Native+people+in+the+English+speaking+world


 * = The Mighty Warrior=**

Rongo, the God of cultivated food. Rongo, the Maori word translated to English means peace. Rongo is my name.

I saw the sunshine for the first time somewhere between twenty-five and thirty summers ago. I do not remember it myself, but I have been told that it was a warm and peaceful summer day, thus the name Rongo, which is literally translated to “peace” in English. I am born and raised in the great woods of the land of the long white cloud, the harmonic and beautiful country we call Aotearoa, New Zealand. I’ve spent my whole life in this idyllic country, and I want to stay here to the day I die.

As Maoris usually my hair is black and waved. My eyes are dark-brown, and I have thick lips and a flat nose with widespread nostrils. And because of the heating sun that always shines upon us our skin is black. Soon after my birth my mother died because of a sickness no one could heal. I’ve been told it was because of a curse caused by black magic from the other tribe, but I guess that’s just a rumor made to raise hate against the other tribe. My father, Iharaira, was one of our greatest leaders in war for a long time, until he died respectfully in a battle that feels all too long ago. He meant a lot to me, and burying him is the toughest thing I’ve done in my whole life.

Now I am the leader of the soldiers in our tribe, and I try my best to live up to my father and do what he taught me to, and what he trained me to do. In my youth he did a lot of exercises with me. We did a whole lot of agility training in hand-to-hand combats, the combat method that has become our specialty. That and a lot of other hard exercises made me to the great warrior I am today, and I try my best to be the strong, respectful leader my father wanted me to be, and a role model for the rest of the soldiers. Before every battle we perform peruperu which is another form of Haka, our traditional dance. This dance we perform in order to invoke Tumatauenga, the god of war, and to frighten and discourage our enemies. In this dance I, as the leader, shout to my soldiers what they are going to do and they then do it without hesitating. We always go into war prepared to die, and the dance is a way of showing that. I’ve been in a lot of battles and every time we go naked, except for a belt we have around our waists to hold our club. In every battle our goal is to make no survivors of our enemies so that there is no chance of revenge.



I’ve spent the most of my life alone, since my parents both died when I was in a relatively young age. I got no family, and after my parents both died I have lived for nothing but war. I have sworn to take revenge on the tribe that killed my father, and one day I swear it will happen. Since I spend all my days doing various exercises such as weapon and close combat training, I hadn’t found time to find someone to love. But one day in the future, when I’ve got my revenge I want to settle down and find a beautiful woman who can be my wife. And maybe we will have two or three kids running around, and I can teach them how to fight like a man, and how to be a good man, just like my father taught me. When I exercise I go to this beautiful place near a waterfall. There I really feel I can focus my senses and become in peace with the nature. It is the same place as my dad went when he needed to relax, and I often stop in my training, sit down and just listen to the nature. There is a rock I sit on listening to the waterfall, the birds and all the different sounds you hear from the jungle. Watching the fish swim around slowly in the river and smell all the different smells from the rich floral life really helps me calm down and make me feel better about myself, and how I am a part of it all.