Tellers of Stories
My thanks to the New Zealand Association for the Teaching of English (NZATE) for their invitation to write this article for their magazine, English in Aotearoa
(Issue 100 to be published in July - online now
My nine-year-old great-granddaughter is an exceptional storyteller. Nurtured intentionally and exclusively in te reo Māori, she can retell the most complex stories of history, of her tupuna, and deeply significant places and events. During the COVID rāhui I watched her, and her father, sit on their front porch and present two traditional Māori stories live to a children’s television audience. They didn’t practise beforehand; they didn’t need to.
She has an intimate knowledge of these stories and has heard them told to her since birth. In fact, when I would continually buy all the Māori language children’s books I could find and explain to my grandson why reading stories to his daughter was so important, he would completely ignore me, leave the books on the shelf, and tell her stories instead.
When I posted the storytelling video on social media I commented, “This is what advanced speaking and presenting ‘as Māori’ looks like! How would our teachers recognise, support, and extend this extraordinary storytelling ability?”
I appreciate this opportunity to write to a nation of English teachers about stories because my answer to my question is that we don't value that inherent Māori oracy and ability and we don't know about its crucial importance ourselves. If I needed evidence of that, my great-granddaughter provided another perfect story and lesson.
A few years ago, a positive article about her parents’ informed and well-researched decision to immerse her exclusively in te reo Māori from birth, certainly not a unique idea in Māori whānau, appeared in the New Zealand Herald. A barrage of negative comments followed its publication. In addition to the many blatantly racist opinions, a large number of commenters asked, “What about English?” with unwarranted advice about the apparent virtue of learning both languages.
The ‘what about English’ question is equivalent to the ‘all lives matter’ response to the Black Lives Matter movement. It is a racist response. It comes from a place of white fragility and white privilege, and it completely denies the existence of racism and the generations of trauma that colonisation and the loss of language and identity caused Māori whānau.
So, my question is, what stories are you telling and what stories do your students ‘read’ in your classrooms? I’m not referring to the texts you encourage students to read and write about or the genre you introduce. I’m talking about the covert texts that Māori and non-Māori learners receive if you don’t actively and intentionally eliminate them from your practice.
Those covert stories that I call ‘White spaces’ are embedded in our teacher training, in our subject disciplines, in our thinking, and in our privilege as Pākehā. If we look at a child’s colouring book, before we add any colour, not only is that white background just ‘there’, the lines on the page dictate where the colour is allowed to go. They are the equivalent of the lines we draw in our schools that set our boundaries and our expectations for Māori learners, that silence their stories and their ways of learning and knowing and leave these out altogether. They are the same limitations that Liana MacDonald identified in her doctoral research that exposed the ‘institutional silencing’ of Māori teachers of English in secondary schools who described prejudice and discrimination from colleagues and non-Māori students about Māori worldviews and perspectives. Her study finds that:
White supremacy in New Zealand society is furthermore assured by state secondary school performances of a state narrative of biculturalism that advances the notion of harmonious settler-colonial race relations by marginalising or denying violent colonial histories and their consequences in the present.”
Never, has this deep exploration of our teaching practice and our education system been more important, or more uncomfortable! After rising to the COVID-19 challenge that changed learning almost overnight, we are now either back to business-as-usual in schools or to a blended version of what used to be normal. But, what if "normal" is the problem? And what if, in the face of our changing national priorities, and a global anti-racism movement that will no longer tolerate a 'one-size-fits-some' approach, we have to make an even greater change to the way we think about learning? How will we move from our previous national focus on literacy and numeracy to the new focus on cultural capability and local curriculum next term? What does that mean to teachers of English and how will you change the covert stories in your classroom?
It's not as if we haven’t been told before about these not-so-hidden stories and silences, and how they impact on our Māori learners. Patricia Grace, one of our best-known Maori authors told us four things that make many books dangerous to indigenous readers:
They do not reinforce our values, actions, customs, culture and identity;
when they tell us only about others they are saying that we do not exist;
they may be writing about us but they are writing things that are untrue; and
they are writing about us but saying negative and insensitive things which tell us we are not good.
Internationally acclaimed Māori academic, Linda Tuhiwai Smith says writing can be dangerous because it reinforces and maintains a style of discourse that is never innocent. She refers to the misappropriation of texts and the legitimisation of texts, in academic, journalistic, and imaginative writing that reinforce “myths” that are hostile to indigenous peoples.
So what is an English teacher, an expert in literature, and a teller of stories, to do? My first suggestion is to interrogate your stories with ruthless honesty, starting with your own. In my online courses, the first five modules are about identifying our own white spaces, particularly those in our heads, learning about our own identity, our positioning, our inner dialogue, our role in perpetuating the status quo. This is a crucial key first step and it’s one we most often leave out.
You can’t teach about racism or injustice, inequality or power by studying literature where it is a ‘theme’. Not when, right under your nose, you have students who are experiencing those realities daily. American activist, poet, musician, and youth mentor, Karega Bailey says it best when he says, “If you have ever journeyed in some of the most hopeless circumstances, if you've really seen hopelessness like if you've seen it, seen it, not studied it, not went to visit it, if you've ever lived in hopelessness, you know how beautiful hope is."
The Māori learners in your English classes don’t want you to see racism, study it, or visit it, they want that counter-story. They want the tools to name it, expose it, and to understand that it is the job of all non-Māori teachers, of English and all other subjects, to eradicate it from your classrooms. How are you actively engaged in learning how to do that?
A few years ago, when I was the principal of Kia Aroha College, I found myself volunteering to teach NCEA Level 3 English when the regular teacher was on extended study leave. The “Warrior-Scholars” at Kia Aroha College, almost 100% Māori and Pasifika, know about racism. They experience it, they expose it in their writing and speaking—national keynotes and symposia to academic research conferences and many other audiences. They “see it, see it”, they live it every day and their analysis and their truth are raw and powerful. The topics they have taken on include those two words “as Māori” from Ka Hikitia, the Government’s Communities of Learning initiative, racism, and intergenerational trauma.
In the English class, we decided that our overriding topic of study for the year would be sites of struggle with a focus on Māori protest and the failure of the system to provide for Māori in education. This linked to standards students were working on in other subjects: history, social studies, media studies, and te reo Māori. That connecting learning across subject areas is another key concept in this work, and my second suggestion. I cannot emphasise enough the need to get out of your secondary departments and plan collaboratively across subjects!
The students brought their own experience as Maori learners, and the historic experiences of their whānau in this struggle to ‘respond critically to significant connections across four Witi Ihimaera short stories ‘with evidence.’ Their connections across the four texts focused on the theme and setting identifying violence, racism, discrimination, assimilation, and colonisation. One student wrote, “I can relate to his stories because the struggle he talks about is happening in my own life.” That’s ‘evidence’ even if it might not be the type the standard calls for. You can imagine then my reaction to the English moderator’s comment that the Witi Ihimaera texts were not “complex enough for this level.”
During the term, a new student had enrolled in Year 13 and I asked some of the class to help her catch up with the Witi Ihimaera study. When I returned to the class, I asked how she was doing? “It’s hopeless! She’s too colonised,” they pronounced. “She doesn’t know what we know.” I think the same could be said of the English moderator.
So, my third suggestion then is to know more. In his book, How to be an Antiracist, Ibram X. Kendi argues that without the capacity for honest self-reflection and critical thinking, we'll continue to swear we "don't have a racist bone" in our body “all while racism and white supremacy persist unchecked, destroying communities and lives”. It is no longer acceptable or enough to ‘not be racist,’ we must be actively anti-racist and build anti-racist structures and institutions. Those of us who are not Māori have to do this work ourselves. How do you build this understanding to change the story your classroom tells?
Love (2004) describes “majoritarian” stories as “the description of events as told by members of dominant/majority groups, accompanied by the values and beliefs that justify the actions taken by dominants to insure their dominant position.” Solórzarno and Yosso (2002) explain that “white privilege is often expressed through majoritarian stories.” These stories normalise privilege, render it invisible, assume universal ‘truths’ and knowledge, promote schools as neutral and apolitical, and endorse the myth of meritocracy: that we all have equal opportunity and we can all succeed on our merits, if we tried harder, read more, did our homework, had good study habits, or better parents.
In a memorable PLD activity a few years ago, Kia Aroha College staff were asked to tell the story of an action they had taken, that they considered was a counter-story or a response to unfair, or racist behaviour or practice. They had to first define the majoritarian story they encountered then describe the action they took against it. Both had to be presented to the whole staff in any way that felt right to them. In the predominantly non-white staff, I was amazed at the impact this exercise had and the discussions that arose from it.
Majoritarian stories included the mispronunciation of their, and their children’s names, racist treatment by the justice system, and the raw realities of their own experiences in education. Actions taken against these injustices ranged from confronting colleagues and teachers who refused to correct their mispronunciation, to leading protest marches.
One young teacher described her ‘action’ as developing a profound love of reading, inspired by her grandmother, a long-term activist for Māori rights. Her presentation to staff was a display of books and texts her grandmother had encouraged her to read, open at powerful quotes, alongside a bone china teacup and teapot she topped up each day with rosewater that gave off a scent that was reminiscent of her grandmother. For the two weeks the display remained in the staff workroom, I saw teachers in there every day reading those texts and carefully returning them to their original open pages. Every presentation brought tears to our eyes as we saw the injustice they exposed. What are your counter-stories? Which majoritarian stories do you identify in your school, your department, or your practice? What intentional action do you take to change this?
Each year, I repeat to the Warrior-Researcher groups, the motivational words of social justice educator, Professor Patrick Camangian who tells his students, leading up to a similar culmination of their critically conscious, humanising research:
This isn’t for a grade; this is for your life! Read, write, speak, think, like your lives depend on it. ‘Cause your life depends on it. Your children’s children’s lives depend on it. (Camangian, 2015)
Are you teaching for an assessment result or are you teaching for your students’ lives, for their absolute right to both receive and tell counter-stories in your English classroom, to name and expose majoritarian stories, racism, assimilation, colonisation and the trauma it has caused without compromise, to debate forcefully, research relentlessly, write powerfully, speak out fearlessly, and above all take action to have their truth heard, and to be activists? That is achievement that is worth having. It is as important for your non-Maori and Māori students alike. I always ask those who tell me they don’t have any, or many, Māori students in their classrooms, “Who do you think should learn most about White privilege? Your Māori children or your Pākehā children?” That has to be a story you learn and teach.
I dread a time when potentially, my great-granddaughter, or any of my great-grandchildren, might not be able to access the very small number of Māori-medium secondary education options and have to attend a Whitestream secondary school that will erode and negate her identity, her language, and her deep understanding of what it means to live as Māori. The truth is that amazing as she may be, she is not unique. The dream we envisage as a whānau for our mokopuna is no different from those of the Māori learners in your classes. Do you hear and understand all the stories their very presence in your class is telling you?
RESOURCES
Course 1: Identifying your White Spaces. Open now.
Course 2: Decolonising the Curriculum: Beyond ‘Culturally Responsive.’ Opens 24 July.
Course 3: Reframing Success & Achievement: Developing and Assessing your Graduate Profile. Opens Term 4.
My book: Coloring in the White Spaces: Reclaiming Cultural Identity in Whitestream Schools is available online from Amazon and Peter Lang Publishing
