Making Connections - The Power of Oral Storytelling | Trent Hohaia | TEDxUOA

I'm the youngest of five of my family there's four boys including myself and there's my older sister she's 17 years older than me what's wonderful about having a 17 year old or a sister who's 17 years older than you and she feels like she could speak to you like she is your mother and whenever she tries to do that to me I remind you is that for the first year of my life she actually wasn't around she was in Germany I don't exchange with your high school and my mother sent her videos of me doing adorable baby things and she thought it would be a good idea to record over them with MTV music videos so I love my sister my three older brothers I grew up completely and utterly in their shadow and I loved it they were all good at sport or talented or good at school or did really well and as I was growing up I thought far out being their little brother it's pretty amazing who I hope well how did he like what soccer mighty public eye audio do tuned in Hanoi no Nazi money puts our heart Tina premature art anatomy Kia Crematory Milwaukee errata we took her to remove a part of in WA a question point car we worry buddy muharram Omaha caricature katoa my name is Jin ho hi I'm really privileged to be in front of you here today to speak about something that I'm deeply passionate about and that is the repatriation of traditional Maori learning methods into the homes of final across South Tarawa our storytelling because I believe that through storytelling what we're able to do is find identity in the present and then better navigate the future through connection to the past so that's what I'm gonna be exploring with you guys all today I was born and raised in South Auckland and a place called to Kearney and that's between money they weren't purple cutter and I loved it growing up in the south side all the different cultures with different people different languages different kinds of food all those things I loved being from South Auckland and I thought far out being from South Falklands pretty amazing did all of my schooling at South Auckland um I wasn't always the best student and to like on my report it used to say things like chances of distraction to other people in class and I feel like that's more on the end than on me nevertheless that was written but I always did really well at school and school kinda came really easy to me I was always at the top if not near the top of pretty much every class I was in what's really surprised me because I'm Modi and all throughout my life growing up I knew although no one ever explicitly said it to me that being Maori in achieving academically were separate things that they couldn't be the same thing and I thought ah you know what it's probably because I'm only half Modi so the other half of me is probably the smart house and being MALDI can't be smart so I had this conundrum actually I was this conundrum here I was at high school talented capable achieving well and credibly good-looking yellow was moldy and had this idea that man I like this can't be me so either I'm not moldy or I can't be intelligent and that shook me and I began to deny who I was I remember this in English class there was a movie called Oh - it's a really good New Zealand made film and there's the same what scared one of the girls in class and I'm really embarrassed by what I said to here but what I said to her when she got scared as I said I don't worry Marty's not real you laugh but honestly that was my identity about myself for years this thought that who I was was some relic as I graduated high school a year after I graduated I went overseas first time of my life first time I been away from my family for more than a week at the time and I thought this is it I'm gonna find out who I am by traveling the world I'm gonna find my purpose in life and unequivocally wherever I went people asked me where are you from I was frustrated traveled all the way around the world to discover who I was and people kept asking me where I come from and so I said as they kept asking me this question I started asking it of myself actually where am i from I knew I was from South Auckland I knew I was Marty but I didn't know a whole lot else and the things I used to identify myself actually had very little to do with me they were all about my family while I was traveling I went to London to visit my oldest brother who still it's coming home next year with his wife on his new baby I'm really excited and there's I visited him I stayed with him for about a month and one of the nights we into a pub because that's what older brothers like to do take your little brother to the pub and teach him the facts of life I wasn't aware that my brother knew those facts but clearly he thought he did and as we're sitting in the pub I started talking and we ended up talking about our family and I had what I can only call a revelation my revelation was this for the first 19 years of my life I've been a worse son to my family than they deserve as my brother and I say let's talk about the sacrifices and the contributions my parents had made not just to me but to all my siblings I started to unmark understand myself in relation to their sacrifice what does this call out of me man I'm their only inheritor of these eggs my father left a six-figure sum job to teach my brothers how to play rugby to coach the team six figures any lifter my father's our kind of man who will fix things you don't know what broken my mum was the kind of person who'll figure out that you're the one that broke them and then go tell your father and I love my parents so after this conversation I came home two jobs one discover who I was to become a better son for my family so I enrolled in university because I thought far out they've put so much into me that I need to particularly my mother but also my father have put so much into me to prepare me well for academics the least I can do was achieve well for them so I signed up to University in the first few years I was on the dean's list of academic excellence reserved for the 2% highest achievers and the faculty regardless of your year I received the Marti academic excellence award two years in a row and I achieved an average Myatt Army University never getting anything less than about a 90% on anything I submitted I don't particularly care about grades I don't see personally but I knew that what I needed to do was work hard for my mother but the funny thing that happened was I was at I was at the top of all these classes I wasn't and I heard comments like this it's really good to see a Maori boy at the top of the class and while these were well-intentioned what they served to remind me was man academic achievement and being Maori are not the same thing if you're Maori you unlikely to achieve here and I thought that by doing well maybe I'd change the stereotype but actually what amazes me is that I perpetuated the stereotype because I became seen as abnormal exceptional that it wasn't normal for Marta to do this so actually I wanted to come closer to my identity as Modi and by doing well I was going further away from it and my identity crisis persisted Who am I if these things are happening a couple years after I graduated University I was staying at a Mud Island Golden Bay and Toto and I met a man named Michael sucker hats a brand he told me a story he told me the story of how in the 13th century Polynesian navigators my ancestors using the tips of connections to the environment to the understanding of the flood patterns of birds ocean currents and star lights using all those things to navigate to arrive an altered or here today now the navigation of the Pacific Ocean by my ancestors academically was thought of as a mistake there was this idea called the Great Wave which is racist and that simplicity the idea was a lot of Polynesians were out in there Walker and a great wave just happened to sweep them from Micronesia all the way down to Altair Dora and I remember this because it made me angry to hear them and then I heard a sentence that I'll never forget because it's a sentence that's changed my life as he was telling the story he said this Jared Diamond the prominent academic was asked at a conference what is the greatest achievement of mankind is that the curing of polio as at the 1960s civil rights movement in the south in America is the putting of a man on the moon as of the fall of the Berlin Wall and he said unequivocally without a doubt it is the navigation of the South Pacific by early Polynesian explorers the idea that they stumbled upon our Theodora is as likely as finding a speck of dust in the eye of a needle the needle in the haystack the haystack in a panic one hit dear White full of haystacks and something in me shifted suddenly achieving great things and being mild he would no longer separate effects they'd never been super but these narratives had dominated my idea of what it meant to be who I was and through connections to story I was able to find an identity in the prison and understand my purpose moving forward much like when I spoke to my brother in the pub understanding my parents sacrifices I found purpose and began to act and that's what I'm passionate to talk to you all about today is the power of our story storytelling connecting to your culture market everyone coaches history in order to understand identity in the prison and navigate the future well yes so after I heard this I just fell in love with oral storytelling traditions and I once understand what is it about these things that helps ground us and identity what are that what's the functional aspect of us this year I've started a social enterprise called total Tito which means to compose verses in unison so the idea is to people seeing the same song making up the words at the same time which i think is beautiful and as I started this I wanted to understand here the function of these things and these are the things that I lens storytelling is relational a developmental my angeles's are like this people will forget what you see don't forget what you did but they'll never forget how you made them feel the act of sitting down with someone not taking photos of your coffees not checking your phone to see who asked wants to hang out the act of sitting down with a person face to face and sharing stories we have no idea the capacity our attention can has to affect the lives of those around us words create world's storytelling is not just descriptive it's prescriptive so this is the basic idea of advertising if you're appealing message enough it becomes truth so the narratives that are fixed in my life and will affect some of your lives I simply have repeated enough that they become true so advertising the basic premises buy this product and you will be better off or don't buy this product and you'll be worse off now those ideas hearing those once or twice a day that's fine but if we continue to hear these ideas that talk about our self-worth degrading without something thousands of times a day repeated every day for our for the entirety of our lives that begins to do something because storage having it is prescriptive it creates world's words create world's our storytelling gives knowledge assault so the reason some forms of esoteric knowledge of Maori and Salman Chong and polynesian Fijian and many other cultures the world have survived thousands of years of migration and coronation and all of the other things they've survived is because they'd had a face there are countless books I always hear this from fish is at University oh man I hate learning theory and I think there's people that have written these theories that set with other people sent letters communicator face-to-face in this is their last week and we hate it because there's no face to it that's one of the reasons sometimes theory can just be boring but this is perhaps the most important thing I lens so the model word for story is poo taco product as a compound word the first word poo tucky or base foundation the second with Rocco tree so when we talk about our story it's what we're talking about is the base of our trees their roots now if you know anything about Marty the martyr creation story often called mythology wrongly Talia Mejia wanted to separate his parents don't you know him Papa to arnica because he understood that for them for this would be a world of light he needed to separate his parents who were on perpetual embrace so great was their love for one another he talked to his siblings some of them said yeah boy let's do it someone said no no no no don't make my dad mad but he resigned himself he said no we have to do this and what he lay his back against his mother and he put his feet against his father and he began to push and as he did so he separated and created the world we have today the word our word for story is base of the tree tani monitor as that's where the god of our forests so for Maori when we talk about stories our pudica our roots we're literally talking about the things that created our world that give our world shape no wonder connecting to these things are so important no wonder we can find identity and connecting to the past through story thank you oh so why is this all important what's the point of our storytelling what what's the value why do we need to know this stuff currently an outtie at all we have the highest user we have the highest suicide rate in the developed world our young men and our young Maori men specifically our 1.5 times high in the national average I have a 1.5 higher chance likelihood to commit suicide than the national average which is already the highest in the world we have higher rates of domestic violence we have huge rates of infant mortality we are an increasingly isolated generation we spend less time face to face with other humans than at any time in history any time in human history these things are creating our identity I believe that is born out of disconnection not connection we see mental health rates rise and part of that is because mental health as being we're getting better at diagnosing it but part of it and I believe is because we have generations growing up not understanding their connection to the world because they're connected to temporal things that are not based on anything that's heaven during lasting contributions to the world and it's not right those things happening in our country I think we all just believe they're not right no matter how you slice it and their intricate their intricate problems with different causes and different ways of solving them but all of us know that those things are not what we want out their door to be there's a there's a tree could the kakatiya that's a native sheets well table and it has no tap roots separates are the root systems that dig deep into the earth to provide stability for trees so that we in faced with challenges from the wind rain sleet snow earthquakes that they can remain strong and now trees don't have them dr. Hackett's here has existed since the Jurassic period so it's got good at surviving and the way it's done there is it's learn to intertwine its roots with other kakatiya around it and other trees it's poo d'arco it's stories finding stability through connection to others alone in the field okay a Casilla is vulnerable to the shifting of the earth the shifting and moving of the wind of rain but connected finally in relationship with others through sharing of story our forests can remain strong the Marty word for forest is na he D na means mini or plural hidden means connections so when we look them to the forest what my ancestors saw was the mutually beneficial neutrally dependent interwoven interconnected relationships that were able to sustain the diversity of life Paul cut it out that's what we saw when we looked into it and it's easy to see and I'll seal to the outer door today with the problems we have understand it's easier than to understand the health of our forests relationally who are we sharing our stories with what value do we place on the roots that we send out in relationship to others or are we standing alone in the field is that why so many of us are falling I'm deeply passionate about this stuff I love it because I believe that the problems we're facing today as a result of disconnection but I have this dream what will it look like in a hundred years if the next generation of young Maori but of young people in general I surrounded from birth from cradle to career with stories that affirm who they are tell them that they're relevant meaningful capable talented purpose with greatness and that being whoever you are and for me being Maori is not a burden but it's a gift I believe that through connection through understanding ourselves not in isolation but through connection to the past through story like I understood myself and hearing the sacrifices of my parents causing me to find identity and then move to enroll in university and all those things and achieve well they're finding connection to the past giving meaning to the presence helping us better navigate the future who might we be if our identity is not based on just who I am what I wear what I do the things I like but if we send out our story we send out our connection to others that we might achieve stability relationally with all of us don't know how many of us there are in this room but all of you has really said Heather story don't doubt the power of your own story what's interesting about a forest about an idea is that trees aren't made strong because they are strong they're made strong because of their relationship in connection to others the kahikatea has survived a hundred hits from the dress appeared 180 million years long-term intergenerational transformative change as possible through connection to relationship no they're not till a democratic artwork or time Nike TNA hey off are we okay namioka Ojeda Kapoor thank you very much [Applause]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 13,619

Rating: 4.9282513 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Life, Communication, Community, Connection, Culture, Identity, Youth

Id: uh_9H93MACA

Length: 17min 52sec (1072 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 19 2017