Spoilers ahead! This review will discuss elements of the book that could be considered spoilers. You have been warned.
All That We Own Know Owe
I am one week into full-immersion kura kaupapa Māori.
Our kaiako says:
“I want everyone to go around the room and say how they are feeling using our kare-a-roto kupu hou.”
“Whakamā,” six people say.
I don’t know my language, I’m frustrated, I’m ashamed, I don’t know what took me so long to get here.
She takes a deep breath, the weight of the whakamā heavy on her chest.
“I don’t want to hear that anymore,” she says.
“Say it with me: ‘He Māori ahau. E kore au e whakamā.’”
We are at my house bunking whānau hui lazily speaking Māori as we usually do before we inevitably slip back into te reo Pākehā. My friend Grace mentions the name Shilo Kino to me. I tend to be completely out of the loop but this time the name rings a bell. I watched a few episodes of the Back to Kura podcast hoping to find some grounding during the first intense few weeks at Te Wānanga Takiura.
I remember there’s a package from bad apple I’ve been neglecting to pick up from the post office after I missed the delivery. Within 20 minutes we’re in Newmarket and the package, a copy of All That We Know, is safely in my hands.
I take this as a tohu. This book is intended for me to read.
All That We Know follows Māreikura, at both times an insufferable and relatable early-20s Māori girl. Raised by her grandmother Glennis, she is reluctantly launched into social media fame when a video of her school speech calling out racism is made public. Already grappling with her identity, Māreikura enrols at a full-immersion, rumaki reo unit. Like many of us Māori, Māreikura feels a deep longing to speak a language she feels was meant for her.
Like our way-finder ancestors, she must navigate deep seas of complex relationships, self-diagnosed ADHD, an unfiltered personality, cancellation and systemic racism. Set in a time where social media activism and racial discourse dominate the online space, All That We Know reminds us that our relationship with our culture is multifaceted, nuanced, layered and deeply personal.
This novel neatly packages our current times through the lens of its main character. Māreikura is stubborn, vigilant, outspoken—all things wāhine Māori are discouraged from being. Her experience in the public eye as an unwilling activist, coupled with her desire to articulate her struggle leads her and her friend Jordana to document their reo journey through a podcast. Despite relating to Māreikura, I also wanted to strangle her. I found myself begging for some sort of character development, some reason to stick with her.
“You need to apologise to Troy.”
“Apologise for what?
“Māreikura.” She gritted her teeth. “You disrespected our guest. He said he didn’t want to talk about his mothers. You bought up shit that wasn’t even relevant to the kaupapa.”
“I was speaking my truth.”“It might be your truth but it’s not everyone’s truth. And not all truth needs to be spoken out loud. That’s why we have journals and therapy.”
But don’t worry, have faith in our girl Māreikura, she will get there and we’re all rooting for her. This undertaking is not an easy one; she is the bridge after all. “It only takes one generation to lose a language and three generations to get it back.” She is taking those first steps and that’s what ultimately counts.
All That We Know pulls back the layers of relatively niche issues you encounter in a kura kaupapa articulated and debated by the characters.
- intergenerational trauma and language loss
- the minefield of religion in the te ao Māori space
- debates about what are whakaaro Māori and what are whakaaro Pākehā
- tall poppy and imposter syndromes
- overstepping boundaries and upholding tapu
- outspoken Pākehā in a rumaki reo with wait lists in the hundreds:
“She’s still Pākehā,” Māreikura said. “Still taking up space when there’s so many of our people who want to learn their language.”
“Yeah, but she’s a good Pākehā,” said Jordana.
The novel addresses these things and more and the text is rich, sometimes overwhelmingly so with this discourse.
Kino’s writing is digestible, flowing from a point of relatability and peppered with modern jargon for the chronically online. My concern is that the parameters in which this story is placed lack a quality of timelessness, which I also acknowledge is likely the point. The work may not be as accessible in 5-10 years.
As politics shift, new apps and AI emerge, podcasts rise and fall, and activism waxes and wanes will Māreikura still be accessible? I acknowledge that at her core, Māreikura represents the longing to reconnect with our ancestors and our culture. This is what gives her her humanity.
We cannot expect one Māori author to cover all issues in one pukapuka let alone speak and write for an entire culture. As Māori we are allowed to write for ngahau, for harikoa, for tākaro—All That We Know achieves this.
Māreikura embodies the whakatauki:
“E hoki ki tō maunga, kia purea ngā hau a Tāwhirimātea.”
Return to your mountains and be cleansed by the winds of Tāwhirimātea.
As Māori our mountains are not simply the highest point in proximity to us, they are the places where our ancestors would run to when they were in danger. They were our strongholds, our fortresses, our pā. From them, we could see our whenua stretched out before us and feel the winds from atua on our skin. They are a reminder that we are not the strongest beings despite our egos, and that the earth on which we stand gives just as easily as it takes.
All That We Know is all that we owe—to ourselves, to our ancestors and to those who come after us. We are the bridge and the mahi is hard, but it is cleansing, it is purea, it is rongoā for the soul.
Featured photo via Moa Press.
