When you haven't got a prayer

It was an awkward conversation, and if I could have slunk out of it, I would’ve.

I was at work, and a British colleague sat down with me. We were both part of a large government department in Wellington. I was working at the time with the Māori policy team, and had affection for both the mahi and the people. The team was trying to pull off a challenging piece of work, with mixed support from the folks around them.

We chatted, the colleague and I, friendly enough, over a formica table in the bland office space. Then the colleague confided something to me. She said, she didn’t understand why we needed to have karakia at work. Aren’t church and state meant to be separate? Overseas, they take that separation seriously: no prayer in the workplace. This is supposed to be a secular society.

I was taken aback.

Any big organisation is much the same. There are a hundred ways it can express what it values, what it doesn’t, but only one or two of them will be egregious. The rest, mostly, are barriers that are harder to put your finger on, subtle and quiet. A raised eyebrow, a rolled eye beneath it, or simply an inertia.

That stuff disappoints me, but it doesn’t surprise me.

This, somehow, surprised me. My colleague’s framing didn’t feel right, that much I knew; but in the awkward moment, a comeback eluded me. She and I parted company, but the conversation stuck. I turned it over after, my brain taking a while to catch up with my intuition.

A couple of weeks ago, the mayor of Kaipara District Council hit the headlines when he banned karakia from the beginning of council meetings. His secular stance comes out of his respect for everyone, he explained, talking over top of a wahine Māori. I sighed at the telly. The whole tired sentiment made me sad, and even more so, because it happened in a public service context - in a place that should belong to all.1

Now, I offer no expertise in karakia or tikanga whatsoever. Like, none. The thing I can I talk about, with greater confidence, is my experience as a white person not entirely understanding things. So I’m not going to berate anybody. I’m even going to reserve judgement on the mayor.

Instead, I’d like to talk from my own perspective, about what it’s been like working in places that have made karakia part of daily life. I’ll talk about feeling nervous and stumbling at first, finding the courage to have a go, then coming to cherish karakia.

Until recently, and for about 13 years, I was a public servant doing policy work (I still do similar work, but now in the private sector).

During that 13 years, government departments made a visible - sometimes controversial - effort to bring te reo and tikanga, including karakia, into their day-to-day work. Local government did the same. This effort continues. I can’t say every public servant has embraced it: probably, eyebrows still rise and eyes continue to roll, although inertia is the most likely barrier. But my experience is, at the leadership level at least, the important public service people are giving it their best shot.2

In the debate about how government departments use te reo and tikanga, including karakia, there are two main strands. The first strand, often allied with conspiracy theories or alt right causes, is violently opposed. It foments on websites with shitty pixelated New Zealand flags and 1990s fonts and spelling errors made in rage. It rails in limp Hobson’s Pledge-style pamphlets that, whatever they may lack in credibility, played their part during the pandemic when toilet paper ran low.3 Let's just say, I will not be giving these arguments my time.

But the second strand of arguments deserves attention. Again, I don’t have expertise here, but I’ll share with you some insights I’ve heard or read.

The use of te reo, tikanga and karakia by government has been subject to sharp criticism - and for a long time. Usage started in earnest in the 1980s, under the fourth Labour government: the same government that overhauled the economy, gutting sectors like forestry and manufacturing. This meant the catastrophic lay-offs of the era, their dislocation and their pain, hit Māori worse than most. To some Māori workers now defaulting on their mortgages, the government’s new enthusiasm for ‘biculturalism’ - shiny dual-language signs on the departments slashing jobs - seemed like taking the piss.

This quandary, all its deep nuances, is with us still. Take the 2017 renaming of Child, Youth and Family (CYF) as Oranga Tamariki, the Ministry for Children. Critics argued that, given our shameful track record of putting tamariki Māori in care - and the systemic mistreatment they’ve suffered while there - this use of te reo is not only wrong, but hurtful. And as critics have pointed out, nothing here is new: policy in Aotearoa has always had colonial roots.

Taking this line of thinking further, there’s another risk. If government departments expect their people to participate in reo or tikanga, including karakia, but their hearts aren’t in it, the result could be half arsed or even incompetent. And that might signal a lack of respect, not just for the language and culture, but for the people to whom they belong.

I will acknowledge this second strand of arguments with my trademark awkwardness. I don’t have the expertise to say what is the right use of reo, tikanga or karakia in a public service context - and even if I knew what I was talking about, I’m not the right person to decide.

But that’s why folks like me need to listen to the people who do know. People like the wahine who stood up to the mayor.

I started out anxious as hell.

I’d grown up in Murihiku, out in the country, and then I’d lived for a few years in Ōtepoti. By the time I moved to Pōneke, having landed my first real job as a public servant, I’d scarcely heard a word of te reo said properly, let alone a karakia.

I couldn’t pronounce the kupu. I was in a different kind of workplace place now, one with hundreds of people; and for the first time, everybody wasn’t more or less like me. I knew I should try, but between my Southland accent and my stuttering lack of confidence, the words would lodge in mouth like a clumsy embarrassment. More than that, I didn’t know the rules. I reached, once, for a sausage roll before the kai had been blessed. I realised my mistake and I felt like a numbnuts.

Then, one day, I didn’t feel like such a numbnuts - or, if I’m more honest, I realised I was using the numbnuts feeling as an excuse. I took a breath. When the phone rang, I answered ‘Mōrena’. And when we said the karakia together as a team, I went from only moving my lips, head down, to speaking loud enough to hear my own voice. Other people were starting to do the same.

I realised the power of my willingness to try on the willingness of others. I forgave myself mistakes, while doing the best I could to fix them. I talked still louder. As I did, the words began to speak back to me. I could pick out a handful of them, tenuously link them, see the images of people and moon and sun and water in my mind.

I came to understand that the words would keep me honest. They would make me humble: would never let me think, for a moment, that a fancy job means I know it all, because others will always know better. They would remind me of the limits of professional pride; that professionalism doesn’t always mean talking the best or the most, and is often the opposite. They would nurture my learning, because in my quest to get better, that learning will never end. They would connect me, as a public servant, to the Aotearoa I desired to serve.

I still fuck up the kupu from time to time, sometimes badly; but I figure I would rather fuck up in good faith than sit quietly in the empty space my courage should be.

I worked out, over time, what was wrong - I think - with my British colleague’s framing. The separation of church and state is an idea from a certain time and place.

My own traditional religious upbringing, as a Catholic, was rich with the imagery of conflict, of death. I learned about the glory of the martyrs; people killed for their belief in the goriest of ways. I heard about religious factions who tried over centuries to seize power, who burnt one another at the stake for minor theological infractions. I understood, I suppose, that in my own heritage, faith was volatility: it could kill as readily as it could heal. In this kind of turmoil, separating church and state was a kind of non-aggression pact, a safety valve.

My faith was uncomprehending of indigeneity. It was unconnected from land - except, I guess, from the acquisition of it. It offered me no real place to stand, nowhere my feet might touch the soil. It belonged to every person, I was told, a church meant for all; yet in its universalism, it handed everyone the same script, the same language in which to speak it. It subjugated the natives, until it begrudgingly conceded they might have souls; then it beat their children in its schools.

Maybe my interpretation is only my own, but here’s what I think. My faith is not without its beauty, even when hard to find, but it’s of a time and place.

I don’t know what karakia mean, not really, but my intuition tells me they’re not this, this thing I inherited - and to try to make them this, to force mana whenua through the lens of this other time and place, to demand a tick in the box of either ‘church’ or ‘state’, I dunno. It doesn’t sit well with my intuition.

Only a few days ago, I had a hui with some people I’d met a little while before. That first meeting, it was a joy. We’d got chatting, and we had so much in common: the words flew from our tongues and our brains caught fire. Names and contacts were exchanged. In a short time we came together again.

The second meeting was by Zoom. Participants drifted in, got chatting, got laughing. When we had quorum, our chair spoke the karakia.

In that moment, I felt welcomed. I felt honoured. I felt the effort my hosts had taken to find me out, to organise the hui; I felt their interest in the mahi we would do together, their excitement for our sharing of ideas.

The funny thing was, the karakia called us to business; but it brought with it, into our formal kōrero, all the lightheartedness, the goodwill, the intellectual curiosity, the sense of connection, with which we’d entered the room. With all those things, we settled into our discussion.

And I thought, yeah. This, right here, is what public service really means.

A compromise of sorts has been reached. In these last few days, the mayor has announced he will give everyone a turn at opening a council meeting, however they choose.

It isn’t enough, not really. I feel like it relegates karakia from its rightful place - from an expression of our respect for mana whenua, our constitutional commitment to Te Tiriti - to a whim on the day, like a card chosen from a deck.

But I know that people can learn, because I have learned, or I’ve started to, from stumbling beginnings. I’ve had goodwill extended to me when I struggled for the words, for the confidence. It’s made me optimistic, just a little, for public service, for the people within it.

Things can change. Maybe, in time, the mayor will want to learn too.