How Māori was kept from dying out

LANGUAGE

In these monthly discussions we answer one question about language in PNG and beyond. This month we are looking at the Māori language and ask ourselves how the language was brought back from becoming extinct.

IF you go to the country that is sometimes called Aotearoa and sometimes called New Zealand today, you will hear most people speaking English, but you will also encounter the indigenous Māori language in greetings such as “kia ora” (‘hello’), in melodious (and often quite long) place names, in public signs, and on television.
If you walk past some schools, you may even hear teachers teaching their classes in the language, and you will hear an increasing number of people speaking the language on the street or at home.
This is a new development. The number of non-Māoris in modern Aotearoa New Zealand is far greater than Māoris, and in the past two centuries there was considerable pressure on Māori people to drop their own language and use only English. This trend has been reversed, and the number of children growing up with the Māori language has been increasing in this century.
The revival of Māori has gone so far that some people have even written their doctoral dissertations at university in Māori rather than English. This reversal of what we would expect has been the result of extensive legal challenges and tireless efforts by language activists in the Māori community itself.
In the 1800s, as British settlers poured into the country, Māori changed from being the language of the majority to being a minority language. Children learned English at school and in mixed families, the home language tended to be English. By the middle of the 1900s, a majority of Māori people no longer spoke their own language and those who did found few areas of public life where Māori could be used. Children were even punished for speaking Māori at some schools.
If this trend had continued, the Māori language might not exist today. But in the 1980s language activists started private Kõhanga Reo (“language nests”), where preschool children would gather in preschool classes where only the Māori language would be used. These were so successful that the government was pressured to start primary and then high schools where only the Māori language would be used to teach all school subjects.

Many of the children attending these schools came from homes where Māori was no longer used, or where only grandparents still spoke Māori. In addition to using the Māorilanguage, these schools operate using ways of behaviour and bodies of knowledge drawn from the indigenous Māori culture.
Today it is possible for children to have all their education in Māori, all the way from preschool to the end of high school. Schools teaching in Māori place much importance in teaching subjects holistically and from an indigenous cultural perspective. Computer software and internet sites have been developed in Māori to help students do schoolwork in their ancestral language.
It is important to note that the emphasis on the Māori language has not meant that English is no longer valued in the country or that English levels have dropped because of the re-introduction of Māori education. Indeed, government research shows that providing education in the Māori language and with Māori cultural practices has improved educational outcomes for indigenous children in Aotearoa New Zealand.
At the same time as some schools began teaching in Māori, the Treaty of Waitangi has been re-examined by successive governments. This treaty was made between Māori and British leaders in 1840 to define the joint Māori-British society that was developing.
As well as establishing the British rule of Aotearoa New Zealand, it emphasised Māori self-determination and a protection of Māori language and culture in all areas of life. The re-examination of these aspects of the Treaty of Waitangi led the government to declare Māori an official language in 1987.
Since then, besides supporting Māori language education in both schools that teach in Māori and schools that teach in English, Aotearoa New Zealand governments under various parties have taken strong efforts to promote the use of Māori in other areas of public life, by, for example, establishing a national Māori television network, making more signs bilingual and designating the Māori language as a “national treasure”.
Unlike PNG, Aotearoa New Zealand has a national language body, the Māori Language Commission, which promotes the use of the indigenous language and gives financial assistance to support efforts to use Māori in public.
This move to increase the use of Māori in public has been helped by the growing feeling among young non-Māoris of their distinct Aotearoa New Zealand identity and the view of many young non-Māoris that the Māori language and culture are important components that set their country apart from other English-speaking countries.

Perhaps the most well-known example of this is the Māori haka greeting dance and song, which has become famous around the world through its use by the All-Blacks rugby team.
The revival of the Māori language and its use in a modern, developed society show us that with enough effort and adequate language documentation, it is possible to keep indigenous languages from disappearing, even in societies where indigenous people are a minority.
While the Aotearoa New Zealand and Papua New Guinea language ecologies are quite different, there is much Papua New Guineans can learn from the efforts of their Māori cousins to keep their language alive.

• Professor Volker is a linguist living in New Ireland and an Adjunct Professor in The Cairns Institute, James Cook University in Australia. He welcomes your language questions for this monthly discussion at [email protected]. Or continue the discussion on the Facebook Language Toktok page.