Nau mai ki Te Wiki o te Reo Māori - Welcome to Māori Language week. Re: multimedia journalist - Māori specialist, Matiu Hamuera, outlines our coverage. We’ll update this article every day with links to all our Te Wiki o te Reo Māori content.
Rangatahi are leading the way when it comes to incorporating te reo Māori into everyday conversations.
In a recent survey, people aged 15 to 24 and 25 to 34 were the most likely age groups to be able to speak more than a few words or phrases in Māori, at 41% and 43% respectively.
These figures show that the use of te reo Māori is on the rise and gives hope to a language that was almost lost to the impacts of colonisation.
This year also marks 50 years since founding member of Māori activist group Ngā Tamatoa, Hana Te Hemara, spearheaded a petition that was signed by over 33,000 Māori and Pākehā.
The petition to save the language was delivered to parliament on September 14, 1972.
These efforts resulted in the forming of Te Taura Whiri - The Māori Language Commission and the day officially became Māori Language Day.
Three years later the day would become a week known as Te Wiki o te Reo Māori.
For Māori, this week is about celebrating and reclaiming te reo, and for non-Māori it is a time to embrace the language, taking opportunities to learn and understand more about it.
That is why the Re: team have been working on creating Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori content that informs, challenges and inspires the next generation of reo speakers in Aotearoa.
Re: commissioned 21-year-old artist Tayla Hartemink (Tūhoe, Ngāti Tūwharetoa and Ngāti Kahu) and on Mane (Monday), we’ll be putting her illustration across our platforms.
Tayla also spoke to Re: News Editor Mandy Te about her illustration, and what te reo Māori an Te Wiki o te Reo Māori mean to her.
Throughout the week, we’ll also have illustrations from Laura Kerrison (Ngāti Rangitihi and Ngāti Tūwharetoa) who runs Kupu Rau. Re: has collaborated with Laura and that means, her illustrations will run on our Instagram for all of this week.
On Tūrei (Tuesday) we bring you a story on sexy ways to ask for consent.
And on Māori Language Day, Matiu will be teaching people how to correctly say the names of places in Aotearoa that are commonly mispronounced. There were too many place names so Matiu will have another video on this later in the week.
Tāite (Thursday) brings us a story by Re: journalist Zoe Madden-Smith on Google Maps and why it sucks at pronouncing Māori street names.
We’ll also have a video featuring TVNZ weather presenter and reporter Te Rauhiringa Brown about her use of te reo on TV and what it means to champion te reo Māori.
On Paraire (Friday), we bring back a story we first published last year, about tauiwi learning te reo Māori and what their experiences have been like.
We’ll also have clips from the new documentary Speak no Māori: one looking at how colonisers went from learning te reo Māori, to trying to exterminate it, and another where we hear from people about how it felt to have their reo beaten out of them.
Over the weekend we'll have a video by Re: journalist Baz Macdonald who looks into the use of the word “Kiwi” and if it really is representative of New Zealanders.
This page will be updated throughout the week with links to our stories as they roll out.
We hope the stories you read, hear and watch from Re: for Te Wiki o Te reo Māori will inspire and interest you.
Kia kaha te reo Māori!
More stories:
How colonisers went from learning te reo Māori to trying to exterminate it
“We were taught that everything they were doing was good and everything we were doing was bad."
Artist Tayla Hartemink talks about her Te Wiki o te Reo Māori illustration
"I do a lot of my art based off mātauranga Māori. I learn and wānanga a lot with my kaumātua."
How colonisers went from learning te reo Māori to trying to exterminate it
“We were taught that everything they were doing was good and everything we were doing was bad."