Maori Language and New Zealand Idendity
Last week in class we discussed about the Maori language, te reo maori, and about how it dramatically becomes less and less a spoken tongue. After it experienced a revival in the 1970s after people became concerned of it decaying into a dead language, we are today at a point where it is still debated on wether to include it into the educational curriculum and also at a point where even the majority of the Maori population does not speak the language anymore.
On the one hand it is a linguistic and cultural loss. Language has always been one of the main expressants of culture and the loss of a language also means a loss of a big part of a culture. Linguistically, the dying out of an indigenous tongue means lesser diversity. In the sense of both cultural and linguistic science this decline is a tragedy.
But there is even more to that. On the level of New Zealand idendity Maori culture (and hereby language) plays an even bigger role. Without it, New Zealand would just be a “Little Britain” or a “Little America” and this very self-conscience has been present in New Zealand for quite some time, says Glenis Hiria Philip-Barbara in her TedxTalk. She goes further by saying that the Maori language is only allowed a minor part in New Zealand everyday life, like a greeting in the news and single expressions, but the language as a whole is more and more neglected. An article on the New Zealand government history website listing “100 Maori Words every New Zealanders should know” proves exactly this. There is awareness for the Maori language, but it does not extend beyond single words. But by disregarding the te reo maori as a complete and valid language, New Zealand rids itself of a big part of its unique idendity. It discards the New Zealand exclusive indigenous history and rather embeds the islands into a history of the British Empire.
The decline of the language mainly has to do with circumstances from about 50 years in the past, when children speaking Maori were beaten in school, as Glenis talks about with her mother as an example. The teaching of the language has been stopped by a generation that experienced discrimination because of it, at a time when indigenous cultures all around the world experienced similar challenges, before a cultural enlightenment and the rising importance of older things. The time we live in today is the exact opposite, with never-seen-before respect for diversity, traditional cultures and indigenous peoples.
So what this leads to is, that the development in the teaching of Maori language are really inadequate in regard to the spirit of the time we live in and it is even more shocking that the ignorant doctrines of past generations still prevail. The future, however, looks brighter, as far as it can be told from this point in time: While the loss of Te Reo Maori was a product of a generation to whom it was a logical adaption to the challenges of the time, the generation growing up today will develop attitudes reflecting the views and opinions of our present, which hopefully will manifest in the doctrines of teaching the next generations.
