Maori was declared an official language 35 years ago this month. In an interview with the Indian Weekender, Maori Language Commissioner Prof Rawinia Higgins plots the journey of the language spoken by the first inhabitants of Aotearoa. This interview was edited for clarity and length.
Excerpts:
Q. You've worked in the area of revitalisation of the Maori language. How do you assess the progress of this mission so far and what are the main obstacles in the way of this progress?
A. When I think about the initiatives that have led to where we are today, if we go back 50 years ago to the signing of the petition [presented to Parliament in 1972], that was driven largely by the first generation urban migration of Maori people and supported by a number of non-Maori people as well, to gather those signatures, [it is noteworthy that] they were the generation who weren't taught the language, and so they didn't have access to the language necessarily. And so that sense of language loss became an emphasis as part of their university lives at Auckland University and Te reo Maori society here at Victoria University. Those students led the way in terms of collecting those signatures for the petition. And from there we see it becoming the catalyst of the creation of initiatives largely from our community. At that time, a majority of the Maori language speakers were our elders. They got in behind the efforts of Kohanga reo or the preschool language nest. And then that led to Kura Kaupapa Maori and the like. And then, of course, they also contributed to Maori broadcasting and the creation of Maori radio stations, and then eventually we got Maori television.
So all of these efforts, if we think about where we've come from, started from those who didn't have language, supported primarily by elders who still had language, and creating a generation of language speakers.
We see in our stats today that the language is largely in the hands of young people. And I think , as a way to frame language revitalization, which takes three generations to restore, one generation to lose, that we're certainly on the right trajectory with this new generation of language speakers taking up the mantle, who will themselves be parents soon, if not already creating generation two.
So, I think the obstacles initially were probably [on account of it being] a community-led movement, which has become institutionalised in terms of being part of the education system or the broadcasting system. And it certainly had some opportunities to strengthen itself, but we're still probably a long way off from achieving normalisation at large or on a large scale.
Q. As the chair of the Maori Language Commission, do you see political goodwill [or the lack thereof] in promoting the Maori language in the wider community?
A. When we had the opportunity to change the original legislation from 1987 and 2016, the new provisions in the Maori Language Act actually outline the role of the government versus the role of the community, Maori iwi and Maori interest groups as well. So there we use the analogy of the Wharenui [Maori communal house]. Inside that house, there is a smaller, narrower part and that's what we call taha iti o te, the small side of the house. And that's led by Timata Wai and their focus is on micro- language revitalization, the language of the home, intergenerational language transmission and creating that new generation. And the tara nui, or the larger side of the house, is the crown. The Maori Language Commission coordinates and leads the efforts of government agencies, to try and be a bit more coordinated with our approach, but also how that sets better conditions across our society. So I think there has been a lot of political goodwill that led us to the legislation, by getting support across the parties, but also the efforts and the initiatives we do today as a result of the legislation and the policy framework that helps navigate what is the role of the state versus what is the role of the family.
Q. Is enough being done to integrate other ethnic communities into mainstream NZ society, including instilling an awareness of Maori heritage and culture in these other ethnicities?
A. One of the things that we tried to do as part of our efforts at the Maori Language Commission is to be more inclusive. One of the campaigns we ran around introducing ourselves [to other ethnic communities] was to try and encourage other languages to be part of that. So for Matariki [Maori New Year], we reached out to a number of ethnic groups for their equivalent of the word for Matariki. We also did introductions. So lots of people have been learning how to introduce themselves in Te reo Maori. We're trying to encourage people to do that in their language as well as in Te reo Maori and to not have everything in just Maori and English. But also to see what it looks like with Maori and Japanese or Maori and Yugoslavian, and other languages. One of the things that people have said to us is that why is it just English and why is everything translated back into English. Why can't it be our language, our heritage languages? We have been trying to promote an awareness of more than just bilingualism, but also trying to embrace multilingualism.
We are trying to be inclusive, to allow people to feel connected to Te reo Maori by way of being part of the Maori language movement. And so we've tried to reach out to as many people as possible.
Q. Do you foresee a time when the Maori language will be fully integrated into mainstream NZ?
A. I think we're starting to see strong signs of that. There will be some people, parts of our society, who will say that there is too much Maori language already. There will also be others who say there's not enough and that we need to be fully bilingual or multilingual, if we include sign language into that in terms of an official language. I think one of the things we should celebrate is where we come from. If we use 50 years ago as a starting point in terms of the reclamation of language, that is a different era. The absence of language in any form, whether oral or written, was hard to see then. There are generations of people in this country who think it's normal that the national anthem is in two languages. People are also using more and more [Maori] language on television, at meetings and in schools as part of the norm. Therefore, I think we're certainly heading in the right direction.
Will we be fully bilingual? I hope so. When we learn to embrace languages as being more than a political statement but as being an integral part of who we are as a nation, that gives a bigger uplift to [people] wanting to learn and wanting to use the language in their everyday life.