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| With my youngest daughter, my Maori girl |
Bullying is something I do not tolerate in any way. I was the subject of bullying while I was at school and not just physically but mentally and emotionally also. I feel for anyone who has ever been subjected to bullying and the long term effect it can have on a person. In particular a Maori girl. We are subjected to much scrutiny anyway and constantly seen as a lower minority within society. If you grew up in the city you had a distinct confidence about you, that was frowned upon when in circles from smaller townships. Yet the influence of the big cities became the something we all aimed for. Do well, move to the city and start living the fast life of liberation and independence. Yet I wonder how easily it is for someone to become so engaged in the city life, that there became a blurred line between who you are and what you appear to be. Identity. I was bullied because I was Maori in a well to do community and I hated being who I was because of it. There became a blurred line in terms of the values I was brought up with and the values that my well to do peers had (which I thought I had to have to feel included) I wish at that time that I was strengthened by my identity and proud of my identity to never have gone there. I mean, I wish I was as confident then as I am now. I know how to be assertive in a situation when I feel my identity being compromised and I know how how to do it humbly. No outright racist stuff in the vocab, just subtle reminders that I am Maori first and foremost and those ways are not in line with my beliefs. I'm talking social behaviour (no it is not alright to sit on a table, even under intoxicated circumstances) and (no it is not alright for me to swim in the sea or tend to my food gardens during my menstrual cycle) and (no I will not step over the legs of a male Maori, out of respect for his Mana and to uphold my own) do I intend on teaching these values to my daughters? Absolutely without a doubt I will be. I prefer not to cook during my time of the month, call me weird if you will and not because it's a Tapu thing to do. I don't because I am aware of the interaction my hands have with my intimates during that time and how messy it is. For the life of me, I don't want to be handling any food during then. I may be the only woman on the planet who thinks this way but it's what I do. I don't compromise those values for any one. It could have been easy for me to compromise, with the peer pressure, the bullying and the taunts that made me insecure about being Maori. Looking back now, I feel it shaped me for when I grew up. Shaped me for now and for what I want to teach my daughters. They will be mothers one day after all.