The Hīkoi mō Te Tiriti has received a surprising “shout out” from an expert in almost 3,000-year-old Roman society.
Associate Professor Alison Griffith, head of department of classics at the University of Canterbury, made the acknowledgment during a kōrero with Te Ao Māori News on Thursday. She was sharing her experience of helping students understand Roman society through a Māori lens.
“I just want to give a shout out to the hīkoi, and I’ll draw a Roman example to it.
“There are points in Roman political history where you’ve got this tension between a very rich few, an oligarchy, and everybody else. And everybody else is what makes Roman society run, basically.”
Fed up with these leaders, the people decide to make a forceful point, Griffith says.
“There’s a point in the fifth and fourth centuries BCE, where there’s so much tension that this mass of Romans withdraws from Roman society to one particular hill.
“When they do that, boy, does that get everybody else’s attention.”
Like the hīkoi, the Roman masses set about getting their message across loud and clear, she says.
“It’s using the collective force of people to make a really important political point.
“I’ve been reflecting on that aspect of the hīkoi all week.”
Where it started
Originally from the US and now a New Zealand citizen, Griffith has drawn on Māori concepts to help explain Roman society to students in a way that is relatable to them for about eight years.
The impetus was a drive by the university to ensure students come away from their studies with “bicultural confidence and competence”.
Academic dean at the time, Griffith threw herself into learning about Māori culture, aware she had to lead by example.
“I did every professional development course that the university offered.”
She started with a reo Māori for the office course, followed it up with Tangata Tū, Tangata Ora about the treaty and tikanga Māori, and also visited Tuahiwi marae and did a short course.
“That’s basically how I got to the point of thinking, right I can get it [Māori] into my courses if I just think hard enough.
“The first course that I did it in was Latin, believe it or not. But I’ve kind of beefed it up every year.
“The more I learn, the more I think, ‘Oh, I can put that in here, or I can apply that [in] this other place’.
“It’s a process of continuous change and improvement really.”
Māori lens
Several Māori concepts offer a window to helping understand Roman society, says Griffith, such as tangata whenua and mana whenua for example.
“If you peel the Romans back to the point before they had an empire, they are people of their land. They draw their strength from the land. They see themselves as being people of that place.
“They have places in the land that are tapu. They’re places of awe that ‘God haunted’, as the Romans would put it.”
Griffith says whakapapa also had great significance for them.
“There’s a strong organisation toward whānau in Roman society. They’re clan-based.
“With that, of course, they have this strong sense of whakapapa. Their legends are about their ancestors.”
Tikanga played an important role too.
“There are ways of doing things, there are customs of the ancestors that we need to abide by.”
She acknowledges the role the Romans also had in “erasing cultures”.
“Part of that process of developing an empire started to pull those concepts in different directions. The Romans could perceive that they were becoming a different type of people as a result of having an empire overseas.
“Of course, you can see how you get into so many other issues there. They’re conquering people. So they’re basically erasing cultures as they go along.”
Main takeaways
Griffith says some students weren’t so keen on the university’s bicultural initiative, unable to recognise the relevance of Māori to Roman studies.
“I never have open resistance. But at the same time, I do sense sometimes stretching of your thinking. I’m stretching the way you’re looking at the world a little bit.”
Her American background has also been a source of discontent for some students.
“A student challenged me one day in class. She said, ‘well, you’ve got a hell of a nerve. You’re an American, and your country has really stuffed this up’.
“I said precisely, our country has stuffed it up completely. There is no treaty. There’s just a string of broken treaties, and people who live in the severest form of poverty in many, many states.
“It’s for that reason that it’s such a pleasure to live in a country where things are taken much more seriously. And where you can take it on board and actually feel like you’re making a contribution that’s positive.”
Griffith says it has been a great pleasure to find ways to share Māori culture with her students.
“I can’t express how much of a better teacher it has made me. It gave me much more confidence walking into the classroom and thinking, ‘right, I’m making an effort to reach a wider body of students in my classes’.
“That’s the takeaway for me. It’s really, it’s liberating. Really confidence building and liberating.”