Moana goes to Ireland: What do Māori and Irish have in common?

[00:00:00]Everyone knows me as Hi Kelly, but my real name's the most Irish name you ever hear. James Mihal Kelly.

[00:00:07]>> Miho. It's the Irish version of Michael Kelly.

[00:00:17]My grandfather Kevin Kelly, he came out from Ireland to New Zealand in the ' 50s and uh through him I was able to get a citizenship and then a passport. What did you observe in terms of kind of similarities between his uh Irishi tonga and you know maldi?

[00:00:38]>> He'll tell me these stories that would paint a picture in my mind about the leprechaorns which are like their version of and bansi like their version of hinu.

[00:00:49]both cultures have a really high value placed on like the oral transmission of our histories and that was really beautiful to see when we'd be in a pub or we'd be in a real informal situation with them socializing and someone would get up and the storyteller would start to narrate this story and then they'd sing a song and then oh next minute's getting up and telling a story and we're singing a song like we have this shared history but then the way we are as people the way we interact with each other is also the And a lot of interaction in pubs.

[00:01:21]>> A lot of interaction pubs >> kind of works >> and and the language starts to flow [music] colonization.

[00:01:34]>> The situation that led to the demise in their language and culture was the same as us and the perpetrator was the same.

[00:01:42]So that's something else we have in common as well.

[00:01:50]Some like him came in recent waves but many rank and file soldiers who served in the New Zealand wars ironically under English [music] officers were Irish.

[00:02:01]Then there was the 18th Royal Irish regiment sent to Wut just after the invasion. Some of these soldiers ended up marrying Mai. My own Irish greatgrandparents on my mother's side arrived into Wamaru in the 1880s.

[00:02:16][music] >> So any advice for us going to Ireland?

[00:02:20]What do we need to be aware of?

[00:02:22]>> Go on to detox before you get there.

[00:02:26]>> And they have a lot of tea kunga around that too. You know the pouring and drinking of Guinness.

[00:02:31]>> You mean it's part of the culture. You have to do it.

[00:02:33]>> Yeah. Yeah. [laughter] Got to hand it to the English. They're nothing if not consistent. I'm here in Belfast and it's in Ireland where the English honed the colonial playbook that inflict on Australia, India, Africa, Canada, and Alteora.

[00:03:02]The colonization of Ireland began long before ours with invasion in 1169.

[00:03:08]Despite centuries of dispossession, famine, and forced immigration, the Irish have always kicked back.

[00:03:15]>> Well, I can't tell my rebellions from my writings.

[00:03:18]>> And whose fault's that? If your lot had stopped invading us for five minutes, there'd be a lot less to wait through, you English prick.

[00:03:25]>> Winston Churchill once said, "We've always found the Irish a bit odd. They refuse to be English.

[00:03:36]So in terms of pronunciation, that's a little bit challenging. Even your name, I was thinking, [laughter] >> how do you spell it? A O I F E.

[00:03:48]>> Okay. [laughter] >> But how do you say it?

[00:03:51]>> EA.

[00:03:53]>> Yeah. Um, it's strange because Irish is extremely consistent in its athography and spelling. It's like once you unlock it and you know the key, it's very you can pronounce anything.

[00:04:06]>> Tell me how I'm supposed to say >> that one's.

[00:04:08]>> That's tig.

[00:04:10]>> Tig.

[00:04:12]>> What?

[00:04:12]>> Nave.

[00:04:13]>> Nave.

[00:04:14]>> Ocean.

[00:04:15]>> Ocean.

[00:04:16]>> Oen.

[00:04:26]Now she has a PhD in mai and is fluent in both Irish and tadil.

[00:04:31]>> My native language is Irish but my first language language is English but I mean everyone in Ireland learns Irish. We learn it [music] for at least 12 years in school. Also the grammar and vocab of Irish has made its way into [music] Irish English and it's very distinctive and I think um [music] >> [music] >> you know, it's it's everywhere. It's ina, [music] you know, in our name. So, if you're in Ireland, you will you will absorb the Irish language whether you want to or not.

[00:05:09][music] We went there in 2017 to have a look at what they would remember when we went to the West Coast and there's still pockets of communities that speak the Irish language day today and it's the first language in the home and seeing everything in Irish like the bank, the the shop, the the pub, everyone speaking Irish and I thought, "Wow, this is this is a dream."

[00:05:52]2022, I started to have these moments of, wow, like we have a very we've been through the same thing.

[00:06:06]The play explores how Irish place names were systematically replaced by English long after Gua was banned from Parliament and in [music] the courts and English became embedded into daily life.

[00:06:26]400,000 [music] children. In the 1920s, the Republic of Ireland began public funded cuda and media platforms. At the 2022 census, the number of speakers had increased though only a small minority say they speak it well and the [music] most proficient.

[00:06:48]>> And um are you able to speak it much out in the community? Yeah. My dad speaks Irish, so just a guy.

[00:06:55]>> So your dad was raised speaking Irish.

[00:06:58]>> Yeah.

[00:06:58]>> And what about your parents?

[00:07:00]>> No, my parents set up the G school.

[00:07:02]>> Yeah. Yeah. North Belfast.

[00:07:05]>> But in West Belfast, it's um the Gail border. So we were able to use Irish around there. But as the further you go outside of West Belfast, it gets there's less and less Irish. Today in Dublin, hundreds of buses have come in from all around the country, from Northern Ireland and around the Republic to march to Parliament to fight for the language, home of Irish music, art, [music] literature and Irish independence which was declared here in 1921.

[00:08:03]What are the key issues here?

[00:08:04]>> Housing is in limited supply, but it's particularly kind of uh acute in Irish language speaking areas because a lot of them are based in areas of natural beauty and over the years people have been buying holiday homes in those areas and that's kind of dispersing the community.

[00:08:20]>> If the the language speakers can't live in those areas, then the language dies out because if the language isn't being spoken day to day, it's dead. I'm actually an Irish teacher in Irish. I teach two adult schools. So an Irish school and she goes to an Irish school as well and so it's been >> and and how is it going with their schools because our schools we don't have enough teachers especially trained in our language.

[00:08:44]>> Yeah. No, I think we have a lot of issues and there's a lot of skills especially Irish schools that are under pressure and don't have enough teachers.

[00:08:55]>> The people are here because they want to see action. It's a longstanding issue in terms of not only the housing issue but also in terms of recognition of the Irish language and the provision of services to citizens in their own language.

[00:09:07]>> Is there a distinction really between how things are rolling up north to help down here?

[00:09:12]>> Well, the same problems persist. You know, there are different kind of political realities I suppose in the north as well compared to the south. Um uh but that said, the Irish language has got certain protections, not as many as it does in the south under, uh northern legislation. And unfortunately, uh it sometimes the language falls into kind of a a kind of a sectarian battle sometimes. And you know, there are communities in the north from both like people from both sides of the community that are learning Irish, but I suppose historical issues still play a part in how government reacts in the north.

[00:09:42]>> Meanwhile, in Northern Ireland itself, the bombings were setting new records in horror.

[00:10:00]30.

[00:10:01]>> I do remember [music] getting told off asking a few too many questions about Northern Ireland and Southern [music] Ireland.

[00:10:09]>> That imposing wall represents divisions between Irish nationalists and pro-British rule communities. The constitution of the republic recognizes Irish as its [music] first official language.

[00:10:30]2022.

[00:10:40]The Irish language has really been fighting an uphill battle, especially up here in the north because with the partition of Ireland, the storm government was formed as [music] an inverted commas, a Protestant government for Protestant people and the Irish language was something that was to be suppressed and put down. Uh, one of the most visible things is the lack of Irish language signage whenever you do cross into the border. And >> [music] >> um we we also have got um a contemporary struggle that maybe people [music] in the south of Ireland can't relate to in the same way.

[00:11:21][music] In 1856, [music] German philosopher Frederick Engles wrote to his friend KL Marx and in a letter he said that Ireland could be regarded as the first English colony.

[00:11:42]Yes, Ireland was the guinea pig.

[00:11:45]The first thing that the colonizer tries to do is to wipe out the indigenous culture in a way to create [music] a vacuum for them to impose their will upon the indigenous people. So that happened with our language. It also happened with our sports hurlin and gelic football. And as we're seeing a resurgence now of the language at one point in history, [music] there had to be visionaries to allow people to reconnect with these native Irish sports. And there are dozens of clubs now in every city up and down the country. It's a massive network and the language is of course intertwined with the sports that we play.

[00:12:34]The best thing that we have going for us here in Ireland is the spirit of the Irish people and the belief that our culture is. It's worth passing it on to the next generation and it's worth participating in.

[00:12:51]>> [music and singing] >> Anna's father, Garajel Caran, was a pioneer of the Irish language movement in Belfast.

[00:13:21]Belfast Nancy go.

[00:13:24]>> Yep. She only speaks Irish and a little bit of Arabic.

[00:13:28]Go Nancy.

[00:13:30][music] Anl Carin is based at the cultural center where he runs his podcast Rebel Matters [music] and manages a gym he set up in a refugee camp in the West Bank.

[00:13:41]>> Me and both my brothers grew up as Irish as our first language, which would have been uncommon at the time. It's still uncommon [music] now, but it's more popular now than what it was then.

[00:13:51]All through the 80s and the 70s, there were people [music] who were risking their lives to set things up [music] that were for the for future generations here. And we're, I suppose, the generation now that has seen the benefit of that.

[00:14:15]>> What was the vibe like up here?

[00:14:16]>> Oh, that was that was magual. That was like being on drugs. There's a a critical saying about the Irish language that it's a dead language. There's no point in learning it. But you look out there, there's just so much life, you know, that's a that was a spiritual experience up there.

[00:14:29]>> Who's your favorite Irish band that sings in in the language?

[00:14:33][laughter] >> Oh, who?

[00:14:36]>> Ready? C E [music] R.

[00:14:54]What is your relationship with that band? My youngest brother is in kneecap and it's been great to be involved in the kind of the surge that kneecap have um played a big part in. I think historically the colonizers in Ireland have tried to kill off the Irish language. A big part of that was to make it seem like the the language was useless, that it was backwards, that it was no longer a requirement. And to a large degree, I think that they succeeded. And I think what we're seeing now in recent years in part Nikap have been played a big part in this that we've seen people taking back the Irish language seeing the value in it. They're sort of taking back their sense of identity and that I think is a big part of the reason why I see so many people coming out on the streets.

[00:15:48]>> They've done a lot for the Irish language making it, you know, cool again for younger people to start speaking it.

[00:15:53]You can see this sort of this renewed interest in the Irish language and Irish culture.

[00:15:59]Johnny Jeff [music] [music] E.

[00:16:11]>> I think that they would probably say to themselves is the kneecap wouldn't be there if it wasn't for the generation before them that had done the ground work. There's a passing on of the torch and with every generation and with every wave, people bring something new to the table. 7 and a half thousand British troops have been sent to Northern Ireland that but for the British army there would be civil war between Catholic and Protestant in this part of Britain 1969 Friday you grew up here in a time of conflict and we've driven around and you've told me the stories of what's happened the stories that you heard your neighbors.

[00:17:05]What is the residue of that now? Is there still tension or is it manifest in different ways?

[00:17:14]>> It's a good question. We're certainly still living with the ramifications of partition here. Not just in terms of cultural suppression, not just in terms of state violence against the community here, but also in terms of uh community development and community investment.

[00:17:34]>> Shooting began and within half an hour 13 civilians, all of them Catholics, were shot dead by British troops. People in New Zealand might look at Ireland and think in particular in Northern Ireland there's the Catholics and then there's the Protestants and there's a there's a division along those lines. I think that's a narrative that was perpetuated by the British government in a way to try and kind of contain the conflict that was here and portray it as a conflict that was happening between two native tribes that just didn't get along with one another, the Catholic tribe and the Protestant tribe, so that they could get away from the fact that they were colonizing Ireland and continue to occupy the six counties and There was an anti-colonial struggle going on against the British government [music] [music] and everywhere there are reminders.

[00:18:50]Ireland is a nation of storytellers and I think we've seen an evolution of the murals and the the visual storytelling that is depicted on our walls a lot of the time moving from more militaristic uh depictions to more cultural depictions as kind of memorials for people who have sacrificed a lot or who've passed away or who died during the conflict.

[00:19:11]>> What is it about Belfast that you would want people in our country to know or understand? I would like people to see the richness of community and culture that exists here, not just here on the fall road, but also in all all different parts of Belfast. There has been a lot of progress made here since the Good Friday Agreement. There's a lot of progress still to be made and a lot of bridges to be built, but Belfast has come on massively since [music] I was a teenager. There's much more happening here that's positive.

[00:19:50]>> [music] >> Now, the Irish people I spoke to really [music] rate Wales for language revitalization. Why do you think that's the case? The Welsh language has been in retreat and continues to lose ground in some places, but it's still a language spoken by well over half a million people and where many many people in Wales, you know, their everyday life is to live through Welsh and I think for some people that's something they would aspire to.

[00:20:28]>> Mark Drake, secretary for finance in the Welsh language and a former first minister of Wales, which is much like the prime minister. I'm afraid to say I'm probably towards the tail end of a generation where uh parents believe that uh English was the language that uh allowed you to make progress in the world and Welsh was a language that held you back. So I heard Welsh from the day I was born. My mother's first language was Welsh. She never spoke anything but Welsh to her own family and she never spoke anything but English to me [music] and to my brothers.

[00:21:01]>> How have things evolved since then?

[00:21:03]families now definitely think much more that the gift of biling bilingualism and that's what it is uh is something you'd want to offer any child.

[00:21:12]>> So the number of our young people who have their education through the medium of Welsh has grown strongly uh and I think there's a greater sense of the importance of the language. It's no longer thought as something that belongs to the past but something that is very much part of our present and our future here in Wales.

[00:21:40]>> [music and singing] >> Welsh medium education which has grown strongly is a huge success story both in terms of the standards of education and the fact that it turns out capable able, confident, independent speakers of the language. We would like to create a million speakers of the Welsh language and we're not that far away. You know, in some surveys around 850,000 people say they speak Welsh already. Just as importantly, we have an ambition to double the use of the Welsh language.

[00:22:22]>> In a way, there's no point in learning a language if you can't use it. So we are working hard to create new opportunities in the workplace for example for people to be able to use the language.

[00:22:34]>> What needs to happen to be able to reach that goal?

[00:22:37]>> The most fundamental thing is that we sustain the strong goodwill towards the language in Wales. That is its biggest strength. the people in Wales who speak the language and who don't speak the language regard it as a positive asset and as an important part of being Welsh then we have to be clear that the language belongs to everybody whether you are a fluent speaker or whether you only manage a few words you speak Welsh in Wales and then to encourage people to acquire more of a language more fluency more ability to communicate in it more opportunities to do that and that permeates into every aspect of life and government cannot do that alone. That really is something that has to be led in communities by the enormous amount of voluntary effort we're able to draw on here in Wales. And then together you create a context in which the language is able not just to survive but to thrive.

[00:23:40]>> What would be your message to political leaders in New Zealand around the language? Well, I think it's to think of language as an asset. An asset to you in terms of the identity of the place that you are lucky enough to live in. An asset in the way in which that creates economic opportunities for people as well as cultural opportunities and an asset that is important for you not just today but in the way we think here in Wales of the future of generations, the well-being of future of generations. The effort that you make today lays down the foundation for people who come after us as well.

[00:24:21]>> Back home [music] and there's something about Ireland that feels familiar.

[00:24:32]How did you find it going back yourself with, you know, your being Irish? Did you feel feel some sense of kind of connection? I felt like I was just probably saying what every other person who's been back to Ireland who has this [ __ ] up. Oh, my grandfather. But as soon as you tell that story, they welcome you in as faro. Yeah.

[00:24:52]>> And I [clears throat] think in my travels with and others when we when we are as Maldi, you'll know with other indigenous communities, no matter where we are in the world, there's this feeling of being with Faro, >> we have a shared history, the same struggles, but at the end of the day, we just also like to have a good time and [music] yeah, connect with each other.

[00:25:27]Hear me pause me my first taste of Guinness as we salute game changers and disruptors. Those in Ireland and Alteor who had a dream to reclaim Tel and fought for it.

[00:25:40]>> Slancha >> Modi order.

[00:25:45]>> What do you think?

[00:25:46]>> That's very berry. Yeah, very buried.

[00:25:51]Some 25,000 people marched that day in Dublin. While it was coincidentally moldy language week back here in Aliador, shortly after the rally, the Irish government announced a funding boost of around $55 million towards the Irish language sector. There's also a new campaign underway to introduce a law that would compel the Department of Education to establish and support total immersion schools in Ireland. Despite huge interest from communities, half the counties don't have any secondary schools teaching in Irish. Hey, hope you enjoyed tonight's app. Watch it again on Maldi Plus. Poor Mari.

[00:26:34][music] >> [music] [music] >> Black Pearl.

[00:27:08]>> [music] >> They tak.