A French woman brought up on Reunion, a tiny island in the Indian Ocean, has been conducting a cultural diversity study at Richmond Road School.
This project was supported by Auckland Creative Communities NZ scheme. Charlotte was very grateful for their support. The photos were on display at the Grey Lynn Community Centre during November.
Charlotte, a Masters graduate from England and South African universities in English and Sociology, loved living in the remote, diverse, yet harmonious Reunion Island. As she lived in different parts of the world, Charlotte began to notice how little people knew about each other’s culture. This was the inspiration behind the photo project.
Charlotte Piot knew how unselfconscious five year olds are, so she deliberately chose that age group. By eight or so, that naivety has dissipated somewhat, she says. She observed that in New Zealand people weren’t mixing a lot with people of other ethnicities or cultures compared to her experience on Reunion Island. She had lived in Perth Australia for four years where she learned how racist Australians could be. Her boss in an education facility told her she could talk about anything at all except the ‘stolen generation, and aborigines’. She was gobsmacked.
Charlotte Piot had been amazed to learn how few New Zealanders could speak Te Reo Maori and how few had ever been on a marae. Creole language has a similar history to Maori - students were caned for speaking it at school in previous generations.
Charlotte was pleased with the photographs the eight children took, and the next phase will be to ask the children to explain their photographs and tell her why they chose them. This will be followed by another exhibition.
What I found interesting about Charlotte was that on the one hand she was critical, or at least very surprised to find so much ignorance among pakeha New Zealanders about Maori, yet her own parents refused to learn Creole on Reunion, and insisted Charlotte spoke French at home and back in France with relatives. When challenged about Creole, her parents would say “Why should I speak the dialect? I’m French. The Island is French. I don’t need to speak Creole.”
Perhaps too many New Zealanders think the same way and see much more importance in earning money, buying a new car, or a beach house, living the affluent lifestyle, consuming, consuming, consuming. Richmond Road School’s bi-lingual units provide a valuable contribution to New Zealand’s cultural diversity and are to be applauded. Charlotte Piot’s attempt to get inside the head of eight young students at Richmond Road, should add to that knowledge and the growth of cultural and ethnic understandings. (JOHN ELLIOTT)