Te reo Māori

The rise and fall and rise again of

te reo Māori?The changing ecolinguistic landscape

The Origins of Māori

• The Polynesian ancestors of the culture that came to be called Māori arrived in NZ perhaps as early as 700 years ago carrying with them the seeds of a language and culture that would develop into and te reo Māori the Māori culture

• Ancestors left the South China/Taiwanese homeland more than 6000 years ago.

• Māori arrivals in NZ the last of the great migrations of peoples, languages, and cultures of the Austronesian language family from Taiwan, to Southeast Asia, Madagascar and the Pacific

The Austronesian World

Yellow area:

Oceanic subgroup

Developing and changing

• Probably no ‘great fleet’ but independent migration that got fused together in mythology, oral history and Pakeha interpretations

• After long distance voyaging faded away culture and language developed in isolation making it quite distinctive from other Polynesian cultures and languages

• Regional dialects began to develop. Three broad dialect areas Eastern North, Western North, and South Island with variations within each area

Dialect differentiation

• In S.I Maori - <ng> replaced by <k> – Ngai Tahu -> Kai Tahu, mātauranga mātauraka

• Some Northern dialects <wh> merged with <h> – Whakāro pronounced hakāro

• Tuhoe <ng> -> <n>– Mātauranga -> mātaurana

• Taranaki <wh> -> <w>. – Whakāro pronounced wakāro

• Moriori? The language/dialect of the Chatham Islands

Colonial encounters/intrusions

• Since the arrival of the Europeans who would into develop NZE and Pakeha culture dramatic changes in the linguistic ecology of NZ/Aotearoa

• Mirror to changes in other parts of Pacific• Dramatic change from monolingual society using an

Austronesian (Oceanic) language to a people nearly completely monolingual in English by mid-late C20th

• Period of contact Pidgin Māori and Pidgin English• “As I got nearer I saw that he was crying as he said: • Tacoury mate Marion” • Tacoury die Marion Standard Māori verb first

Adapting te reo, Naylor, 2006, p.15

Missionaries

• Produced scripture in Māori• Missionaries transmitted their religion through the Māori

language, and taught in Mission schools the three Rs in the indigenous language …. Later industrial skills added

• Deep spiritual attachment to the Māori Bible as Māori embraced and ado/apted Christianity

• Literacy comes to te reo• 1840-1860 more Māori were literate than the settlers• Did not passively accept literacy – embraced it and

adapted it, producing texts, and readerships, Māori language newspapers produced by the government and by independent Māori groups

Development of Māori written genres

• As Maori was not a written language before the missionary period – C19 saw the development of writing and genres put to use for Māori purposes. Writing and recording of whakapapa – genealogies

• oral traditions and oral histories became written

• New religious movements created their own religious texts which were written down

• Genres such as whaikōrero speechmaking adapted to such purposes as letters to the editor

Extracts from a letter to Te Manuhiri Tuarangi, 1861

• Friend, the Governor• Salutations to you, and to the people who

understand what is good. The ‘Manuhuri Tuarangi’ has reached me, and now I cry- “I welcome thou Manuhiri Tuarangi! It was my son who fetched you from the distant horizon, and bought you hither. Welcome! Come and sit you down in our kainga, that I may stand forth and address you: - welcome! Welcome my older brethren! Welcome on shore! …. Let me recite a song for you … [song]

• Enough. Send this to the press. From your friend• HEPATA TURINGENGE

The decline of the people

• By the 1860s the number of settlers out-stripped the population of Māori

• Diseases brought by settlers –influenza, measles, etc had wiped out large numbers – no natural immunity to them

• Continuing pressures on land from the settlers, the government

• Māori wars and the land wars• Severely disrupted/transformed Māori culture • By the end of C19 common view that Māori were

passing into history

“A noble relic of a noble race’Like many Pakeha in the early twentieth century, Goldie believed the Māori race would either die out or be assimilated. Very few of the Māori in Goldie's paintings are young or active, even though at the beginning of twentieth century the Māori population was increasing … Many titles of Goldie's paintings also suggest a paternalistic, pitying attitude towards Māori: The Last of the Cannibals, A Noble Relic of a Noble Race, Weary With Years.

Population increases language declines

• after 1860s Maori population slowly increased … but bilingualism started to become the norm

• 1840s Maori had begun to see the advantages of English literacy – engage in trade, missionary boarding schools set up

• 1847 The English Ordinance Act• “All schools which shall receive any portion of the

government grant shall be conducted as heretofore upon the principle of religious education, industrial training and instruction in the English language”

What kind of education?

Henry Taylor (School Inspector, 1862) …

1876 Native Schools Act

• The native schools were secular• English language only• Land for the schools had to be provided by

Māori• Half the cost of building and quarter the cost of

teacher salaries – amend in 1876 to relieve some of these costs

• Native School System survived into 1960s in rural areas

• Focused more on practical education right to the end

Selby’s research shows that Māori teachers were remembered to be some of the harshest disciplinarians

The denial of te reo

The end of C19

• By the end of C19 NZ = Rural Māori zone, and Urban Pakeha zone,

• In the rural zone te reo was the mother tongue of most Māori – but the domains of language use were already shrinking – education was in English, dealing with Pakeha, govt officials, increasingly English replacing Māori in worship

20th century

• The C20 saw the eventual collapse of the rural stronghold of te reo

• World War II – Maori saw younger gen. of native speakers lost

• Man Power Act – saw non-fighting Maori males moved into industry to support the war effort

• -> moved to the cities to work

• Post-war urban drift continued as Maori moved to the cities for employment

The return of Maori Batallion, 1946

Blue Smoke

Maori in the cities

• Settled by pepperpot policy• - no ‘urban Māori areas – but sprinkled across city

neighbourhoods to promote assimilation• Te reo a language of the home, not the street, not the

school• Serious problems with transmission of language in the

home setting, (actively discouraged by some agencies such as Playcentre group in the 60s)

• Movement to the cities – people lost contact with the home areas – hapū (subtribe) links were forgotten, tribal links erased

• New urban Māori

1970s – realisation and response: the Māori Renaissance

• By this decade 70 000 Maori speakers = 20% of Maori, mostly the oldest generation

• “If nature were left to take its course, Māori would be a language without native speakers with the passing of the present generation of Māori speaking parents”

• (Benton, cited in Te Puni Kōkiri, 2001, 13)• The birth of Māori radicalism• Beginnings of a movement to claw back the language • Ngā Tamatoa – university students/non-speakers• Increased learning at high school, teacher training and

Māori Language Week