'Te reo Māori has taken a bit of a beating': Donovan Te Ahunui Farnham

Donovan Te Ahunui Farnham is a te reo Māori teacher, a consultant, and a strategic leader in Māori-medium education. His education was through the medium of te reo Māori from kōhanga reo through to university.

In an article on Maimoa Creative, Whānau is described as ‘an illustrated phrase book designed to help te reo Māori find its natural place at the heart of our homes — in the quiet, meaningful exchanges over a cuppa, the encouraging words to a tamaiti, or the laughter that bubbles around the kai table.’ And it has that feel, being just longer than my hand, with a phrase to share with others on each page accompanied by one of Rehua Wilson’s charming illustrations. 

Kia ora - it's lovely to chat to you, Donovan. E mihi ana on Whānau’s publication! You start the book with phrases of love. And the book overall seems like a gesture of love. Can you tell us more about that? 

Kia ora rā. A gesture of love? I think that you're giving me too much about how intentional I was. The book is a collection of those quiet phrases that don't always get the spotlight: the ones that we whisper to our tamariki at bedtime, or gently utter in a hug. Love takes so many forms and for our whānau, it's the background noise of the household, the check-ins, the encouragements, the cheekiness, the sharing of food, the celebrations, the consoling, the giving, the receiving, the nice and the not-so-nice of being a whānau. I wanted to assemble something that would be shared between loved ones in those spaces. Did you envision it being such a beautiful little book, physically, when you wrote it? The soft colouring and sparkles on the cover, plus the stunning illustrations and layout, make it really appealing. 

I really didn't! There's a whakataukī that states, "Kāore te kūmara e kōrero mō tōna anō reka." This common proverb suggests that kūmara doesn't talk about how sweet they are. All of the credit for the book's beauty goes to Rehua Wilson's stunning artwork and Aroha Tamihana's striking design.  What was the genesis of the book? Why did you want to write it?

I've always believed that te reo Māori belongs not just in speeches and school, but around the dinner table, in the lounge, and at bedtime. When I first sat down with Alison Shucksmith from Hachette Aotearoa, we talked about bringing together a collection of concepts, sentences, figurative language and idiomatic expressions from te ao Māori that would shine a light on some of the deeper aspects of te reo Māori and making them accessible to everyone. That was the goal of the book.

You are a teacher, consultant, and expert in te reo Māori. What was easy and what was difficult about the research process of this book?

The easy part of this book was collating the material. I've been doing it all of my life. I struggled with trying to fit everything into Whānau. I wanted every metaphor, every proverb, everything that I could think of to be included. Alison helped bring me back down to Earth and was invaluable in shaping the carefully curated book that Whānau became.  Mānawatia a Matariki! Are you hoping that whanau will share the phrases in the book over the Matariki period, as they gather? You’ve said the phrases were specifically chosen to be woven into the fabric of a home.  Matariki is a time to reflect, be present and look to the future. More recently, te reo Māori has taken a bit of a beating in the political landscape, but we can make our present moments count and make goals that create change. If Whānau can help in normalising te reo Māori and bringing it into the home as part of that, I'd love it! Do you envision making this into a series of books? And if not—what will you write next? I can't say that I've thought that far ahead yet, but there are two books I'd love to get out of my head. The first would be a follow-up to Whānau - one that draws even more on the poetic language of our ancestors. My background is in teaching and I've done a lot of work in linguistics and Māori-language grammar during my Master's, so the second would actually be more of a grammar book - one where we'd dive into the explaining how each sentence works.