OK (monolingual) boomer, you might be having your final moment in the sun
New Zealand film director Taiki Waititi, in a 2018 interview in British magazine Dazed, referred to growing up in Aotearoa in the 1980s, as being “racist as f...”. “I mean, I think New Zealand is the best place on the planet, but it’s a racist place. People [still] just flat-out refuse to pronounce Māori names properly…”
Waititi’s comment caused quite a stir at the time. How dare he label Aotearoa New Zealand racist!
This negative reaction was particularly striking for two reasons. First, many who were most incensed about it were Pākehā, a general trend identified in the academic literature on racism where whites often diminish or simply deny the impact of racism on those who aren’t white.
Even more problematically, this denial is resonant with an earlier view of New Zealand’s supposedly “positive” race relations between Māori and Pākehā that had, many thought, long been debunked.
Contrary to this view, endemic institutional racism, a direct legacy of colonialism, continues to persist as myriad negative social and economic indicators for Māori highlight; most poignantly, the still seven-year age difference in life expectancy. The notion of Māori “privilege” regularly bandied about by opponents of biculturalism is simply a nonsense.
But Waititi’s observation is also important because it highlights the longstanding opposition to te reo Māori, which is also a central feature of our colonial history. And it is starkly apparent in the anti-te reo Māori rhetoric emanating from the current coalition Government, particularly, its two minor parties, ACT and NZ First, albeit with the active obeisance of the supposedly dominant partner, National.
According to this view, English should not only be the dominant language in Aotearoa New Zealand, it should also apparently be the only language.
Again, this highlights its proponents’ woeful grasp of history. At the advent of colonisation, te reo Māori was the language most widely spoken, the lingua franca, the language of trade and education.
It was only from the mid-19th century that te reo began to be usurped by English as the rapid growth of Pākehā settlers and a colonial government intent on “assimilating” Māori took precedence.
This, of course, to lead to the banishment of te reo from education for over a century, until the Māori language revitalisation movement of the 1980s saw the re-emergence of Māori-medium education and, particularly over the last 20 years or so, its increasing visibility in media and other public language domains.
And it is this resurgence of te reo which is, apparently, such a key concern for the current coalition Government, so much so that they seem intent on spending millions, despite their stated wider fiscal concerns, to rebrand our government agencies as “English-only”. This imperative comes from a small, but vociferous and politically well organised, constituency of predominantly monolingual, older, Pākehā New Zealanders – monolingual boomers – who have very little knowledge of, exposure to, and respect for te reo Māori.
These people grew up in a New Zealand where te reo was still relatively invisible, with the only exposure for some being its wilful mispronunciation (or, more accurately, bastardisation) in New Zealand English.
Place names, as Waititi points out, were a particular favourite – think Tikawata (Te Kauwhata) or Mangowai (Mangawhai).
Former National Party Party leader Don Brash’s infamous 2017 interview with veteran broadcaster Kim Hill about his opposition to the use of te reo Māori on RNZ reflects the experience of so many older monolingual Pākehā speakers all too clearly. These views also reflect a spectacular lack of understanding about both the nature and the widespread benefits of bi- and multilingualism.
Take the nonsense argument, for example, that bilingual signage might “confuse” us. Given two thirds of the world’s population is bi- or multilingual, and can quite happily navigate across various languages simultaneously, this suggests that monolingual New Zealanders are simply morons.
Most often though, their arguments are couched in opposition to the supposedly “woke” recognition of te reo Māori. And, in this, they may finally have a relevant point.
After all, it is younger New Zealanders, as well as more recent migrants to Aotearoa, who tend to already be bi- or multilingual, who are often far more aware of, open to, and positive towards te reo Māori. The adult te reo Māori courses across the country, bursting at the seams, suggest as much. So, the vestigial opposition to te reo Māori – though strong and tightly held by some – may be having its dying moment in the sun. Opponents may well find that the march of time and demographics have the final word – in both English and te reo Māori.
He rangi tā matawhāiti he rangi tā matawhānui
A person with narrow vision has a restricted horizon;
a person with wide vision has plentiful opportunities.
Professor Stephen May is Pākehā and learnt te reo Māori as an adult. In 2023, he was awarded the Mason Durie Medal for Social Sciences in Aotearoa New Zealand by the Royal Society of New Zealand, Te Apārangi for his work on language rights and indigenous language revitalisation.