Māori language revitalization

Māori (Māori: [ˈmaːɔɾi]), or te reo Māori ('the Māori language'), also known as te reo ('the language'), is an Eastern Polynesian language spoken by the Māori people, the indigenous population of mainland New Zealand.

The Māori Language Act 1987 was passed by the Parliament of New Zealand and gave official language status to the Māori language and gave speakers a right to use it in legal settings such as courts. It also established the Māori Language Commission to promote the language and provide advice on it.

Revitalization efforts

A government-sponsored initiative, te Wiki o te reo Māori, Māori Language Week, has been celebrated since 1975 and is intended to encourage New Zealanders to support te reo Māori. The week in 2008 saw the release of Google Māori, a Māori-language translation of the search engine created as a collaboration between Potaua and Nikolasa Biasiny-Tule of Tangatawhenua.com, the Māori Language Commission and Google.

Māori leaders initiated Māori-language recovery-programs such as the Kōhanga Reo ("language nests") movement, which, beginning in 1982, immersed infants in Māori from infancy to school age. In 1989, official support was given for Kura Kaupapa Māori—primary and secondary Māori-language immersion schools.

The policies for language revitalization have been changing in attempts to improve Māori language use and have been working with suggestions from the Waitangi Tribunal on the best ways to implement the revitalization. The Waitangi Tribunal in 2011 identified a suggestion for language revitalization that would shift indigenous policies from the central government to the preferences and ideologies of the Māori people. This change recognizes the issue of Māori revitalization as one of indigenous self-determination, instead of the job of the government to identify what would be best for the language and Māori people of New Zealand.