my little angel.” When we would come home from our outings alone together, he would declare loudly to my mother, full of love, “we are back from our date.”

One weekend, my sister took me shopping and helped me choose what would become my preferred outfit that year: a blush pink hoodie and a pair of brown corduroys. I loved that outfit so much I wore it every mufti day. On a Saturday, just before my violin lesson that morning, I was traipsing around the lounge, proud to be donning, for the umpteenth time, my favourite corduroys. Papa was sitting on the couch, grinning with those big teeth. As I crossed his path, he slapped me on my ass and said “you have a nice ass.” It would not be the last time he said this. He would say it again and again. He would tell my mother, “she has a nice ass,” and tell me that Mama is jealous of me, of my body. That I have a nice body. He would slap my ass again.

***

Here are my gloved hands, in the bile in your stomach, beating the lining of your womb, squeezing water from your drowning brain. How to interpret this reality, your father, brushing your hair, given what you know about the world, knowing as you do that the majority of CSA in Asian families is perpetrated by fathers; aware, also, that there was a time when your father’s father would never have elicited any suspicions from his daughters. You are not a vulnerable child; you can trust what you know, and fill in the gaps with what reasonably fits. Love is beside the point; you will not be his little girl or his property.

I’m now at an age where I have a legal obligation to report my grandfather to the authorities. Only 3 in 100 reported cases of CSA reach court and I feel, with dull fatalism, that my story is representative of that useless 97. Here is how the labyrinths of evasion wind round and round. It is a question of costs — so much was spent to raise me, why betray that? No one in my family would testify, and there’s no material evidence left to speak of. Time cannot be retrieved. Childhood cannot be rewritten. Round and round and round.

Order and its maintenance are sometimes mistaken for goodness, and for my own part I hope that I will someday be able to really tell the difference. Nevertheless, I believe that to live honestly you have to acknowledge some portion of evil as embedded in the things to which you owe your life, perhaps the very things you love. There’s some hope in acceptance that I won’t fail those I’m responsible for in the same way I was failed. Papa always told me that my gift with words came from my grandfather. Personally, I have always preferred prose, and I have not written a poem in ten years. The last poem I ever wrote, if you could call it one, goes like this:

I have embraced evil,
He kissed me on the mouth,
And told me

I had grown.

*

If you need support:

Victoria University of Wellington — VUW has a number of different support avenues, details are on their website: https://www.victoria.ac.nz/students/campus/health/sexual-violence.

VUWSA advocacy service — Erica Schouten; 04 463 6984; advocate@vuwsa.org.nz

Rape Crisis — 04 801 8973; Crisis line 0800 883 300

Lifeline — 0800 543 354

Women’s Refuge — 0800 733 843; Crisis line 0800 REFUGE

Shakti New Zealand — Crisis line 0800 SHAKTI FREE

Youthline — 0800 376 633

Wellington Sexual Abuse Help Foundation — 04 499 7530; Crisis line 04 499 7532

Tū Pakari Ora — Cuba Street Clinic, 275 Cuba Street, Wellington; 04 805 0522

Hutt Rape Counselling Network — 04 566 5517; Crisis line 0800 22 66 94

Male Survivors of Sexual Abuse Trust (MSSAT)  Wellington — 021 118 1043

ACC Sensitive Claims: 0800 735 566

MOSAIC (Male Survivors of Sexual Abuse): 022 4193416

If you’ve experienced sexual assault or abuse you can report it to NZ police by dialing 111, or learn more here.

After much consideration, I have decided to merely list a few facts about H.P. Lovecraft in an attempt to avoid scaring readers away (I understand, I myself have a habit of skipping over the long articles):

• Howard Phillips Lovecraft was never what you would consider “normal”. From a young age, he suffered from sleep paralysis and was haunted by “night gaunts,” a symptom of hallucinations brought on by the paralysis.
• He barely attended school until the age of eight due to constant sickness, and even then he was pulled out of school after a year.
• The adult Lovecraft is described by Wikipedia as “gaunt with dark eyes set in a very pale face (he rarely went out before nightfall).” (I think our campus goths need to up their game.)
• Throughout his life he also suffered from the deaths of several close family members, including both of his parents (who both died in the same mental institution) and his grandfather, all of which impacted much of his view on life.
• He is believed to likely have been asexual.
• His close friend was called Samuel Loveman (which is fitting).
• Lovecraft was very sensitive to criticism, and often gave up on trying to publish his works after they were rejected once. He never even tried to publish his novella The Case of Charles Dexter Ward because of his fear of rejection.

By this point you may be going “hey, didn’t you mention something about changing the horror genre or something? How exactly?” Yes I did dear reader, and here’s how. Before H.P. Lovecraft, the horror genre was based primarily around vampires, witches, werewolves, and murderers. So what did Lovecraft do? Write about elder gods that shape the nature of the universe and drive people fucking insane. And suddenly, horror could be about anything. You know how Stephen King is one of the most popular horror authors alive? He himself was inspired by Lovecraft. By breaking the boundaries of horror, H.P. Lovecraft opened up a whole world (and beyond) of possibilities. So maybe, if you ever come across one, have a read of one of his many (many, many) short stories. See what he’s about, other than just Cthulhu (don’t get me wrong, Cthulhu is popular for a reason). You never know, you might become a fan. I mean, who can resist the use of such words as phantasmagoria?

Happy birthday Lovecraft. In the genre of horror your legacy lies dreaming.

— A fan from Innsmouth

There is this meme that goes: “Don’t ever be ashamed of who you are, unless you are a whore.”

My name is Min, I am 23-years old, and I am a whore.

Before entering into the “Oldest Profession”, my primary knowledge of the industry came through the lens of mass media; I was familiar with interventions on Dr Phil in which vulnerable women were dragged in front of gleeful housewives to confess the salacious details of their lives — how they degraded themselves and “sold their bodies” to pay for drugs or alcohol, or because they had been abused.

I had frequently seen sex workers portrayed as the butt of jokes or helpless victims in the media. There were also the “more acceptable” sex workers: the hookers with hearts of gold who found themselves in the job due to external factors and a lack of agency, opportunity, or economic tools. There were also the “bad” sex workers: the nymphomaniac deviants who had chosen this life and could be killed off or violently assaulted in horror films and video games without the audience feeling squeamish.

I had heard “jokes” at school ranging from:

“How do you make a hormone?”

“Stick a rusty chainsaw in her.”  

to

“How do you know when the hooker in your trunk is dead?”

“She smells better.”

Like many, I internalised the idea that sex workers were defined only by their job and promiscuity, and subconsciously believed them to be disposable and undeserving of respect and dignity. I am thrilled to inform you that I was very wrong.

My identity is not defined by my status as a sex worker: I am also an artist, a graphic designer, an enthusiastic dancer, an obnoxious singer, and the owner of two (!) living house plants. I perform physical labour for money, just as a plumber or a coal miner may, only with considerably more orgasms.

I didn’t become a sex worker on purpose; in fact the job came as something of a surprise. I grew up in in a large Protestant family in which masturbation, let alone sex before marriage, was considered immoral. When I was 18 my mother banned me from watching Friends because Rachel was a “slut”. This was the latest in a long line of bans that included having male friends visit, holding hands with boys, and attending sex education at school. I didn’t find out what an erection was until I had one jammed inside me, a week before my 21st birthday.

My lack of education resulted in an abusive relationship with a partner who seemed to isolate my sexual function as my primary value. Following this I was sexually assaulted and even raped by someone who took advantage of my trusting nature and low self-esteem. I developed PTSD, depression, and extreme anxiety around sex. I felt as though being raped was my punishment for being sexually active, so I stopped having sex.

Perhaps at this point you are filing me into the category of “acceptable sex worker.” Someone whose trauma forced them to take up sex work. I certainly know of fellow sex workers who have experienced assault (and others who have not), but in a country where an estimated one in three girls is sexually abused before the age of 16, conflating correlation and causation would be a mistake. The idea that people do sex work because they are damaged by abuse to the point where they can no longer see sex as enjoyable, or something that they have any kind of control over, is one that I have come across many times but, while I can not entirely separate my experience of sexual assault from my decision to take up sex work, it would be incorrect to say that I am a sex worker because I can not get past that trauma.

While people like to imagine sex work as a passive experience in which we simply wait for Johns to “use our body,” my experience has been vastly different. Sex work allowed me to move past my trauma by experiencing consensual sex in a safe environment with men who value my time and body. Since engaging in sex work I have begun to reclaim my sexuality and ownership of my body. For the first time in my life I fully enjoy sex without feeling self-conscious or guilty. I feel beautiful and strong, and no longer allow myself to be pressured into sex. I have been able to come off all of my meds and the symptoms of my PTSD and depression have all but vanished. I am able to tell people how I like to be touched and the the flexible hours and generous payment means that I have time to focus on self-care and recovery.

Despite what people think, I fully enjoy every day of sex work, and if I am not in the mood to share my body, I do not. I take the day off. I read a book. I trust myself to know what is right for my body. I get excited about meeting new clients and learning about their body and how they like to have sex. Sometimes I discover things that I like or am attracted to, that I never knew about. Sometimes I have amazing sex or sometimes I help someone with low self-esteem feel attractive. There are many reasons why someone may take up sex work, but mine was an act of self-care and reclamation of my body and consent. And I do not regret it one bit.

***

Now to move on to the salacious details; the questions I get asked again and again. The questions that would make Dr Phil’s herd of suburban housewives wet themselves with glee, here they are:

1. When will you get a proper job?

I get asked this a lot — by friends and clients. The implication is that I should be studying or working a mainstream job. In fact I have an honours degree, do freelance graphic design work, write, and do illustration.

It just so happens that the income I make from sex work is more than all of these jobs combined. But sex work is work, as much as anything else.

2. You are too clever to do this.

Wrong. I do this because I am clever; I am using my most lucrative commodity to generate income and I am doing something that I enjoy.

3. You must see a lot of dick heads.

Yes. I do. As in any job, some clients are nice, some are dicks. Mostly I am lucky enough to see people whose company is entertaining or enjoyable. If I see someone I dislike, I choose not to see them again.

Consent is a vital part of sex work and I may withdraw that consent whenever I want.

4. Are you addicted to drugs?

I took a Lemsip today. Other than that, I am painfully boring. I sit at home sewing, painting, and reading. I like a glass of red wine on occasion but I am hardly Johnny Rotten.

5. You must LOVE sex.

I do love sex. I think if I disliked sex this job would be difficult. However, a lot of the sex I have is not great sex or sex with someone that I am attracted to. I still enjoy it, but it is completely different from sex in real life.

Besides, a great deal of my job is in the emotional labour — listening to clients talk about their problems and insecurities and making them feel important and desirable. Sex is a secondary part of the job.

6. How can you see married men?

I am not in a relationship with them. I am providing a paid service. At any rate, not all clients disclose their relationship status. I tell my own sexual partners what I do, but I am not dating my clients and it isn’t my job or business what they choose to do.

I use condoms, I get frequent STD tests, and I do not get involved in contacting my clients or their families. Their business is their business.

7. Do you like sex work?

Mostly yes. Like any jobs, some days are hard, but I have the luxury of only working on days when I feel like it.

I have regular clients who I get on with, my job gives me the means to travel and have spare time, and my partner is understanding and supportive.

Sex work has changed my life in so many ways, but mostly it has made me more confident, self-assured, and in charge of my sexuality. It gives me orgasms, money, and endless anecdotes — as of today, I am a terribly happy, healthy whore.

***

Need to talk?

Rape Crisis — 0800 883 300

Lifeline — 0800 543 354

New Zealand Prostitutes Collective Wellington — 04 382 8791

If you’ve experienced a sexual assault you can report it to NZ police by dialling 111, or learn more here.

Do not write about it here,

I’m a poet too.

She never loved you,

Can’t you see that it was wrong?

You are wasted space.

Should not have happened,

You tried to take advantage.

How dumb can you be?

Continue to bleed,

We’ll drag your name through the mud.

Don’t do it again.

I started high school thinking I was straight. The five years following was a rollercoaster of crushes on classmates that resulted in questions about my identity. But now, I know a lot more about who I am and who I want to be. I’m gay. I’m full of pride but I don’t know how to share it.

Leaving high school meant leaving the safe liberal bubble I’d built for myself with teachers, peers, and friends. Until now my world has been full of social justice warriors, feminists, genuine allies, and people who just get it. I knew that if I disclosed my sexuality or talked about issues around it that I’d be greeted with open arms. Many of these people haven’t lived the experiences that come with being LGBTQIA+ but they know how to sympathise and connect, nonetheless.

I see Victoria as a new world with so many people with different thoughts and lives to mine. That includes people who don’t fully support my identity, don’t understand it, or don’t want anything to do with it. One of the things about living in the closet for so long is it can protect you from certain kinds of discrimination. It’s like armour you wear so people think you’re batting for their team rather than the “other” team.  

But now that I know who I am, how do I let people into that? I don’t want or need to disclose my sexuality to every single student here but I’d like to be able to talk about going to the Pride Parade or about how much I’m looking forward to UniQ. But the queer fear is larger than I am: the fear of rejection, misunderstanding, hate, and ignorance.

I’m now in a space where asking for someone’s pronouns isn’t the norm, where I don’t get to have an automatic bond with someone because we’re already in a queer supportive space. I’m stepping out of my bubble and into the world. I hate it because it makes me uncomfortable and vulnerable. This unfamiliar environment and life is lonely, and makes me tired but mostly just scared. Scared about trying to find a place for myself where I can thrive, because if I’m not able to be honest about who I am, I can’t thrive and I can’t succeed, whether that be in lectures, tutorials, or social circles.

Some people like to say that sexuality isn’t everything, that you shouldn’t define yourself so strictly. But for me, it’s about more than who I’m attracted to and how I express myself. It’s a complex identity and shared experiences that I have with other queer people. It’s shaped me into who I am and how I see the world. I need to be able to talk about it, even just casually.

I walk around campus and lectures trying to spot the other queer kids — sometimes that’s rainbow badges on a backpack, a haircut like mine, but often it’s a smile that feels just a bit too kind, because maybe they know how it feels. I shared a smile like that with the girl standing next to me at the UniQ stand for clubs week, then we both took lollipops and went our separate ways. At that stand, with all the flags, I felt safe for the first time in this new world, but I want to take that feeling with me everywhere I go.

I’m writing this piece for the other people who still feel this queer fear that I do. I see you. Hopefully within the next three years here I can work out how to let myself be seen too.

My language is my awakening, my language is the window to my soul.

Ngā Rangahautira is the Māori Law Students Association at Vic, more commonly know as “NR”. We provide a supportive whānau environment for Tauira Māori studying law at Te Whare Wānanga o te Ūpoko o te Ika a Māui. Moana Jackson and other prominent scholars coined our name Ngā Rangahautira; the name originates from the phrase “he tina rangahau.” This relates to the responsibility of our tauira Māori at Te Wananga to research and to use the law to facilitate Māori success.

At law school language is a fundamental. Everyone has a language. Language is one of those commonalities that hold a group of people together. The language of Ngā Rangahautira is legal, but first and foremost it is derived from the language of our culture—Te Reo.

We need to see our language in greater use in our legal system. To find a space that is both equal in status and equal in use to the language of the coloniser. Te Reo occupies a limited arena in our legal system. 2012 saw it finally being used in the opening, adjournment, and closing of District, Family and Youth Court proceedings—bear in mind that it had been used since the inception of the Māori Land Court, Waitangi Tribunal, and Matariki Court.

Our tauira are using the skills they have gained at law school and are exploring additional avenues for using the ‘legal’ language to assist Māori and our culture.

Te Hīnātore was created in 2015 by students for Māori tauira and non-Māori tauira who wish to explore and understand the gap between Te Ao Māori and Aotearoa’s current legal system. Speakers such as Moana Jackson, Tai Ahu, Carwyn Jones, and Māmari Stephens have spoken to tauira about an array of issues linking tikanga, the law, and te Ao Māori.

Ngā Kaiaronui is a sub-rōpū of Ngā Rangahautira. This committee was formed as a response by tauira to use the legal skills they have gained through their studies to pro-actively advocate for Māori people. This is mainly done by preparing submissions on bills through the select committee process on issues that affect Māori.

We will continue to use the legal language that we learn at law school to ensure that Te Reo and our culture is no longer ignored by the Western Legal system.

Mohoa nei, e anga atu ana te titiro ki te pae, te kitenga atu he rā anō kei tua. Koia ko te whitinga mai o Te Mātāwai hei herenga mā tātou ngā mōrehu a Māui. Mā Te Mātāwai ngā tini āhuatanga pōuri e aho mai anō, mā tōna wera tātou e āhei ai te pīhore i ngā tāera me ngā taura e here ana i ō tātou whakaaro e ai ki ngā whakaritenga a tauiwi e uaua ai te rere ki tua o te ao e karapoti ana i a tātou.

Ko tēnei kaupapa “Te Reo me ōna katoa” he kaupapa e whakanui ana i te Reo Māori ka tahi, engari ka whakanui hoki i ngā tikanga, ngā tukanga, me ngā tūmomo haumarutanga e whakamahana ana i te tangata kōrero Māori. Ko te “ōna” e kōrerotia ana, e hāngai ana ki ngā tini āhuatanga atu i te kupu, arā, ngā waiaro me ngā wairua Māori e hua mai ana i te reo. Kia kapo ake i te kōrero a Te Rangihau, “ko te reo te poutaka e iri ai ngā tāonga a ngā mātua tīpuna”.

Ko te pūtake o tēnei kaupapa he waiwai i ngā kākano e noho maroke ana ki roto i ngā whenua pīrere o hiahia, o whakaaro o tēnā, o tēnā. Mā tēnei waiwai e haumako mai anō ngā whenua o roto i a tātou.

Ko Te Matawai te whitinga o te ao hou mō ngāi tāua, ko tēnei aronga tētahi o ngā tuamaka a Māui. Mā tātou anō tēnei tuamaka e ruku ki Te Mātāwai. Mā reira e mau i a tātou ōna painga katoa

Te Huinga Tauira is the annual National Māori Students’ Conference where tauira have the opportunity to gather to discuss topical issues, participate in cultural and sporting activities and raise awareness about issues that affect Māori students at tertiary institutions, and within the wider community. This year Ngāi Tauira will be hosting Te Huinga Tauira ki te Ūpoko o te Ika. We would like to acknowledge the following sponsors; Victoria University of Wellington, Te Puni Kokiri, Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Māori me Victoria University of Wellington Students Association.

If you want to know more information or to get involved, email tehuingatauira2016@gmail.com.

Whai whakaaro mo te whāngai:

Nō te Pōhoroi kua pāhure, ka tūtaki maua ko tētahi tama, a Peta, i runga i Tinder. I tipu ake a Peta ki Ahitereiria engari i Porirua ia mō taua mutunga wiki noa iho. Moe tahi maua i taua pō, mate kanehe ahau ki a ia. Nō te Rātapu ka hanatu ahau ki te kai tahi i tōku matua kēkē (te tunganē o tōku māmā) kua hoki mai i tāwahi. Ka tau au ki te kainga, ka haramai tōku matua kēkē, ā, he tama i tōna taha… ko Peta! Ka whakamārama mai toku matua kēkē ko Peta tana whāngai. E tata mate ana ahau i te whakamā. Me aha ahau?

— Nā Kotiro Kutekute

W: He nui ngā tūmomo mate kei a koe, e Cersei… whoops e Kō! Hei aha ngā whakaaro a ētahi atu. Whai i tāhau e manakohia ana.  Mena ko Jaime… whoops Peta tēnā, hei tā ngā tīpuna he pai tonu te moe whanaunga kia noho kotahi ai te whenua i roto i te whānau, kia kotahi tonu te iwi o wa kōrua tamariki hoki. Kia mataara e hine!

Hoa horomiti hoha:

Ao te pō, pō te ao kei ngā whārangi ipurangi o ‘redtube’, o ‘pornhub’ taku tino hoa e mātaki whakaaturanga ana. Kāore au i te mōhio me aha au kia puta ia ki te ao mārama. He tama takatāpui a ia, ā, he wahine ahau. Kāore a ia e pirangi ki au. Tohua mai tou atawhai, e Mū!

— Nā To Hoa Aroha

W: E rua aku whakatikanga, e hoa. Tuatahi: Ivy i te Pōmere. Ki te kore, ko te tuarua: Tākuta. Kia kaha e hika!

Ngārara ngaro i te Wao:

Tēnā e Mū, kua rua tau māua ko taku hoa wahine e noho piri ana. Nō ngā marama tata nei kua waiho ia kia tipu kia mātōtoru te wao o raro. Kare au i te mōhio me pēhea taku kī atu ki a ia kia heua taua wāhi rā. He kupu āwhina wāhau?

— Nā Tāne Mahuta

W: Ae. E rua aku kupu awhina ki a koe: E kai! Arā hoki te kōrero a ngā tipuna ki a tātau “E mua kaikai, e muri kai huare”. Ki te kore taua wāhi rā e kaingia e koe, taihoa ake ka kaingia e tētahi atu.

Ka mātua i konā, e hoa mā! Mo te tau tītoki kōrero tahi anō ai tātau!