Te Rangatiratanga o te Reo: Sovereignty in Indigenous Languages

• In Event: Imagining Possible Worlds With Young Children, Families, and Teachers: Sustaining Language/s and Family Pedagogies

Abstract

"Language is the lifeline and sustenance of a culture" (Pere, 1991, p. 9). Māori knowledges melded Māori ancestors in the lands of Aotearoa and the surrounding oceans for over a thousand years before the coming of the "white man". Māori elders embodied knowledge and a strong desire to perpetuate certain forms of knowledge, reflected through the language in a variety of forms; naming people, places, phenomena and things, waiata (songs), karakia (highly ritualised ceremonies, prayers and incantations), whakapapa (genealogy), pūrākau (narratives and storytelling), and through tikanga (cultural ways of being and doing), spirituality and beliefs’ (Author, 2019). Māori whānau (families) have consistently expressed the desire for their children to learn their language (Waitangi Tribunal, 2010).

The Waitangi Tribunal provides a forum for Māori treaty grievances to be researched from both Māori and Crown (government) perspectives. One of its first reports was in relation to the Crown’s failure to protect the Māori language (Waitangi Tribunal, 1986). This report stated that ‘The Crown has failed to protect the Maori language as required by Article II of the Treaty’ (p. 49) and condemned the government for policies that had meant that the numbers of Māori speakers had dropped from 90% to less than 5%. It went further, stating that these policies had also resulted in Māori educational failure, stating that: ‘Judged by the system’s own standards Maori children are not being successfully taught, and for this reason alone, quite apart from a duty to protect the Maori language, the education system is being operated in breach of the Treaty’ (p. 38). Through the Māori language immersion movement beginning with Kōhanga Reo (Māori language nests) in 1982, Māori have sought to restore the mana of their language, recognising its centrality to cultural identity and knowledges resulting in an initial increase of Māori language speakers to 25.2% in 2001. However, since this encouraging statistic, we have seen this number decline to 21.3% in 2013 (New Zealand Ministry of Social Development, 2016).

A more recent Waitangi Tribunal report pointed out that despite the huge initial success of the Māori language movement, the government had failed to develop policy that would assist in the revival of te reo and the safeguarding of dialects (Waitangi Tribunal, 2010). In this paper, we argue for urgent prioritisation of the preparation of Māori language teachers who have the requisite skills, knowledges and fluency in te reo to turn the tide of this second wave of loss of language speakers.

Authors

• Mary Eileen Skerrett, Victoria University of Wellington

• Jenny Ritchie, Victoria University of Wellington