Marissa Holder says her son will know his Pākehā ancestors as well as his Māori ones.

I learn te reo, because I get goosebumps when I watch a haka.

Whether the feet stomp into the manicured grass of a world stage to scare off South Africans, or on worn wooden floorboards by the hand-me-down jandals of schoolboys who don’t shave.

I learn te reo, because kāranga makes me cry.

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Whether it greets the tired, dewy poppies on a foggy April morning, or echoes through the hall where heavy hearts carry a coffin.

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I learn te reo, because while Mike Hosking embarrasses himself with words like “It was never illegal to learn”, our koro and our kuia still feel the slaps from teachers who said “No, it’s pronounced New-Zee-land.”

I learn te reo, because not once has a Māori asked me to explain why I want to speak the language. And yet here I am, explaining.

Because I walk the halls of the Wānanga and I step onto the marae, and I almost forget that there are people out there who don’t laugh when they hear the words “British victory” in the same sentence as “the Land Wars”.

We walk over ground that had limp, broken bodies dragged over it and buried under it.

We drive over the road that carried both kilts and ketes to glory and defeat.

We take selfies on DOC-deemed hilltops where the bush still remembers the war cries that shook the leaves.

I learn te reo, because my son will not go a day in his life without knowing the blood that runs through him, both where it is from and where it was spilt. He will know his Pākehā ancestors as well as his Māori ones.

Because when we honour history, we don’t pick and choose. When we move together as a nation, we must move hand-in-hand or we will not move at all.

The only thing compulsory te reo does is give future generations the ability to speak with the words of their ancestors, so that, like every New Zealander, they can stand with pride and with mana when they shake like the ground of a haka and cry with the kuia leading the kāranga.

Marissa Holder has studied te reo at the University of Waikato and Te Wānanga o Aotearoa.