Anumpa Achukma/Good News

2005.01

This is a newsletter dedicated to reporting the successes in revitalizing endangered languages worldwide. Share your good news with us by sending us an article about your program or current activity in revitalizing an endangered language.

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I spent 4 months in Aotearoa (Maori name for New Zealand) as a Fulbright Scholar studying Maori language revitalization. While there I was able to visit many different programs for all ages and to interview many people. What I saw was amazing! No journal article or conference presentation comes close to capturing the evolution of this process. The Maori are reversing language loss. Each article will focus on some aspect of what I saw there.

In 1994, I was presenting a paper on what works in language revitalization when an audience member piped up with a challenge to my professorial approach to the topic. What he said still makes a lot of sense. To create language revitalization, a person must create a time and space for an endangered language.

In my interviews with Maori about their language, te reo, many stated that learning Maori was a spiritual journey for each of them. There was a part of each that yearned for it. Speaking the language was what made them Maori. they had made this time and space for the language and found it rewarding. In our day-to-day lives, what does speaking the language of our ancestors mean? We all have other obligations and necessities. Sometimes, taking time out of our already busy schedules seems frivolous. At the same time, many of us do want to speak our own language. We have those same yearnings—to take that personal journey to spiritual reconnection.

Also, some groups have few speakers or maybe no speakers. The language may seem part of a dim past, hard to grasp in a fast-paced, modern, English (or French, Spanish) speaking environment, where economic forces of shape everyone’s futures. Life has changed from those days when the language was strong. The Kai Tahu is a populous iwi (tribe) of the South Island of New Zealand. They are surrounded and out-numbered by their Pakeha (European) neighbors. They are scattered all over the South Island. They have very few speakers of their dialect left, a dialect with noticeable pronunciation and vocabulary differences from other varieties of Maori. Also, racially they may look little different from their European neighbors.

Ancestry is very important to the Maori. A traditional Maori can recite his/her ancestors back to the ancestor and waka (canoe) that ancestor came to these islands on. That ancestry is what determines Maori identity. At the same time, they are proud of their European ancestry too.

Because the Kai Tahu lack a cohesive community from which to rebuild their language and culture, they have created their own approach to revitalization. They have made it personal. Kai Tahu make a personal commitment to use as much Moari language as possible in their respective homes, to make Maori a home language.

The first P: Make it personal.

There is a small group of language learners in Dunedin, the Scottish Gaelic name for Edinburgh, and settled by Scottish immigrants. I sat in a circle of about 20, a hui (gathering) on my behalf to welcome me. There were all ages from teens to an elder (in his seventies). Each one introduced him/herself to me in Maori. Most of them were not fluent speakers and some had to continue in English. Yet here each was using whatever language they had. It was OK for them to be beginners.

Paulette, who is in charge of the Kai Tahu language program here, creates both classes and situations in which people can use their language. One of these language situations is to have coffee at different restaurants and cafes. Paulette brings language games that participants can play so that everyone has a chance to use language. A mother of three young children, she is working with other mothers to create a preschool language environment for the children of working mothers (this is different from kohunga reo, or language nests, to be discussed in a future article).

To learn more about the Kai Tahu program contact them at info@ngaitahu.iwi.nz. In a kitchen, a young Moriori woman sits with her Maori partner, speaking Maori with their three young children. The aren’t part of any organized program. This is the commitment they have made for the future of their children. The Moriori language of the Chatham Islands is a dead language, but Chris, the young mother, plans to return to help revitalize it.

Native people in the U.S. have been doing this as well. A little over ten years ago, two women from different parts of the country and different languages made personal commitments to revitalizing their languages. Margaret Mauldin, a Muskoke language speaker, ran classes from her home. Donna Pino Martinez at Santa Ana Pueblo didn’t wait for permission or funding from the tribal council. She just started classes. In Wisconsin, Gerald Hill, Oneida, and an adult began his personal journey to learning the Oneida language over ten years ago. He began by getting to know the elders in his community. At one conference, he said that he had started going to church because that was where the elders were. Regardless of your age, you can begin learning your language. I saw many 70 + year olds learning Maori. Both Margaret and Gerald are involved with the Indigenous Language Institute. You can contact them here.