'White chick' nails the native tongue

By RENEE KIRIONA

Zoe Linsell is a young Pakeha woman from a small farming town in the South Island who speaks fluent Maori.

In the heart of the Maori Television headquarters at Newmarket, there is nothing but respect and envy for the "blackest white chick" who works as a subtitlist translating English text to Maori, and vice versa.

The 20-year-old says her hometown shaped her.

"I made a decision not to be ignorant; not to be like the people in my town who were, for want of a better word, redneck.

"Both Maori and Pakeha freak out when they discover I'm a full-blown Ngati Pakeha who speaks Maori. They are even more surprised when they find out that I'm from the south.

"Some even call me the blackest white chick they've ever met."

Miss Linsell's parents moved from the Lake District in England to Warrington, 20km north of Dunedin, in the 1980s. Her mother was pregnant with her.

"At the time people there opposed anything Maori happening at school. Those were the days when kaumatua in the area tried to talk to us about the culture but were stopped by parents at the school gates.

"It was also a time when the bus driver called Maori people niggers."

Unlike many others, Miss Linsell's family interacted with the few Maori who lived in the area.

"My parents could not believe what they were seeing when they came to this country so when I told them I was going to learn Maori they gave me total support."

Miss Linsell initially majored in drama at Otago University, but graduated last year with a bachelor of Maori studies with honours.

"I decided that I was more passionate about Maori than acting so I changed my major. One of my dreams is still to be in front of the camera, though."

Her adopted tongue has "given me a whole new world view".

Some people felt she should not speak Maori, "but the more of us that learn, the better chance the language has of living, and the better chance Maori and Pakeha have of understanding each other".