74 Maranga Mai! The systematic erosion of identity is central to the success of colonial oppression: The key to any social revolution is for people to identify with the cause or kaupapa. If you undermine a peoples’ sense of identity enough, then it’s much easier for you to oppress their health, take their children, incarcerate them. Oppressing identity is one of those key aspects that stops people from rising against those injustices (Ngata, 2021). Denigration of Māori names and identity The positioning of te reo as abnormal, uncivilised and inferior led to Māori language and identity being marginalised. This extended to the undermining of Mātauranga Māori and tikanga systems and belief systems. A continuing disregard for, and mispronunciation of, Māori names is an ongoing sign of this kind of racism: Colonisation pressured change on Māori names. Missionaries influenced Māori to accept Biblical names in te reo rather than authentic ancestral names. Legal processes forced Māori to adopt the first name of one of their parents as their surname. Pākehā were unconcerned with pronouncing Māori names properly. Doing so was an annoyance. They encouraged Māori to anglicise their names, take up English names or accept nicknames. The surname of a Pākehā parent gave an advantage. Māori men who enlisted in World War 1 often did so under Pākehā versions of their names. Māori went to the Māori Land Court under their Māori name and to other forums under a Pākehā name. Parents began giving their children Pākehā first names. Nicknames and Pākehā first names helped avoid racism, more so if you are fair, less so if you were brown. There is a frequent indignity where Māori with ingoa (Māori names) politely spell their name immediately after stating what it is; inter-generational colonisation encourages such compliance (Taonui, 2021). For many Māori students, this is an everyday indignation: My name is ‘Hoani’ and apparently that is too hard to pronounce so teachers just called me, H (Muru-Lanning, 2020). When I started at this school, I had a Māori name but none of the teachers could say it. So now I am Tania (Berryman and Eley, 2018, p. 108). For former chief executive of Te Taura Whiri i te reo Māori, Haami Piripi, it comes down to a matter of respect: The reason Pākehā mispronounce the Māori language is because they totally disrespect us, otherwise they would pronounce it correctly, if they respected us, they would. And after what, six, seven generations, we still can’t get that respect – that’s a real problem (in National Library of New Zealand, 2021; Husband, 2015). There is a new generation of teachers that try to make a better effort: Rangatahi shared how it feels good when their teacher welcomes them in the morning and calls them by their name and pronounces it correctly (Office of the Children’s Commissioner and New Zealand School Trustees Association, 2018, p. 21).