Speaker 1: Hedda.
Speaker 2: I'm Susan Nordquist and for Chelsea Daniels. And this is
Speaker 2: the Front Page, a daily podcast presented by the New
Speaker 2: Zealand Herald. It's t Wiki or teal Maori Language Week.
Speaker 2: Wikiwi's are encouraged to have a go at terel. Whereas
Speaker 2: the language was once on a pathway to extinction, it's
Speaker 2: now flourishing as people flocked to learn it. But a
Speaker 2: change in government last year saw restrictions placed on how
Speaker 2: the public service usesterrel, one of many policies that has
Speaker 2: been seen as an attack on Maldi rights. Today on
Speaker 2: the Front Page, we are joined by aut professor doctor
Speaker 2: Ali Henry to discuss some of those policies and how
Speaker 2: we can still celebrate old Tuto's indigenous language.
Speaker 1: Ala.
Speaker 2: This year's Malori Language Week comes a little under a
Speaker 2: year since the Coalition government was sworn in. As part
Speaker 2: of that coalition agreement between National and New Zealand, first
Speaker 2: government departments had to revert to putting their English names first,
Speaker 2: and it also required public service departments and Crown entities
Speaker 2: to communicate primarily in English. What do you make of
Speaker 2: this change?
Speaker 3: Well, it's been one hundred and eighty four years since
Speaker 3: we signed Tinnity or White Jongy. So this is not
Speaker 3: the first time that a government of New Zealand has
Speaker 3: tried to suppress the Maori language. In many ways, many
Speaker 3: would argue that this has been going on for decades,
Speaker 3: if not generations, But this is a new iteration of
Speaker 3: that same strand of thinking. I believe that is tied
Speaker 3: to a broader issue to make fundamental changes to the
Speaker 3: founding Document of our nation which envisaged partnership between Tungata
Speaker 3: Fenua and tongue to tidity. So I see it as
Speaker 3: part of a broader campaign to negative impact on Mary,
Speaker 3: not just to the l Maori.
Speaker 2: So, in your view, is the government trying to suppress
Speaker 2: the language.
Speaker 3: I don't think it's supposedly a whole of government approach,
Speaker 3: but because of the particularities of this coalition, there is
Speaker 3: certainly a party act which has been trying to impact
Speaker 3: on treaty principles. Remember back in two thousand and eight,
Speaker 3: Rodney Hyde proposed a similar bill in a less conducive
Speaker 3: environment about removing from government legislation the requirement to take
Speaker 3: tetinity into consideration with all legislations. So this has been
Speaker 3: an ongoing project for a particular political party that is
Speaker 3: now very powerful in the current coalition, woke.
Speaker 4: Virtue signaling and mary place names for government departments with
Speaker 4: target says. In New Zealand First Leader Winston Peter's launched
Speaker 4: his campaign for the twenty twenty three election, it told
Speaker 4: supporters an attacked church in East Auckland that it was
Speaker 4: time to take the country back and.
Speaker 5: In New Zealand First, we will change all the local
Speaker 5: virtue signing names of every government department back to English.
Speaker 2: New Zealand First Leader Winston Peters said on the campaign
Speaker 2: trail that this policy was not an attack on the language.
Speaker 2: It's an attack on the elite virtual signalers who have
Speaker 2: hijacked the language for their own socialist means. How do
Speaker 2: you interpret a statement like that.
Speaker 3: There are so many strange statements in there, coming from
Speaker 3: a man who in decades past has actually been a
Speaker 3: very strong supporter of Maori development, Maori people, Maori revitalization.
Speaker 3: So one has to wonder where that is coming from
Speaker 3: as a particular philosophy. But this ongoing notion's perpetuation of
Speaker 3: an idea that somehow there is a Maori elite flies
Speaker 3: in the face of all.
Speaker 1: Of the actual facts.
Speaker 3: Marii are more likely to die earlier, Maori are less
Speaker 3: likely to own a home, Maori are more likely to
Speaker 3: be incarcerated. Mary are less likely to have tertiary education.
Speaker 3: So I'm really wondering where this teeny tiny group of
Speaker 3: elitd that Winston Peters talks about.
Speaker 1: It sounds a bit like they're mainly his friends.
Speaker 2: Okay, this policy it even saw a Justice Minister, Paul
Speaker 2: Goldsmith intervene to remove words like altero from an official
Speaker 2: invite for Matariki that was sent to an Australian counterpart.
Speaker 3: Minister.
Speaker 4: Quite hey, why did you ask officials to take Alto
Speaker 4: and Malti greetings out of these Martariki invites?
Speaker 1: Well? As as I recall, it was.
Speaker 4: In relation to sending an invitation to an Australian minister,
Speaker 4: and I didn't think he needed a lot of terreo
Speaker 4: in his invitation because he's in Australian.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, of all time, the scandal of the century,
Speaker 1: I would have thought.
Speaker 2: Does that seem like a step too far to you?
Speaker 3: Well, I think that is absolutely extraordinary. In a year
Speaker 3: when the Leader of our Commonwealth, King Charles was quite
Speaker 3: happy to use the phrase alter or New Zealand in
Speaker 3: his statement of commiseration to the king Eytongue at the
Speaker 3: loss of King E two hated. So if King Charles
Speaker 3: is comfortable with it, I'm not terribly sure why a
Speaker 3: New Zealand government should be uncomfortable with the idea of
Speaker 3: us being alter.
Speaker 1: Or New Zealand.
Speaker 3: And, as I say frequently, if we actually did change
Speaker 3: our name to Alta or New Zealand, do you know
Speaker 3: what we'd get to come out before Australia at the Olympics.
Speaker 1: Now, wouldn't that be fun?
Speaker 2: That's a very good point, thank you, Ella. Do you
Speaker 2: think the Coalition is undermining the growth of the language
Speaker 2: with these views?
Speaker 3: Let's start by the fact that the language almost became
Speaker 3: extinct because of government policy, and it was Maui, it
Speaker 3: was communities. It was Ewe Fano Hapu who began the
Speaker 3: tiny little language nests in the late seventies and the
Speaker 3: early eighties, which have finally been converted into a specific
Speaker 3: Maori education. Could a copapa Marii education system, which we
Speaker 3: know works extraordinarily well for Mardi people, but more importantly,
Speaker 3: the numbers of people New Zealanders who are enrolled in
Speaker 3: todeal Maori courses Maori and non Maori. Shows that this
Speaker 3: language has been taken to heart by a significant majority
Speaker 3: of people in this country. And we hear it every
Speaker 3: night on the news, and we hear it every day
Speaker 3: when people refer to those ministries that are supposed to
Speaker 3: be known by their English names, but we ordinary New
Speaker 3: Zealanders choose to keep on using those tonal names. Shows
Speaker 3: that this latest battle against our language may not be successful.
Speaker 2: Are we still seeing that interest from across somewhat for
Speaker 2: learning the language.
Speaker 3: Well, I think we've had three extraordinary events this year.
Speaker 3: We had the Hui Amort, which the King Echangueill called
Speaker 3: earlier in the year, in which tens of thousands of
Speaker 3: people came out around the country about, you know, protesting
Speaker 3: about these very pieces of legislation. Then we had a
Speaker 3: White Tungi Day, which I was so grateful to be
Speaker 3: at for the whole week, and you know, on the
Speaker 3: last day it was estimated that fifty thousand people were
Speaker 3: at White Tongi and at least half of those were
Speaker 3: not Maudi, and they were proudly carrying bags and wearing
Speaker 3: t shirts saying we stand with Maudi.
Speaker 1: I was in the political tent.
Speaker 3: When you know the Japanese group, and the Indonesian group,
Speaker 3: and the Chinese group, and the Sikh group and the
Speaker 3: Irish group, you know, all of these other cultures who
Speaker 3: understand the importance of culture and identity and language and
Speaker 3: feel that enriches not impoverished as a nation.
Speaker 1: They were the ones.
Speaker 3: And then, of course we saw the outpouring of grief,
Speaker 3: most recently at the tongue hunger for KINGI to hate
Speaker 3: her and amwortately the positive energy that came about with
Speaker 3: the coronation of the new Aliki Nui. So I believe
Speaker 3: genuinely that this language is alive and well in the
Speaker 3: hearts and minds of many many New Zealanders, most of
Speaker 3: whom might be Maui, but a growing number who have
Speaker 3: children and grandchildren who go to school and learn a
Speaker 3: Hakka and awayata and Akutakia. And it doesn't matter about
Speaker 3: their ethnicity, because that thing is what makes them unique
Speaker 3: and distinctive in the world. So this language is flourishing,
Speaker 3: despite ravages by a government hell bent on taking away
Speaker 3: that success.
Speaker 2: It must be quite heartening to see this interest in
Speaker 2: the language, given the repression of tenel in the past.
Speaker 1: I am so heartened.
Speaker 3: I mean, I am part of that generation who my
Speaker 3: parents were beaten savagely, were part born at the very
Speaker 3: beginning of the last century, and they wanted to protect us.
Speaker 3: They gave it the most English sounding names they possibly could.
Speaker 3: They tried really hard not to speak the language at home.
Speaker 3: They did that to protect us because they genuinely believed
Speaker 3: that was the only way to save our people. Moving forward,
Speaker 3: it's my children's generation and my grandchildren's generation that are
Speaker 3: making a difference because they are the ones who are
Speaker 3: embracing all of their ethnicities. They are one hundred percent Maui,
Speaker 3: one hundred percent Dalmatian, one hundred percent Irish. It is
Speaker 3: a very racist notion that you can put a blood
Speaker 3: quantum on culture and identity.
Speaker 2: Some of the worst racism that you've experienced in your life.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm seventy, so you know I've been around through
Speaker 3: a bush of stuff. I mean, I was born in
Speaker 3: the fifties in a small town in the far North
Speaker 3: where I didn't meet a white man until I went
Speaker 3: to school to ahi part of Native school, and he
Speaker 3: was the principal, and you know, my parents would walk
Speaker 3: down the streets of Kaitai, and when a white man
Speaker 3: and woman came along, they would moved to the side,
Speaker 3: because we had all inculcated the idea that we were
Speaker 3: inferior and that we had to get out of the
Speaker 3: way of the white man and the white woman. And
Speaker 3: then I moved to the city where came from Kaitaia
Speaker 3: to New Lynn, where my father worked in the factory
Speaker 3: and my mother the tanneries, and my mother worked across
Speaker 3: the road at the potteries. And I found out I
Speaker 3: was brown. Who knew up in Kaitai because we were
Speaker 3: all the same color. I found out I was poor.
Speaker 3: I found out that I couldn't go to my friend's
Speaker 3: house because I was a dirty mary. You know, so
Speaker 3: you inculcate that stuff as a small child, and it
Speaker 3: has the potential to break you. I am very fortunate,
Speaker 3: and education played an enormous role in that change in
Speaker 3: my thinking and therefore the thinking of my entire far
Speaker 3: no far nui. I was one who said that can't
Speaker 3: be right. We can't be this insignificant. You know, the
Speaker 3: people I know are beautiful and warm and kind. Why
Speaker 3: does everybody hate us? And the fact that in the
Speaker 3: last fifty years that has transformed, that has become a norm.
Speaker 3: You stand end up in front of a hakka of
Speaker 3: five hundred school students, or you watch the all Blacks
Speaker 3: and you your heart fills with pride to be a
Speaker 3: new Zealander. I just watched the team at the Palace
Speaker 3: meeting King Charles and singing a beautiful wiater. These strengths,
Speaker 3: these contributions we are making through our culture and identity
Speaker 3: cannot be changed by pieces of legislation.
Speaker 2: Muli Language Week started a few days after the latest
Speaker 2: developments in the proposed Treaty Principal's Bill. The bill was
Speaker 2: discussed at Cabinet last week, but it seems to be
Speaker 2: caught in this quagmire between act who are pushing the
Speaker 2: bill and National with Prime Minister Chris Luxon already indicating
Speaker 2: he won't support it beyond a first reading. Are you
Speaker 2: concerned about how this conversation could go between now and
Speaker 2: this supposed point where it's killed off.
Speaker 3: Even if this bill is killed off as it goes
Speaker 3: through Parliament, And it seems that maybe the case, what
Speaker 3: it is done is created an environment that has encouraged
Speaker 3: increasing levels of race hatred. And I'm using that term,
Speaker 3: and I know it's a strong term, but we are
Speaker 3: seeing it and you and the media would also be
Speaker 3: hearing about it in terms of the gates of anger
Speaker 3: and frustration are opened by pieces of legislation like this,
Speaker 3: and what David Seymour says is supposed to be beginning
Speaker 3: a positive conversation maybe aboard, it's actually becoming a groundswell
Speaker 3: of negativity. And I worry about that because I genuinely
Speaker 3: believe as a nation, over the last fifty years, New
Speaker 3: Zealand has become known internationally as being a leader at
Speaker 3: working with its indigenous people, at building a culture that
Speaker 3: unites our diverse groups of nationalities. We're known for this internationally,
Speaker 3: and legislation like this is going to have an enormously
Speaker 3: negative impact, I believe on that image that we hold globally.
Speaker 1: You know, this is a force for good.
Speaker 6: This is a positive initiative. Far from changing or diminishing
Speaker 6: the treaty, it actually embeds it in legislation, and far
Speaker 6: from reducing rights so mariti it actually generalizes and strengthens them.
Speaker 2: Why is it so important to revitalize the language.
Speaker 3: I think a culture is maintained by its language.
Speaker 1: It is the most important thing.
Speaker 3: I mean, you and I are here speaking in English,
Speaker 3: and this is a language that has been impacted by
Speaker 3: every other culture. Half the words we speak are either
Speaker 3: French or Latin or Greek.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: I mean the language stays alive because it is spoken
Speaker 3: because as it has cared about and ours almost died,
Speaker 3: and if it had a part of Maori identity would
Speaker 3: have died with it. The fact that it has been
Speaker 3: revitalized and strengthened, not just by Maori, shows that it
Speaker 3: has relevance. Words like farno have come into being to
Speaker 3: mean much more than just mum, dad and three kids.
Speaker 3: Being able to have a porphany when you start a
Speaker 3: new job, and feeling that sense of connection, attending a
Speaker 3: tonguey hunger where grief is allowed to be in outpointing things.
Speaker 3: These are things that Maori culture and identity have brought
Speaker 3: to New Zealand society, and what's more, they add to
Speaker 3: our brand. There are tourists that come in their hordes
Speaker 3: from all all over the world to experience Maori culture
Speaker 3: and so what we bring is not just a language,
Speaker 3: not just a people, but a part of our brand.
Speaker 3: As you can see on every single plane that air.
Speaker 3: New Zealand flies around the world with one of our
Speaker 3: most ancient symbols, the quardu on it. So what is
Speaker 3: good for Maudi is good for New Zealand. What is
Speaker 3: good for Mali culture is good for the New Zealand economy.
Speaker 2: It's Maori language Week this week. How can people celebrate.
Speaker 3: I love the fact that during to a ky or
Speaker 3: toel Maudi, I can go into places where I ordinarily
Speaker 3: wouldn't and the storekeeper will go Curda, or people will
Speaker 3: say Curda on the streets or morderner. You don't have
Speaker 3: to be a fluent speaker of Todel Maudi. That is
Speaker 3: a very special gift. But you can be a user
Speaker 3: of the language. You can be somebody who says, this
Speaker 3: is something that makes me different.
Speaker 1: I have my own life. You know.
Speaker 3: Most New Zealanders, now, because we have such a diverse population,
Speaker 3: are already multi lingual. They already speak the language of
Speaker 3: their homeland and English and are quite happy to add
Speaker 3: a third because it helps give a deeper understanding of
Speaker 3: the names of the places and the history and that
Speaker 3: the culture, and so those little acts of saying Kurda
Speaker 3: are as important as being able to stand up and
Speaker 3: be part of the man who cordia or speech. There
Speaker 3: are competition that our young folk had last week. As
Speaker 3: far as I'm concerned, it's about embracing language and seeing
Speaker 3: that it adds to who and what you are, regardless
Speaker 3: of your ethnic identity.
Speaker 2: So saying kyorda can help people adopted into their lives
Speaker 2: and spread the language. What are some other things they
Speaker 2: can do?
Speaker 3: Well? We all acknowledge that, as I said, the importance
Speaker 3: of farno, and so you have schools who create little
Speaker 3: farno groups and support teams. You know, there are words
Speaker 3: in the Maui language like kaitiaki tanga. Now there's an
Speaker 3: interesting word to be a guardian, to be a steward
Speaker 3: of our mother the earth. Kaitiakitanga is woven into legislation
Speaker 3: that protects our country from mining exploitation. Isn't it interesting
Speaker 3: that a piece of language like that is trying to
Speaker 3: be expunged from that legislation that is protecting our country
Speaker 3: from mining exploitation.
Speaker 2: Ala, you were speaking about how people learning the language
Speaker 2: can help in other parts of society too. Can you
Speaker 2: speak to that.
Speaker 3: Well, I think it's not so much about learning the language,
Speaker 3: but it's about enhancing identity. And I see this because
Speaker 3: I work at Auckland University of Technology. We ran the
Speaker 3: classes where a number of very prominent non Maori media
Speaker 3: journalists Jennifer Ward Leland, Jack Tay and guy On Espiner
Speaker 3: all came and did their classes up at AUT. So
Speaker 3: I see the faces of those people who are going
Speaker 3: into these classes and the relationships that are formed out
Speaker 3: of going on this journey together. So I think it's
Speaker 3: actually about strengthening our identity as New Zealanders. I mean
Speaker 3: the very word that non Maori used to describe themselves kiwi.
Speaker 3: It's a Maori word. And I shall remember that bloke
Speaker 3: you put the signs up going ewei versus ewe, and
Speaker 3: I was interviewed with them. I said, well, thank you
Speaker 3: for still using a Maori word to describe yourself, even
Speaker 3: though you're anti Mary. I mean, we don't even realize
Speaker 3: how much the language and culture have permeated our society
Speaker 3: until we go elsewhere and see that they don't do
Speaker 3: the things that we take for granted in this country
Speaker 3: because of the weaving together of Maori and British and
Speaker 3: every other culture that now forms the society that.
Speaker 1: We share Namihi nui.
Speaker 2: Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: Ala Elder Nummi.
Speaker 2: That's it for this episode of the Front Page. You
Speaker 2: can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverageet
Speaker 2: inzet Herald dot co dot nz. The Front Page is
Speaker 2: produced by Ethan Sells Dan Goodwin as the sounder engineer.
Speaker 2: I'm Susie Nordquist. Subscribe to the Front Page on iHeartRadio
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