Tāmaki Herenga Waka is the over-arching theme for a series of activities aimed at building a positive Māori consciousness and a more dynamic and connected community in Auckland City. The principle of the proverb dating from 1840 behind the name “Tāmaki herenga waka” (Tāmaki moored canoes) was to see an end of tribal conflicts in the region and that Auckland City would be reputable as a safe haven for all people to commune as one. It is on this basis that the project’s team has embraced the name for this series of initiatives.

This project challenged the definition of literacy used in New Zealand compared with definitions used overseas and focused on the importance of orality and listening for Māori, based on the premise that without orality and listening, there’s no literacy for all cultural groups. The researchers found that Māori literacy is complex and is equally about relationships and respect building between people and groups of people and the salient features of their tribal lands. Speeches and songs stress meaningful relationships between people, their lands and their neighbours.

Even after 30 years of Māori language revitalisation movements, the Māori language continues to be in a perilous state. Despite these efforts there is no one method that can stem the decline as societal factors still impact adversely on language development. The most successful Māori language revitalisation movements are those located at the ‘flax-roots’ level.  However, as highlighted in the Pre-publication of the Waitangi Tribunal’s WAI 262 Report, there are a number of factors that have eroded Māori language revitalisation movements since the mid 1990s.

Otago has very low numbers of Māori language speakers – French is the most widely spoken second language in the region. Given this context, it is important that any interventions aimed at revitalising and maintaining the Māori language are evidence-based. There is ample research on second language acquisition but little that shows the actual as opposed to self-reported experience of the second language learner as transmitter of this language within the home.

This research project’s origins date back 22 years when Dr Joe Te Rito helped establish local Māori radio station Radio Kahungunu in Hastings. Joe saw how the dialect of his iwi Rongomaiwahine-Ngāti Kahungunu was diminishing in quality, in terms of grammatical and spoken fluency, with each generation. The station was to fill the gap for children who did not have Māori spoken in the home or role models to learn te reo from. While schools looked after education, the station wanted to bring the voices into the home.