This year’s theme is ‘Ake ake ake – A Forever Language.’
Ake ake ake - this theme represents the resilience, adaptability and endurance of te reo Māori, and reflects the commitment to embracing and learning the language long into the future.
Join the movement to support te reo Māori. It is so important to foster amongst Māori and non-Māori positive attitudes towards, and accurate beliefs and positive values about, the Māori language so that Māori–English bilingualism becomes a valued part of New Zealand society.
Did you know that this week has been marked every year since 1975, and celebrates the presentation of the Māori Language Petition to parliament on the 14th September 1972? In 1973, the NZCER Sociolinguistic Survey of Māori Language Use found that te reo Māori was in rapid decline and in danger of disappearing. Statistics show that in 1975 less than 5% of Māori school children could speak te reo Māori, as opposed to 90% of Māori schoolchildren in 1913 (https://teara.govt.nz/en/te-tai/te-mana-o-te-reo-maori-timeline).
Jump forward to July 2022, when Stats NZ reported that New Zealanders are getting better at speaking te reo Māori and are more supportive of its use in day-to-day life. Data from the 2021 General Social Survey (GSS), collected between April and August 2021, show that since 2018, the proportion of people able to speak more than a few words or phrases of te reo Māori rose from 24 percent to 30 percent. Furthermore, almost a quarter (23 percent) of Māori said they spoke te reo Māori as one of their first languages, up from 17 percent in 2018.
What will the 2023 Census results tell us? The first results of Census 2023 show 19.6 percent or 978,246 of Aotearoa New Zealand’s population are Māori – an increase of 12.5 percent between 2018 and 2023 – described as a transformational shift by Stats NZ. With the results yet to be fully released (further information due to be released in coming months), wouldn’t it be great if this transformational shift is equally reflected in an increased use of te reo Māori in Aotearoa?
Kia kaha te reo Māori. Let’s make the Māori language strong.
