\u201cYou might get a gist, but you don\u2019t have the deep knowledge,\u201d she told Real Life.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve had enough [te reo] to get me by, but never any fluency, and if people speak to me in M\u0101ori, I never have the confidence to answer them back.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re funny people and I think we\u2019ve all been to a marae when the collective laugh comes up to something someone said, or you\u2019re in the kitchen and people are having a laugh at each other, and you just want to be part of that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Already several weeks into the course, Tahana says she\u2019s learning to have fun with the reo.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a return to the language of her t\u016bpuna (ancestors), after she spent most of her early years speaking English in Australia, where her father worked as a truck driver.<\/p>\n
Tahana was at intermediate school when her parents, overcome with homesickness, decided to move back across the Ditch and resettle their wh\u0101nau in \u014ctaua, near the Northland township of Kaikohe.<\/p>\n
Reflecting now, Tahana says she\u2019s \u201cso happy\u201d they returned.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wouldn\u2019t have had an idea or a concept of what it was to be M\u0101ori, really M\u0101ori, if they hadn\u2019t got homesick and decided to come home,\u201d she told Cowan.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we moved back … we had a wh\u0101nau rugby league team, and we played netball … Sport was a great introduction to your cousins … It was awesome community, it was like a social glue.\u201d<\/p>\n
She regrets that she missed some of the trappings of New Zealand childhood, like learning T\u016btira Mai Ng\u0101 Iwi and getting involved on the marae.<\/p>\n
But while she feels she hasn\u2019t been a \u201cgood participant\u201d on the marae, her mahi (work) as a reporter has pushed her into M\u0101ori contexts more frequently.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve probably been a bit useless on the other front [participating on the marae], but I feel proudly Ng\u0101puhi, and happy to be from the naughty north,\u201d Tahana said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHaving travelled the country and seen quite a lot of iwi structures around the place, the north has some of the funniest characters, some of the most intelligent. If you ask someone from Ng\u0101puhi a question, you don\u2019t wonder what they\u2019re thinking. They\u2019ll tell you what they think.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love that they\u2019re upfront and they tell you things to your face.\u201d<\/p>\n
As for the career she\u2019s leaving behind, Tahana says she\u2019ll miss the teamwork element of TV news \u2013 but it\u2019s time for a change.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s an industry where there\u2019s some of the funniest, driest, drollest list humour, some great characters and there\u2019s a whole bunch of different grapes that make up journalists,\u201d she told Real Life.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are all quite different people. You mix that all up and you just try and get a product out at the end of the day, something that means something, something that helps people understand an issue or a place or a time or an event … the people actually help you get through it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Real Life is a weekly interview show where John Cowan speaks with prominent guests about their life, upbringing, and the way they see the world. Tune in Sundays from 7.30pm on Newstalk ZB or listen to the latest full interview here<\/a>.<\/p>\n