At the time of writing his essay, intergenerational transmission of te reo Māori had effectively ended in most Māori communities as a direct result of colonial education policies and the denigration of Māori language and culture in New Zealand schools, and in society more broadly. In my own whānau, my grandmother’s generation, while raised with the language themselves, rarely spoke it as adults and never passed it on to their children. As a young person, the world that my grandmother encountered outside of her papakāinga was one that sought to assimilate her into what was essentially a monolingual and monocultural Pākehā society. Te reo Māori was seen as having little value in such a world, while English, on the otherhand, enjoyed a much different status. The power and prestige associated with the English language would inevitably play a significant part in the choices made by my grandmother and other Māori parents of her generation. The impact of all of this on the vitality of te reo Māori, however, would not be realised for another two or three decades.
When I was born in the late 1970s, the alarm bells had already been rung. Concern for the status and wellbeing of the language led to the 1972 Māori language petition which called for te reo Māori to be given legislative recognition and for Māori language courses to be offered in schools. The following year, Dr Richard Benton began a landmark sociolinguistic survey of te reo Māori that would highlight a worrying trend – a grave decline in the number of Māori children who were able to speak te reo Māori. The severity of the situation was such that without any intervention the language would almost certainly be lost.
The decline of te reo Māori in the mid to late twentieth century is not the centrepiece of Dansey’s essay, however, but rather the backdrop for his heartfelt messages of encouragement to the readers of Mana to hold fast to their ancestral languages. Dansey’s emphatic and poignant words speak to the heart of what is at stake, our sense of self[ii]:
There is nothing that can take the place of one’s own mother tongue no matter what that tongue may be. It is the river which carries our culture and it is the stream that brings us the warmth and the value and richness of our past.
Importantly, one of Dansey’s most salient points is that communicating in one’s own mother tongue is ‘an absolute right’ to which each and every one of us is entitled. To live in the way that our ancestors intended, with a full understanding of who we are, our languages need to continue living and breathing just as we do, and we have an obligation to ensure that this happens. As a mother of Māori speaking children, a second language learner and a teacher of te reo Māori for almost twenty years, I understand this well. I know the feeling of longing for your reo and I also know the world that opens up to you when you embark on a journey to reclaim the language of your tūpuna.
Thankfully, for my tamariki, there is no journey of loss and recovery. They have never known a world without their reo and are all the more richer for it. Hopefully, they too will see the value in passing on the precious taonga they have inherited.
[i] Harry Dansey, ‘Our own language’, Mana, 1, 3, 4 August 1977, p.2.