This article was first published by RNZ
Mata with Mihingārangi Forbes - The fight for te reo Māori has entered a new phase, the Chair of the Māori Language Commission says.
From school books and government agencies to teacher training and even passports, the place of te reo is under intense scrutiny.
But Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Māori - the Māori Language Commission chair Professor Rawinia Higgins is confident the language will continue to grow alongside the “Kōhanga Reo generation”.
As the 50th year of Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori approaches she told Mata that te reo is in a much healthier place than it was half a century ago.
“We see that Kōhanga Reo generation that don’t know what it means to not have te reo Māori, that are highly competent in both languages and have become the realisation of those seeds that were planted over fifty years.”
Reflecting on those 50 years, she said it has taken a lot of willpower and strength from Māori to arrive at where the language is currently.
Higgins was in Canada for an Indigenous Languages Summit when news broke that the Ministry of Education had canned a book because it had too many Māori words.
The ministry told schools “At the Marae”, did not fit the sequence that young children were now taught to decode words using the structured literacy approach.
It was re-sized into a “big book format” that teachers could use to read with pupils but taken out of print in its existing form.
It was a challenge to hear because te reo is heralded internationally but at home it’s not quite as valued, Higgins said.
“I think this is a glitch in the Matrix. Because we have rangatahi who have had exposure to te reo Māori and they don’t see it as an issue they’re not as tied up on the politics of the language because for them they just see it as part of who they are.
“Those who are kind of anti te reo they’re of a particular generation, mate atu he tetekura ara mai he tetekura, we’ve just got to wait it out because this is an intergenerational kaupapa.”
Politicians need to be distinctive, so being extreme on issues such as the use of te reo has serves a need for particular groups, a trend that has happened globally, she said.
“I think what I find interesting about te reo Māori is in 1985 when the WAI11 claim happened and if you read the 1986 report there’s a long list in the back of the report of all the objections to te reo Māori and a lot of those objections we still hear today, that te reo Māori is only a language for this country, that it’s not international, that everybody can speak English so why do we have to learn te reo Māori.”
Higgins people often write to her as the commissioner to say “stop shoving this language down my throat”.
But she said her job is to support people to use as much te reo as they can.
We need to break down some of the barriers of the expectation that everyone needs to be highly fluent in order to speak te reo, she said.
“People get language anxiety and so it becomes a barrier inside themselves in terms of the usage of te reo or the expectation that you must be fluent in order to be able to use the language.”
Second language learners, and adults in particular have inhibitions on coming across as not being proficient enough, she said.
“Every day I find a new challenge. I’m a second language learner, I know that people expect me to have highly proficient ability but every day I’m still learning new language, I learn new words, I hear new language being used by rangatahi and I think ‘I wonder what that word is’.”
Te Wiki o te Reo Māori will include a hīkoi to celebrate te reo Māori.
Higgins said if Māori don’t celebrate the gains te reo has made they may default to being angry.
“I like to think when it comes to te reo that we have gone from protest to celebration,” she said.
