Embracing te reo Māori daily journey for Potaka-Ross oamarumail.co.nz - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from oamarumail.co.nz Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Language is a waka, and kaiako Tania Sharee Williams is handing out oars.
For the past five years, Ms Williams has taught te reo Maori professionally across Otago and Southland, and is now offering children’s classes in Oamaru.
Ms Williams did not grow up in a Maori-speaking household.
Her father moved from the top of the North Island to Dunedin, where he met her pakeha mother, and where Ms Williams was later born.
When she was 9, her mother took her to Dunedin’s Araiteuru marae, where she became immersed in Maori culture.
“I was not raised around my iwi, but we were gifted by Kai Tahu Araiteuru,” Ms Williams said.
Te reo on the agenda . . . Cultural services collaboration group members (from left) Chloe Searle, Sophia Leon de la Barra, Lisa Potaka-Ross, and Philip van Zijl stand outside Oamaru s library where te reo Maori classes will soon begin. PHOTO: RUBY HEYWARD
An Oamaru cultural services group wants to build its staff and volunteers’ te reo Maori skills this year not plan on stopping there.
In collaboration with the Oamaru Language School, Waitaki District Libraries plan to deliver new te reo Maori classes for the professional development of library staff and volunteers.
Library manager Philip van Zijl and language school founder Sophia Leon de la Barra are working with senior library assistant and te kairuruku o nga ratonga Maori (Tikanga Maori co-ordinator) Lisa Potaka-Ross and Forrester Gallery and Waitaki Museum and Archive curator Chloe Searle as part of a “cultural services collaboration group”, to build te reo skills “cross-organisationally”.