Maori Language Week: Mike Puru’s Journey to You, ‘Giving It Back to My Family’

Growing up in Gore in the 1980s, the only time Mike Puru thought about the fact that he was Maori was when someone pointed it out to him.

“I was one of three Maori in my school, and my family was not really involved in any culture or criminal, it was just not part of my life,” said the co-host of the radio show The Hits Drive. He says.

One such occasion was when he was announced as headmaster at St Peter’s College.

“One lady said to me, ‘Oh, you’ve done very well with a young Maori, hasn’t it?’

“I don’t think she meant to be condescending.

“But God made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. I thought about it for a long time, about identity and stereotypes, and why she had to put ‘for a Maori’ in that sentence.”

Now Puru, at age 45, embarks on a journey to restore that lost connection.

He and his co-hosts Stacey Morrison and Anika Moa, who are also Maori and grew up in Te Wai Pounamu / the South Island, recently shared their stories in a podcast about reconnecting with the reo in their lives.

Morrison, who grew up in Ōtautahi / Christchurch, had no tea experience until his early 20s and realized that he wanted to strengthen his connection to his culture.

Since then, she has become a Maori inmate champion, co-wrote best-selling books with her husband Scotty, and regularly acts as a guide for anyone wanting to learn and experience the culture.

While Moa, who also grew up in Ōtautahi, has maintained a strong connection to their culture.

She is covered in tā moko (tattoos) and makes a great effort to use the language in her normal vocabulary.

But Puru has almost no experience with Maori tea or its culture, and strives to make that connection.

Puru’s mother Diana is Pākehā, and her Maori side comes from her father, Wayne, who grew up in ōpōtiki, of Te Whānau-ā-Apanui and Ngāpuhi descent.

But due in large part to her living in the lower part of the South Island, where her parents moved for work, an area dominated mainly by “Pākehā farmers”, there was little Maori culture in the upbringing of Puru and her two sisters apart of some northern trips.

Even his name, Puru, had been mispronounced most of his life, most often as the country Peru.

It was attending her nana’s tangi in Ōpōtiki, shortly after she moved to the North Island in the mid-1990s, which turned out to be a great moment to want to reconnect with her Maori identity.

“My aunt brought me, we went to our marae and I realized she didn’t know anything.

“I realized that I wanted to be that person in my immediate family who, for the first time, can bring a bit of Maori culture, learn about our whakapapa, our protocols.”

Due to that disconnected upbringing, Puru said that she had struggled with the feeling of being Maori, but without knowing I reo you, or even things like waiata and haka.

“I had to go out twice,” he says.

“A ‘Gore Gay Maori,’ The Odds Were Against Me”.

Even on air, he admits that he avoids saying Maori names.

“I feel a lot of pressure, as a Maori, representing my family in the mainstream media and fighting with my inmate.”

It is a form of whakamā, shame or even a feeling of shame for not knowing one’s own culture and criminal, and in today’s society it is strongly linked to the policies of colonization and assimilation that repressed the Maori culture.

“There are times when people are doing a haka and I shrink to the corner,” says Puru.

“It’s not that I’m ashamed to do it, it’s that I’m ashamed not to know.”

However, the urge to reconnect has always been there.

He remembers that he moved to Tauranga and started working in the radio in 1995, when the incorrect pronunciation of the city name was almost a source of pride.

“Everyone was saying, ‘Towel-bad-ah’, and I said no, it’s Tauranga. There was a backlash, but I made a real effort to keep saying correctly.

“And six months later it was normal among all the presenters.”

Along with those personal experiences, the revitalization movement and listening to the experiences of others had helped encourage Puru to begin her own journey.

“It really resonated with me when John Tamihere spoke about urban Maori struggles, it made me feel secure in who I am, that I am still Maori and that I am on my own journey.

“Before that, when there were things like tribal settlements, I didn’t feel part of them, a bit lost.

“I think society expects things from you, and I spent my whole life doing that, and Maori culture was never part of [that expectation].

“When I was 20 years old, if I had met you, I don’t think anyone would have cared.

“Now I go back to my high school and I see kapa haka, and everyone hugs it. I wish we had that when I was in school.

“It is beautiful to see how the language develops; it is something we have as a nation that is unique to us.”

He is also inspired by other mainstream media presenters such as Jack Tame, Melissa Stokes, Miriama Kamo, and Guyon Espiner.

“They’re all in the mainstream and they talk to you.

He also highlights the unique opportunity he has at The Hits, alongside Moa and Morrison.

“Three Maori in the mainstream media, doing a show together”.

His goal is to begin night inmate classes, along with regular practice with his co-hosts, and in a year to return to his marae, and be able to do a personal mihimihi presentation.

“I just don’t want to be in a position where I’m in another tangi, and I can’t speak.

“I want to be the person in my family to do that.”

She hoped that by sharing her story she could help others start their own Maori inmate journeys.

“The point of sharing this is that we are all on our own unique journeys, not to be critical, but the key is to just get started.”