New road signs show the way in Maori
Once banned from schools, te reo Maori has now been used by Porirua kids to make the city’s first bilingual road signs.
Students from Te Puna Matauranga, an iwi-based learning support and education centre in Takapuwahia, have one message for motorists: ata haere – slow down.
Their message adorns new traffic signs that have gone up on the streets around Takapuwahia Marae, and are the first bilingual road signs in Porirua with more to come as old signs need replacing or new ones are introduced across the city.
The signs were revealed as part of Maori Language Week, and Porirua Mayor Mike Tana said they symbolised how much things had changed since the 1867 Native Schools Act that said English should be the only language used in the education of Maori children.
While Tana’s kids are all learning te reo, he said his father stopped speaking Maori after being caned for doing so at school. ‘‘My dad never spoke Maori after that.
‘‘Our young people are now owning Maori as their language to speak and can normalise that. It’s about being respectful to where we live, Aotearoa, and to our children who have made the effort to learn te reo.’’
While the Act was stopped in 1969, the language was still far from common-place.
Tana hails from Ngati Whatua and is believed to be the city’s first Maori mayor.
In 1984, his relative Naida Glavish, also from Ngati Whatua, hit headlines after her boss at the post office demoted the telephone operator after she refused to stop saying ‘‘kia ora’’ instead of a formal English greeting.
Then prime minister Sir Robert Muldoon got her permission to use the Maori salutation.
Major Maori language recovery programmes began in the 1980s, including the first kohanga reo opening in Lower Hutt.
Maori was made an official language of New Zealand under the Maori Language Act 1987.
Te Puna Matauranga student Te Uatorikiriki Solomon said he hoped Porirua’s first bilingual road sign would be the start of many.
‘‘We don’t have many signs in Porirua that have Maori on them and there should be. It’s a reflection of our hapori [community].’’