Waihoroi Shortland’s second headmaster, Rome Davis, the uncle of Kelvin Davis, taught him to love learning, and to love expression, written and spoken. Photo / Supplied
Waihoroi Shortland has been a social worker, a broadcaster and an actor, with roles in The Governor, Boy and Rain of the Children. A powerful advocate for te reo Māori, including several years with The Māori Language Commission, Shortland played Shylock in the 2002 feature The Māori Merchant of Venice. He also appeared in the 2012 Māori Language production of Troilus and Cressida at The Globe Theatre. Shortland will deliver the keynote address at this year's Māoriland Film Festival in Ōtaki, June 29-July 3.
My adopted mother had a whāngai child who was 1 year old at the time of my birth. I was born June 3, 1952, which means I've been alive as long as Queen Elizabeth has reigned. My mother Katerina was forever fostering. When she finally passed, we counted up the children she had cared for and we got to 46 and stopped counting. Many were from the state, and the last two were her great-granddaughters. She could never say no to children.
I often reflect on how chancy life can be. How so many stars had to line up for my parents to find me. When the natural mother of that whāngai baby took her son back, the district nurse came to visit and found my mother weeping for the whāngai child she had lost and the district nurse mentioned a baby at Kawakawa Hospital up for adoption. My mother rustled up my father and they caught the train to Kawakawa that afternoon. I was one week old.
I grew up in Matawaia, a rural community in the hinterland outside Moerewa. We were known as the kids from the bush because all of our conversations were in Māori, my first language. English was something we ran into when we started school. I never had any fear of my language. It is part of me and has been part of everything I've ever done, and still is.
I'm Anglican, like my adopted mother, and my adopted father was a Mormon who worked on the railways. He was a "gangie" which had very different connotations back then. My father was a stay-at-home scholar, well-versed in Māori tīkanga and a student of Latin. He was well-read and loved debate. He was my first storyteller, and he introduced me to reading. He retired at 65 because his hearing had gone, and he was nearly run over a couple of times because he didn't hear the train coming.
Movies were played on Saturday afternoons at the local high school. We'd ride our horses 10 miles to see things like The Ten Commandments, Spartacus and Hopalong Cassidy. The movie reels were delivered by train and were played on the school projector. We'd watch the movies then play the characters as we rode home. Back then we sided with the cowboys. We all wanted to be the hero, like John Wayne. Now we'd probably go with the Indians.
I remember when TV first started around 1960. It started at 5pm and ended at 10. Not that we had a television set. I had to ride four miles to the Dutch family's home, and I'd sit and watch the test pattern on their TV until the programmes started at 5pm. I was bolshi enough to attach myself to things most children in our community did not have access to.
I started school in Matawaia in 1957. This was during a period of migration to the "big smoke", so the community was changing. My second headmaster was Rome Davis, the uncle of Kelvin Davis, and he had an enormous influence on my life. He taught me to love learning, to love expression, written and spoken. He taught us how to gather our thoughts quickly and express them well. Because of him I left Matewaia with a yearn to learn and I put it down to that one man. He brought it together for many Matawaia children, directing us towards other areas of learning so we might become achievers.
When I went to St Stephens in 1965, my parents took me down to the same place they'd brought me home to when I was a baby. I caught the rail car to Auckland from a whistlestop station called Opahī. I can still see my father's gangie mates, standing beside their jiggers on the railway line as they took up a collection. Those men reached into their pockets, some pulled out a ten bob note, others two half crowns. By the end of their whip-round they put five pounds into my pocket. That was the biggest sum of money I'd ever seen and it bought them a lifetime subscription to me. Their generosity instilled in me an ethic of community service because they didn't get the opportunity I was being given. Although gone, those people still influence my life.
I was already a seasoned traveller when I left home. Because my father worked on the railway, that meant we could travel anywhere in the country for free. At Christmas, we'd go to wherever my brother, an Anglican minister, was serving. To Ngāruawahia, Te Kūiti, Whanganui, Ōtaki, Wairarapa. We didn't need hotels either, because wherever the train stopped, Father would bundle us out and we'd find a railway hut to move into. We'd stoke up the primus and that was our holiday. I saw much more of New Zealand than most children would've seen at that time.
I loved St Stephens. When I saw it for the first time, with its parapets and clock tower I thought, "wow I'm going to live in a castle". Before I'd even walked up the drive, it had captured my imagination and nothing was going to turn me off, not even being away from home.
My generation of Māori actors, we were accidental actors. In 1976 I was at Victoria doing a diploma in Social Science, to further my social work career, and on Friday nights we'd all go down to DeBretts, across from the Manchester Unity building. That was the watering hole where Māori academics went to pontificate. One night, someone told us they were filming The Governor in the hills behind the Hutt and they wanted some Māori actors. They were offering extras $30 a day, which was good money, and I was bitten by the bug. There were also real craftsmen, actors like Don Selwyn and George Henare, and after that they kept some of us on their radars. When Don started doing things in the 1980s and 90s, if there was a role with te reo, he threw those things my way. He said it was because he didn't have to teach me, all he had to do was manoeuvre me around the set.
My wife is a teacher and she's played a huge part in shaping the person I am today. We met while I was working in South Auckland and we have been together 47 years. I'd moved from the Māori Land Court where I was a clerk and interpreter for nearly three years, before I became a Māori community officer at the tender age of 23, chasing young Māori round the streets of Ōtara, Papakura and Māngere. We were called the Joint Team, because we were made up of social workers from social welfare, police officers and community volunteers and my wife was one of those volunteers. Through that work, before I became a journalist, I was also exposed to influencers from the Māori world. I knew Whina Cooper before she was a dame. I also knew people at Bastion Point but, as a civil servant, we were banned from going up there.
In 2015 my wife and I decided it was time to return to Northland, partly because I wanted to level up on that five-pound investment. When I work with the people at home, I deliver to Ngāti Hine, because every one of those contributors to that kōha when I went to St Stephen's were Ngāti Hine, and all the work I do today is the interest on that investment. When I left that morning in 1965, the people who stood by that railway line had a vision, and an expectation of me. Those men have been at the back of my mind in all the things I've ever done. My work is my iwi commitment, and it will stand as a cost I willingly carry.
I see myself as a conduit, whether I was with the Māori Language Commission a Māori Community Officer, working in journalism or film, those jobs have all broadened my view of the tapestry of our nation. I deliver in equal measure to everybody whose lives I touch and whose lives touch mine. I have no time for the sort of politics that try to make a mockery of things Māori. I have no time for people who are critical of strong Māori advocacy, or think that if any leeway is given to addressing Māori aspirations, that the advantage to Māori, means they must have had something taken off them along the way.
I can applaud Christopher Luxon's pledge to learn Māori, as a precursor to us both understanding each other, but I will absolutely stand up against any rhetoric that labels Māori-based initiatives as separatist, and come at a cost borne by the rest of society. If the promise for nationhood made 182 years ago is to be realised then we must set the protocols, the tīkanga, in place so we can do that. The idea that if we give you this, then we must have given something up still finds gravitas in some quarters and it whets my appetite because I know there are still things for me to do.
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