'Kura': Udvikling af raceadskillelse i New Zealand

The story “Kura,” illustrates racial segregation when a teacher, Mrs. Wood abuses a Maori student named Riripeti because she does not speak English. As quickly as the English culture came to New Zealand, so did racial segregation. Riripeti and Kate are both students who help illustrate the racial segregation in this story.

Kate is the main character and 1st person narrator in Kura. She is now 68 years old and tells the story in the past tense. The story is about herself as an 8 year old and her teina, Riripeti. A teina is a younger sibling or cousin to a tukana. A tukana has to take care of their teina especially in school, which illustrates a clear perspective of how the culture was in the daily life in New Zealand 2 generations ago. The reader discovers that in the eyes of the English speaking majority, the Maori culture is unaccepted. Kate makes it clear that her black family is not from slaves, but wealthy Maori citizens since they’re from Te Wharekapa and Kapiri, who had a high status and owned a wide area of land. Mentioning that is important to Kate, because back then the Maori people weren't respected by the English people. To be a Maori was considered to have a low status, intelligence and income, that’s why Kate makes it clear that her family had high prestige. Kate finds it is very difficult to make her teina fit in at school, because she isn’t speaking fluent English. The teacher Mrs. Wood ends up using the cane on Riripeti for the same reason. This goes to show that Riripeti is an innocent little girl. Riripeti and Kate “didn’t tell…anyone, what happened, but sometimes Riripeti was told off at home for her dirty clothes” (p. 34 ll. 15-17). In this quote, we clearly see that the rich Maori family of Rirpeti and Kate, only notices their reputation is suffering because of Riripeti’s self image and don’t realize that it is because of the toll abuse has taken on her. Back then, rich people were able to go to school and therefore it was a big deal to attending. Riripeti wear fancy clothes to school and ends up dirtying them. The family gets mad because wearing informal clothes at school can’t show the teachers they had prestige. When 68-year-old Kate is speaking, the readers can definitely tell that her perspective of racial discrimination has changed, from accepting racial discrimination to realizing the way Maoris were treated was intolerable, but 8-year-old Kate still lives in the same period in history, where segregating races seemed normal.???