By Pokere Paewai of RNZ

Tauranga iwi Ngāi Te Rangi says the fight for te reo Māori is not over yet and that it’s going to continue promoting te reo regardless of what the Government does.

The Waitangi Tribunal released its Taku Kura Reo, Taku Reo Kahurangi report on Crown policies concerning the use of te reo Māori in the public service in October.

The claim brought by Ngāi Te Rangi focused on commitments in the coalition agreement between National and NZ First to ensure all public service departments have their primary name in English, except for those specifically related to Māori. Secondly, to ‘require the public service departments and Crown Entities to communicate primarily in English – except those entities specifically related to Māori’.

It was the first of a flurry of applications the Tribunal received for an urgent inquiry after the Government came to power in 2023. Hearings took place in June 2024.

The Tribunal found the Crown breached the principles of te Tiriti / ​the Treaty, including rangatiratanga, partnership, active protection, equity and good government.

Judge Te Kani Williams said any diminishing of Crown support for the revitalisation of te reo was a matter of serious concern.

“As the Tribunal has previously observed, te reo has been matched only by Māori land as a galvanising force for Māori protest in recent decades.

“The language remains in a vulnerable state (something the Crown readily acknowledged in our inquiry) and te reo advocates are quick to remind us that there is no margin for complacency.”

Ngāi Te Rangi chairman Charlie Tawhiao told RNZ the iwi was compelled to take the claim to the Tribunal because the “attack” on te reo is also an attack on Māori cultural identity.

“From our perspective, it’s led to Māori thinking harder about the fact that the fight for our reo is not over yet. So we’ve got to continue to keep promoting te reo amongst our whānau, particularly the mokopuna we’ve got coming up behind us, and ensure that regardless of what the Crown does, that te reo won’t vanish or be extinguished.”

Tawhiao said if iwi leaders didn’t model to the next generation that they would not tolerate the attack on te reo, then they would end up paying the price with “another silent generation of Māori”.

“I think at a higher level, protecting and upholding te reo Māori as the first language of this whenua, this place we now call Aotearoa, is an obligation, not only for us as iwi Māori, but actually for all thinking Kiwis in our view.

“But the recovery and the progress has been remarkable... not only for Māori, but there’s a whole generation of tangata Tiriti who have also taken efforts to learn te reo Māori, not because they must, because they want to.”

The older passport features the English words first. Photo / Supplied, PRADO

Tawhiao said despite the efforts to recover te reo Māori there remained a “stubborn and outdated” view that the indigenous language of Aotearoa had no value.

After the tribunal had finished writing its report, Judge Williams said they “were appraised of further steps being taken by the Crown to relegate the placement and status of te reo Māori behind English”, referencing Internal Affairs Minister Brooke van Velden’s announcement that New Zealand’s passport was being redesigned to place the English words above the te reo text.

Tawhiao said it is just the latest of a “whole basket of policies” designed to assimilate Māori.

But for Ngāi Te Rangi he said the best thing they could do was to follow the words of the late Kiingi Tuheitia, to be “Māori everyday, in every way”.

“I think that’s something we’ve got to encourage our people to do, that our cultural identity doesn’t require or depend on any government acknowledging it. But at the same time, we don’t want to be spending our time defending our very identity and who we are, which is where people were starting to feel.”

The iwi would continue to encourage its people to carry on speaking te reo wherever they chose to and however they could, he said.

“Just as an example of what happened to te reo, when I was learning as a young fellow, and I was visiting my dad one day, and every time I met with him, I talked to him in Māori, so he talked back to me so that I could hear, first of all, did I make sense? Did he hear me? But secondly, to hear how he spoke so I could learn more.

“And I remember we were sitting in a coffee shop having a cup of tea and I was talking to him in te reo Māori and then some people came in and he was looking nervously at them and I said, ‘what’s up?’. He said, ‘well, it’s a bit rude to talk Māori in front of Pākehā people’. And I thought, oh God, and I said to him, ‘Dad, it’s an official language now, we’re allowed to speak Māori’. You know, we’re recovering from that trauma.”

Tawhiao said unlike his father he never lived through that trauma, but he lived through its impacts.

The next generations have lived with the revival of te reo Māori, and he said he didn’t want to see that progress stifled by “continued outdated views that come from an age that’s long past”.

Judge Williams, quoting from the landmark 1986 Tribunal report on the te reo Māori claim, said, “To recognise Māori officially is one thing, to enable its use widely is another thing altogether.

“There must be more than just the right to use it in the courts. There must also be the right to use it with any department or any local body if official recognition is to be real recognition, and not mere tokenism.”

The Tribunal’s recommendations

• Take immediate steps to reverse actions and policy concerning the use of te reo in agency names and government communications.
• Ensure new governments comply with the Crown’s obligations to te reo Māori under both existing legislation and te Tiriti / the Treaty and its principles.
• Strengthen the wording of Te Ture mō Te Reo Māori 2016.
• Make Te Tohu Reorua i te Reo Māori me te Reo Pākehā - Māori-English Bilingual Signage 2016 guidelines compulsory.
• Amend the 2024 Government Workforce Policy Statement “so that the payment of te reo allowances to government officials continues regardless of whether te reo skills are a requirement to perform their role or not”.
• Increase the bilingual aptitude of the public service.

- RNZ