Te reo leads the way

Efforts to promote te reo Maori are seen as the international benchmark for indigenous language revival, according to a visiting expert.

While the Maori Language Commission laments the position te reo is in, Professor Kenneth Rehg said in Hawaii his linguistics students looked to the Maori effort for inspiration.

“The United States looks to Hawaii, and Hawaii looks to New Zealand. Maori revitalisation has set the model. It has gathered attention around the world.”

Rehg was recently in New Zealand to speak about the worldwide death of languages. He said as a linguist there was no more noble cause than trying to save them.

However, according to a Sunday Star-Times reader poll, some have different ideas about the worth of te reo.

Respondents were split on whether the $5 million spent a year on maintaining and promoting the language was worthwhile. Forty-five per cent believed that the money was justified, but 43 per cent disagreed.

“The money spent on Maori language is a total waste and does nothing for the vast majority of New Zealanders,” one respondent said.

“Te reo is a defining part of our history and culture. We should do all we can to maintain it, irrespective of who speaks it,” said another.

Rehg said that ambivalence was a worldwide issue. The National Science Foundation estimated that, of the nearly 7000 languages in the world, half would be dead by the end of the century. There was always pressure from younger generations, who saw learning a dominant language as a means of upward mobility. However, he said, often they forgot that one did not need to forget one language to learn another.

Rehg said many people refused to acknowledge the obvious benefits of language.

“You see the same thing in many places where indigenous people and cultures have been run over.

“There is an unfortunate attitude from people coming from dominant cultures that they have nothing to learn from indigenous societies. Nothing could be further from the truth.”

Rehg pointed to the 75 per cent of plant-derived pharmaceuticals coming from information provided by traditional healers.

Languages also provided us with a window on the mind. More than anything, languages were repositories of knowledge, he said.

“Often that knowledge is maintained in oral societies, so when the language dies, the knowledge dies with it.”

Maori Language Commission chairman Erima Henare said te reo was the “heart and soul” of all that was precious to Maori. “It remains the primary avenue by which the riches and joys of our traditions are accessed, engaged and celebrated.”

However, the commission’s most recent annual report declared that despite its efforts, the language remained in a “perilous state”.

Rehg said things like Maori Television were seen as a bastion of language promotion and were something to be proud of. “I think the people here are doing an admirable job.”