Let My Whakapapa Speak

It [te reo] is the voice of the people … it expresses the intellectual flow of ideas, it expresses the psyche of a people.

– Tāmiti Reedy

What a wonderful, colourful, beautiful way that those old women brought that [the term Kohanga] into being. Otherwise you’d just have [just] said, ‘pre-school’. Because as they talked … it was their love, and the way to nurture their child in the nest of their culture, in the nest of their language [that emanated]

– Kara Puketapu, on the origin of the Kohanga (nest) name

Make learning a joyful experience!

– Iritana Tāwhiwhirangi

"Let not silver be your God / Something rotten comes with money."

– Advice to Iritana from her father

For the past quarter of a century of my long life the Kohanga Reo movement has tried to rescue Māori language by giving it back to the children…

– Iritana Tāwhiwhirangi

[Let My Whakapapa Speak] typified the sort of documentary that Māori TV does best, taking a linear approach incorporating old footage and interviews. While advertising itself as an examination of 25 years of the kohanga reo, it was also a fascinating look at an indomitable woman...she's simultaneously scary and terrifically likeable, due to an ability to laugh at herself.

– Linda Burgess in a Dominion Post review, 2009