​wareware ēnei ingoa

Wellington
Picton
Nelson
ko wai e pīrangi ana ki ēnei ingoa mō ngā tāone o Aotearoa?
kāore ahau.
ko wai e pīrangi ana ki ēnei ingoa o ngā tāne mā kua mate?
kāore ahau hei mōhio.

Auckland
Hastings
Hamilton
ko wai e pīrangi ana ki ēnei ingoa mō ngā tāone o Aotearoa?
kāore ahau.
ko wai e pīrangi ana ki ēnei ingoa o ngā tāne mā kua mate?
kāore ahau hei mōhio.

Napier
Buller
Gisborne
ko wai e pīrangi ana ki ēnei ingoa mō ngā tāone o Aotearoa?
kāore ahau.
ko wai e pīrangi ana ki ēnei ingoa o ngā tāne mā kua mate?
kāore ahau hei mōhio.

ko te wā ki te whakakore i ēnei ingoa o ngā tāne mā kua mate.
te wā ki te mahara i ngā mea kino katoa o ēnei tāne.
te wā ki te wareware i a rātou katoa.

te wā mō 
Te Whanganui-a-Tara Waitohi Whakatū
Tāmaki Makaurau Heretaunga Kirikiriroa
Ahuriri Kawatiri Tūranga-nui-a-Kiwa

ināianei me mō āku tonu atu.





[wareware ēnei ingoa – forget these names

ko wai e pīrangi ana ki ēnei ingoa mō ngā tāone o Aotearoa?
kāore ahau.
ko wai e pīrangi ana ki ēnei ingoa o ngā tāne mā kua mate?
kāore ahau hei mōhio.

who wants these names for the towns of Aotearoa?
not me.
who wants these names of dead white mean?
I don’t know.

ko te wā ki te whakakore i ēnei ingoa o ngā tāne mā kua mate.
te wā ki te mahara i ngā mea kino katoa o ēnei tāne.
te wā ki te wareware i a rātou katoa.

it’s time to erase these names of dead white men
time to remember all the bad things about these men.
time to forget them all.

te wā mō - the time for
ināianei me mō āku tonu atu – now and forever - ‘translation’ from Māori into English].






​Vaughan Rapatahana (Te Ātiawa) commutes between homes in Hong Kong, Philippines, and Aotearoa New Zealand. He is widely published across several genre in both his main languages, te reo Māori and English and his work has been translated into Bahasa Malaysia, Italian, French, Mandarin, Romanian, Spanish, Esperanto. He is the author and editor/co-editor of over 50 books. His latest is Sexual Predation and TEFL (De Gruyter Brill, 2025), a further critique of agents pushing the English language on to Indigenous communities.