By Luka Forman, RNZ journalist
A community leader from a tiny island says preserving her native tongue is more important than ever, as schools on the island itself have stopped teaching it.
Rotuma is an island about 650km north of Fiji and is a dependency of Fiji.
UNESCO lists Rotuman as definitely endangered and says there has been a sharp decline in fluent speakers.
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Auckland Rotuman Fellowship Group chair Rachel Mario, who also manages the NZ Rotuman Community Centre in Mt Roskill, said that made it even more important for the community here in New Zealand to keep learning and speaking it.
“If we don’t revive the language or don’t do enough about it, we’ll lose it forever, so it’s quite important that anyone with Rotuman blood out there adhere to that,” she said.
“If you don’t teach your kids and you don’t learn it, or you don’t speak it at home, it’s going to be lost forever.”
According to the 2023 census, 1323 Rotumans live in New Zealand, though Rachel Mario said the number could be higher depending on how the ethnicity question was framed.
‘Also empowering’
“It’s their identity, it’s their culture. It’ll also empower them once they know who they are.”
Rotuman Language Week started on Sunday, something Mario fought for two years to have recognised.
“They kept saying no, because they think we’re Fijian and our culture is totally different. We speak different languages, we’re totally different from the Fijians.”
The Rotuman Community Centre will be running activities throughout the week, including a church service, a decolonisation symposium and a seniors day.
The Rotuman people are a distinct ethnic group, with their own Polynesian language culture and identity.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
