By Caleb Fotheringham, RNZ Pacific journalist in Rarotonga
The Cook Islands Secretary of Culture Emile Kairua says people in his country are getting complacent about the use of Māori.
Cook Islands Māori Language Week started on Sunday in New Zealand and will run until Saturday.
Kairua said the language is at risk at the source.
“Here in the homeland, we’re complacent,” he told RNZ Pacific.
“People have stopped using it in their everyday lives. Even my children, I must admit, don’t speak Cook Islands Māori. They understand it, thankfully, but they can’t speak it.”
Kairua said he thinks Cook Islands Māori is stronger in Aotearoa because that is where a lot of the language teachers are living.
“We haven’t done a welfare audit of the language in Aotearoa [but] I would imagine that it’s a lot stronger, purely because a lot of our teachers, a lot of our orators, are living in Aotearoa.
“I guess being away from the source, being away from home, there is a feeling of homesickness, so that you do tend to grab onto to what you’re missing.”
Critical to ‘wake up’
He said it was “critical” that Cook Islanders “wake up and appreciate the importance of our language and make sure that it’s not a dying part of our identity”.
“A race without a language – they don’t have an identity. So as Cook Islanders, either first, second or third generation, we need to hold on to this.”
Ministry of Pacific Peoples Secretary Gerardine Clifford-Lidstone said there was power in the language — it anchored identity and built belonging.
The theme of the week, ”Ātui’ia au ki te vaka o tōku matakeinanga”, translates to “connect me to the offerings of my people”.
The Cook Islands Māori community is the third-largest Pacific group in Aotearoa New Zealand.
UNESCO lists te reo Māori Kūki ‘Airani as one of the most endangered Pacific languages supported through the Pacific Language Week series.
News in Cook Islands Māori is broadcast and published on RNZ Pacific on weekdays.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
