Māori Lessons

A Fulbright Fellow studying the Indigenous language of New Zealand, Travis Richardson (C’15) unearths the deeper meaning behind the things we say.

In te reo Māori, the language of the Indigenous people of New Zealand, instead of saying “Hello, how are you?,” you might say, tēnā koe (“there you are”). The phatic expression originates from the Māori creation story, when Hine-ahu-one, the first woman, sneezed after Tāne-te-waiora, the god of mankind, breathed life into her nostrils. His first words to her were: there you are.

“I think it’s a beautiful way to recognize the inner spirit of the person before you,” said Travis Richardson (C’15), a Ph.D. candidate in sociolinguistics.

Richardson is currently in Aotearoa, the Māori word for New Zealand, as one of the 28 inaugural Fulbright-John Lewis Civil Rights Fellows. Established through bipartisan legislation in 2024, the fellowship honors the legacy of civil rights leader and Congressman John Lewis by supporting scholars studying civil rights, justice and equity on a global scale.

As part of his fellowship, Richardson is investigating how government support for the Māori language is reshaping the responsibilities of non-Māori citizens. He’s particularly interested in how this model could inform revitalization efforts for Native American languages in the United States.

“In New Zealand, being a good citizen is seen as supporting Māori endeavors, including language revitalization,” Richardson said. “There’s a lot we can learn from their successes — and their missteps — as we work to preserve U.S. Native American languages.”

For Richardson, the cause is personal. After graduating from Georgetown with a major in linguistics, he helped develop language curriculum for the Zuni people in New Mexico. He also has ties to the Choctaw Nation, the third-largest Indigenous tribe in the U.S. His father was adopted by Choctaw parents, raised on the reservation and was fluent in the language, but was denied tribal affiliation because of his adoptive status. Richardson grew up estranged from the language and culture, which left him wrestling with questions of belonging.

“Now that I’m an adult and speak some Choctaw, I’m interested in learning more,” he said. “But I grapple with: How appropriate is it for me to pursue it? Am I taking a seat from someone who is Choctaw?”

These questions became more pronounced for Richardson while serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in Kyrgyzstan. Richardson is fluent in Kyrgyz — as well as 10 other languages, including English. His fluency, however, sometimes caused unintentional harm.

“I witnessed my fluency in Kyrgyz being used to shame local children who attended Russian-speaking schools,” he said. “People would say, ‘Look, this American speaks better Kyrgyz than you.’ ”

In linguistic anthropology, this is known as the double bind of shame, where Indigenous people face criticism both for not knowing their ancestral language and for not mastering it when they attempt to learn it later on.

For his dissertation, Richardson is exploring what he calls the “double bind of colonial shame,” where outsiders feel guilt over benefitting from colonial systems and seek to learn Indigenous languages — but risk taking up space intended for the community itself.

“Language revitalization policy the world over really is not taking this into consideration,” he said.

Richardson’s work underscores the precarious balance between appreciation and appropriation — while providing perhaps a new way to recognize the people before us.

Lost in Translation

Richardson is researching the effects of whakamā, or shame, in non-Māori learners and speakers of te reo Māori at Te Herenga Waka–Victoria University of Wellington.

Richardson knew before he even started at Georgetown that language would be part of whatever he dedicated his life to. His first semester, he took Introduction to Language and decided his major right on the spot. Along the way, he picked up a fascination with sociolinguistics — or how people use language to express their identities and acknowledge their different backgrounds.

“The real power of language is its ability to connect us to — or separate us from — other people,” Richardson said. “When you speak a different dialect from somebody, you might find that quaint and cute, but that can also be the impetus for excluding, othering or stereotyping people, too. Linguistics looks at both of those potentialities, and that’s what I love to dig into.”

To share that love, we asked Richardson — a self-professed linguaphile — to break down some of his favorite expressions from a handful of the languages he speaks and studies.

“Chuka achafa”

LANGUAGE: Choctaw
LITERAL TRANSLATION: One house
CULTURAL SIGNIFICANCE: “This is the word Choctaw use for ‘family,’ as people who live in the same house as you are your family — be they related by blood or not. Family is all about working toward the common good of all in your community.”

“jakshy körüü”

LANGUAGE: Kyrgyz | Жакшы көрүү
LITERAL TRANSLATION: To see and be happy
CULTURAL SIGNIFICANCE: “Although an equivalent verb to the English ‘to love’ exists in Kyrgyz (Сүйүү / Süiüü), this is by far the most common way of expressing your love for someone or something. Loosely translated, it means ‘everything is good when I see you,’ and I think this is a really beautiful way to express the concept of love. Interestingly enough, it’s quite common cross-linguistically for languages to express love periphrastically (that is, using phrases and roundabout expressions instead of having just one word for something). In Luxembourgish, for example, ‘I love you’ would be Echhunn dech gär (I am glad to have you) — which is very similar to Kyrgyz.”

“Takiwātanga”

LANGUAGE: te reo Māori
LITERAL TRANSLATION: Being in one’s space
CULTURAL SIGNIFICANCE: “A neologism for autism, this word is an attempt to account for enculturating Western concepts but many autistic Māori individuals question the appropriateness of it to describe their lived experiences as autistic people, and some outright reject it in favor of their own coinages, or will even use the English word ‘autism’ instead.”

“enryo no katamari”

LANGUAGE: Japanese | 遠慮のかたまり
LITERAL TRANSLATION: Lump of hesitation
CULTURAL SIGNIFICANCE: “This term describes the last bite of food on a communal table. It’s the ‘lump of hesitation’ because — even though you may secretly really want to finish off the last little bit — Japanese culture values deference and consideration for others’ wants/needs as signs of respect, so you wait patiently to see if someone else will take the last little bit first!”