2018: Language Trauma
January 27, 2020
By AHNZ
What is Language Trauma? The short answer is that it was an enabling term minted in 2018 to excuse people who were supposed to be Maori but were not speaking and behaving Maori enough.
What is the nature of this excuse? Who came up with it? And what is ‘Maori enough’ supposed to mean?
“My language, My Awakening”
Kiwi Power Couple¹, Scotty and Stacey Morrison both started talking about Language Trauma mid-2018. The previous August, the husband and wife co-authored a book entitled Maori At Home. It’s an everyday guide to learning the Maori language for the English speaker by two people who have walked that path in adult life themselves.
There is no zealot like a convert. According to his wife, Scotty in particular, was “up himself” and “used to be a little shit.” Their lives lacked purpose and spiritual engagement as individuals but the pair found it in a Māori identity they never grew up with.
“Your face says you’re Māori but you have no way to express that. We have a saying: “Tōku reo, tōku ohooho” or “My language, my awakening.” I’ve seen te reo be transformative in people like my husband, who used to be a little shit. With Māori he’s found his life purpose. I’m also grateful for how it’s helped him engage with his spiritual side.”- 12 Questions: The Hits radio star Stacey Morrison; NZ Herald
Being Māori was not authentic to either Morrison² but now they both dominate that identity in the literature, prime time TV media, academically, and with language-teaching. They are leaders in a new from of Maori constructed artificially in the universities: Māori. For these celebrities it was a response to having a face that looked like a Maori’s but not being able to express oneself according to the expectations of others. As Mrs Morrison admits above, she changed her identity to match the expectations upon her.
Language Trauma
By the middle of 2018 the Morrisons had become confronted with the same paradox observed by others. It was not Maoris who were lining up to buy their book or attend their language courses, it was overwhelmingly non-Maori who showed up to learn. Worst of all, non-Maori were the better students! And, excelling.
My explanation is that this was inevitable. Māori (with the macron) is not kaupapa, not authentic. It’s a Victimhood Culture construction cooked up in the academic world not the Maori world. It was made by and for non-Maori in their ivory tower language as part of a State program. People like Professor Scotty Morrison mistake this sort of fake plastic Māori for the real thing just as others have done before. Having repressed this knowledge, the Māori now is confronted and surprised at who is attracted and who is repelled. The artificial Māori does not bring Stacey’s “faces that say you’re Maori” through the door.
Lacking this explanation, how does someone in Scotty or Stacey’s position process the fact that they’re not appealing to the people they thought they were? The justification for all they do, for their new identities, for glory, is that some average Joe Maori with a nice brown face and Maori features, is the ultimate beneficiary. Instead, they get Jennifer Ward-Lealand, Hine Elder, Lillian Murray, and Jenny Rankine.
The Morrisons have far too much invested to turn back now. They have put their reputations, their books, their children, on this train ride. Now they can only double down. But how to process this inconvenient fact? Their people are not showing gratitude, they’re not showing up! Yet it cannot be their fault because…they’re Maori after all. The answer comes: The fact itself is what’s racist.
“Mr Morrison said non-Māori often have an easier time learning te reo, as they come in fresh, while Māori often suffer from “language trauma” where there is a strong emotional attachment to their learning.”
“That trauma comes from decades of the language being oppressed and discouraged in New Zealand.”- Mr Morrison; TVNZ
The non-Maori students are not simply hard workers or linguistically talented. No. They simply have the ‘privilege’ of lacking something called ‘language trauma’. Or, to put it another way, the Maori students are not lazy or slow-learners but suffering from ‘language trauma’. ‘Please implement this software patch everyone. Thanks.’
“It’s really hard for Māori because you feel the language should be part of you but it doesn’t come easily…I was so embarrassed. That’s what we call language trauma.“- Mrs Morrison; NZ Herald
The State needs these news media Sophists to act as the priesthood and spin these moronic narratives to try to hold irrational society together. Meanwhile, it is doing huge damage and disrespect to everyone and in particular offering humiliating condescension toward these Maori students by giving them this moral handicap.
What a cruel and abusively enabling thing to say to Maori having trouble learning their own language that it’s white people’s fault. The Morrisons’ are not selling te reo, they’re selling resentment.
Defence Lawyers Adopt Morrisons’ Excuse
From the media priesthood to seeing action in the courtroom, Language Trauma is now being used as a guideline in criminal trials…
“There’s an issue of language trauma. Historic and present-day factors, which have worked to dispossess Māori of their reo, are the same factors which contribute to the overrepresentation of Māori in the criminal justice system.”- Echo Haronga; Te reo in the courts and ‘language trauma’; Newsroom.co.nz
As we have seen, Defence lawyers are happy to employ any means necessary to get their clients off the hook and do not stop at subbing in history in place of justice. People like Haronga and the Morrisons are part of a tradition of Victimhood Culture Adventuring.
The efforts to infiltrate the Judicial Branch of Government with Māori would be a slam-dunk. Certainly the institution itself has no spine, no moral boundaries, to stop it. “Crown Law was inundated with requests from lawyers in all parts of practice and all parts of New Zealand asking for te reo.” The resistance comes from the fact that THIS form of Maori (ie Māori) is fake, in-authentic, academic-speak and clients within the court system don’t want any part of it.
Once again, rather than accept that their ideals are wrong, the lawyers and priests blame the raw material- people. Their ideals are perfect, it’s just that they’re being applied to the wrong species! And, thanks to Morrison’s inventiveness those blamed people don’t need to be Joe Maori with the Maori Face. It’s white people’s fault.
People have a habit of inventing fictions they will believe wholeheartedly in order to ignore the truth they cannot accept.
—
1 Ref. Spy’s Kiwi power couples of 2018; NZ Herald; Internet Archive
2 Not unusual, this is how becoming a zealot usually works. See also the Australian lesbian pakeha who came to New Zealand to tell us how to pronounce our words.
Image ref. Some Māori struggling with ‘language trauma’ as number of Kiwis learning te reo continues to surge, Scotty Morrison says; TVNZ
Image ref. Hine Elder; DAVID WHITE / STUFF
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