Passion and practice: the role of communities in Māori language

revitalizationJeanette King, University of Canterbury

George Ann Gregory, Ho Anumpoli

Fishman 1991

• Importance of home, family, neighbourhood, community

• Language socialisation

• Identity socialisation

• Commitment socialisation

Fishman 1991

• Emphasis in Māori language planning:

• National level

• Māori Language Week themes - home and community

• Tribal level

• Ngāi Tahu - Kotahi Mano Kāika

Communities of passion

• Focus on education sector:

• Kōhanga reo, kura kaupapa Māori

• Generation 1 - second language speaking adults

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Communities of practice

• Generation 2 - first language speaking children

• Communities of practice

Communities of practice

• Speech competitions (Manu kōrero)

• Kapa haka competitions (performing arts)

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Role of marae

• New ‘marae’

• ‘symbolic focus of Māori social and cultural life’ (Walker 1989: 159)

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This study

• 2005

• Fulbright scholarship

• Interviews - 3 open-ended questions designed to elicit narrative responses:

• Tell me about your experiences with the Māori language?

• What is the role of community in revitalization?

• What is the future of the language?

Demographics

• 74 participants

• Ethnicity: mainly Maori

• 44 females, 30 males

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Location of interviews

• 6 locations around New Zealand

• 2 in the South Island

• 4 in the North Island

Results

• Types of communities

• Tribe

• School

• Like-minded people

• Roles of communities

• Opportunity

• Motivation

• Normalisation

Community = tribe

• It’s more like the tribal bases. This area has three tribal - strong tribal affiliations. It was the coming together of those three tribes. (OF01)

Community = school

• I mean, back here in Whangaroa, we don’t, or I don’t, detach the community from the school. (RF01)

• Without the community we couldn’t keep our kura going. Without support the school wouldn’t’ve been established in the first place (LHF01).

• Community in our sense I suppose is at one stage we’ve got the community of parents [at our kōhanga]. (HF05)

• For us, our first step is our children and then their parents. And those parents have a responsibility to be like a community in that they must take a share of the decision making for the kōhanga. (HF05)

Community = school

Reciprocal role of school and community: community sets up the school

and the school feeds back to the community:

• Obviously, being in a school situation, the first commitment on the community is to gift us their children. So all of the parents agreeing as a community that this is a good thing for them. Without that, it falls out for us. The second role is that as a school community that we support in the homes and offer opportunities for parents to learn the language. (HM01)

Community = like minded people

• te reo always seems like it’s a class environment. It’s not a priority, and it’s always like a task. So they haven’t really got time to add a te reo class to their already busy lives and their families. So I thought, well, most people have a coffee break or a lunch break. That would be a good way to use that time. People like drinking coffee. Let’s all meet at a café. And we’ll do different cafés so it doesn’t get boring. So we have different levels. And the first time, the first couple of meetings there were just a few of us talking and few just sitting there nodding and stuff. So I thought, well, how can we encourage more people to feel more confident and just try and get their lips around some words. So we sort of designed a few games. (DF01)

Community = like minded people

• I mean I have first cousins who don’t have the same level of passion for the language that I have. Yeah, they have other passions and other desires and so, but, yeah, community is really important. But it’s the way that community is organized and inspired by the same thing, unity of purpose and so on and so forth, yeah. (LHM03)

Whānau

• Traditionally an extended kin-group

• new kinds of whānau have emerged, modelled on the traditional whānau and its values

• ‘increasing participation in whānau, as part of a renewed emphasis on Māori cultural identity’ (Metge 1995: 17)

Role of communities = opportunity

• I’m trying to organize a poker night actually—play poker in te reo Māori, and play for money and so on and just try and nurture those everyday life events, but in te reo Māori because I see there being quite a strong link between just using the language everyday and its survival, not just using it as a token ceremonial language. (DM07)

• It’s a lot easier to pick up and be able to speak when you’ve got people around you that are speaking te reo as well. (HF01)

Role of communities = motivation

Communities important for ongoing motivation and language strengthening.

• I think it’s, uh, it’s vitally important because otherwise the language has got nowhere to grow. You can only grow so far in your home, so you’ll get to a point where in that little community of your immediate family there is no more learning to be done there. So you need an outside community where there is no limit to your learning and you can learn off this one or that one. I think if you keep it enclosed, it just becomes stagnant and you can’t take it much further, or if you do it, it needs a community to use it all the time to stay alive. (DM03)

Role of communities = motivation

• to make it okay, to make it fun, you know to make the, the learning of the language okay. (DF02)

• communities where you can just have fun and learn and laugh and not be driven by whakamā [embarrassment] or suppressed by that. (DF02)

Role of community = normalisation

• That’s really important I think because [using the language] just becomes natural. It becomes natural to the community because that’s been going on for quite some time. You just don’t blink an eyelid to it really. (RF01)

• And that was—I think that was a huge part of the main reason why I think I still have the language and why a lot of us, my generation growing up fluent in Māori where I come from, in the town I come from and just because it was all around us. (RF05)

Role of communities

• Opportunities for practice

• Motivation - making learning and speaking fun

• Making te reo Māori normal

Summary

• Communities have an important role in language revitalisation

• Communities evolving over time > from passion to practice

• Many types of communities from national > tribal > local

• Communities of place > communities of practice

• Role of communities to support and encourage language use and development

Final quote:

The role of community, hmm? I think it’s vital. It’s vital for the Maori language to be able to breathe throughout the community. It’s got to be living. And it lives within the community. (RF01)

References

Fishman, Joshua. A. 1991. Reversing language shift. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Metge, Joan. 1995. New Growth from Old: the Whānau in the Modern World. Victoria University Press, Wellington.

Papesch, Te Rita. 2010. Composing Māori, composing tradition in Kapa Haka. Symposium of the Māori Performing Arts. Auckland, AUT University.

Walker, Ranginui. 1989. Colonisation and the development of the Māori people. In Michael, C. Howard (ed.), Ethnicity and nation-building in the Pacific, 152-168. Tokyo: United Nations University Press.