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Salient. Newspaper of the Victoria University Students' Association. Vol 42 No. 18. July 30 1979
6. Trustee of the Maori Language
6. Trustee of the Maori Language
A Trustee of the Maori language must be established to protect and promote the language and co-ordinate the activities of a diverse range of individuals, Maori groups and Government departments. The future of the language depends very much on decisions made and support given to the office of the Trustee of the language.
Failure to act on these measure now will, in my opinion, lead to increasingly serious racial strife as soon as Maori has ceased to be a first language for any significant proportion of pre-school children.
At this stage the language becomes officially dead in that it has no native speakers among the next generation.
An awareness of this state, if it is allowed to develop will result in all Pakeha being blamed for allowing the language to die, or for actually killing it off, and your children and their children and their childrens' children will inherit a bitterness worse than that caused by the land confiscation in the 1800s.
As a Pakeha who is learning Maori, I don't want to see this occur or be responsible for having taken part in such "linguistic genocide" but I feel it will fall on us all regardless. I therefore urge you, even if you yourself don't want to learn Maori or give your children the oppotunity to do so, to assist Maoris to fight for the right to maintain and revive their language.
| a) | Pledging support and money to Maori Groups like Te Reo Maori fighting for the language. |
| b) | Supporting the pressure for an act to establish Maori as a natural language. |
| c) | Supporting the proposal for the Establishment of a Trustee of the Languages. |
| d) | Making submissions to the Maori Affairs amendment Bill hearings which close in November. |
| e) | Pressure the media and Politicians to make a place for Maori regularly in the media as of right t. |
| f) | Support Regional Development schemes for Maori rural areas. |
| g) | Indicate to the Minister of Education and the Department you desire to have bilingual schooling introduced for Maori children and/or all children as an option available as of right to all NZ parents. |
| h) | Support Maori Language week activities in force. |
| i) | Accepting that initially you will get abused for the deeds of all Pakehas but take this as a first reaction, of frustration only. |
And above all give our children the chance we never had. To grow up with a foot in both cultures and languages and be better New Zealanders because of it.
Kia Ora Koutou
John McCaffey.