This year’s Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori marks 51 years since the Māori language petition was delivered to Parliament by Māori activist group Ngā Tamatoa, and 48 years since Māori Language Day became Māori Language Week.
Since 2018, the number of people able to speak more than a few words and phrases has increased significantly from 23 to 30%.
One in four Māori adults now speak te reo Māori as a first language and the number of tauira learning te reo in kura auraki is the highest it's been, recording over 220,000 students.
There are currently 480 kōhanga reo and 119 kura kaupapa Māori across Aotearoa.
Many people around Aotearoa will be practising their te reo this week.
Māori Language Commissioner Rāwinia Higgins said she’s been overwhelmed by people who want to learn more about the language.
“Kei reira te orangatanga o te reo Māori, kei roto i ngā kāinga, kia hoatuna te reo ki ngā tamariki, ki ngā mokopuna." (That's where the livelihood of the Māori language lies, in the home, to give to the children and grandchildren).”
He taonga tuku iho – reclaiming our language
There's a lot more at stake than just learning a language. For some, it’s the undoing of an entire generation’s worth of lost knowledge.
Nalisha Tahere runs a business, Kōmiri, selling homeware storage solutions labelled in te reo Māori to encourage people to learn and use the language in everyday life. She said the reo journey has been challenging for her whānau.
“My dad was actually whāngai within the whānau and we just weren't exposed to that part of our whānau.
“It took me a really long time to be able to be comfortable to kōrero Māori. Even now I get quite whakamā to speak,” said Tahere.
Many others have gone along the same path as Tahere, including Te Karere reporter Kruze Tangira, who made it his mission to learn te reo Māori, following an encounter that left him longing to reclaim his native language.
The Te Karere reporter spoke to Breakfast's Jenny-May Clarkson on his experience learning te reo Māori.
Speaking with Breakfast, he shared his story of attending Te Wānanga Takiura o Ngā Kura Kaupapa Māori, a one year full-immersion te reo Māori course.
“I was at a netball training camp [and] we were asked to recite our pepeha. Not only did I not know it off by heart, but I was reading it off my phone, that was a catalyst of why I went to Takiura because I felt so ashamed and so embarrassed that I couldn’t do a simple thing like recite my pepeha.
“I haere au ki Takiura ki te ako i te reo Māori - I went to Takiura to learn te reo Māori last year and my world has just totally opened up from there,” Tangira said.
He kitenga onamata, hei aronga anamata – The future of te reo
Against all odds, te reo Māori continues to thrive, and it’s most prevalent in younger generations.
Murrays Bay Intermediate, an English-medium school in north of Auckland, has taken it upon themselves to help revitalise te reo Māori by making it a compulsory subject in their school.
“We want them to love it. So having so many different cultures within this group and our classrooms learning te reo Māori, that just makes my heart sing,” a spokesperson said.
Now the number of students who are learning te reo is increasing every single day.
“What we're seeing is: these increase in numbers goes to highlight how effective these immersion kaupapa have been, but also intergenerational language transmission within our whānau,” Māori Language Commissioner Rāwinia Higgins said.
“As I've said on many, many occasions that it takes three generations to restore a language, it takes one generation to lose a language.”
Glossary
tauira – student
kura auraki – mainstream school
kōhanga reo - Māori language preschool
kura kaupapa Māori - Māori immersion school
whānau - family
whāngai - Māori adoption, foster
kōrero - to talk, speak
whakamā - to be ashamed, embarrased
pepeha – a way of introducing yourself and where you’re from in Māori
kaupapa – topic, purpose
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