In 2016 Te Roopū Māori, the Otago University Māori Students’ Association, started offering free Te Reo Māori classes. The response was impressive, with the beginners’ class in 2017 peaking at 120 people, most of whom were not Māori.
“We were overwhelmed but excited to see a high interest in people wanting to learn Te Reo. Our classes were more popular than anticipated with extra venues needing to be booked to accommodate all the students,” said Tiana Mihaere, Te Roopū President.
The classes are returning for 2018, with OUSA stepping in to fund them for the first semester, while Te Roopū sorts out further funding. “OUSA believes it’s important to educate the student body on New Zealand’s native language,” said OUSA President Caitlin Barlow-Groome.
Te Reo has seen a surge of interest recently. Tiana argues that “The promotion and use of Te Reo Māori across different mainstream mediums and throughout the Otago campus has begun to normalise our language within the student population and wider community. This widespread revitalisation of Te Reo Māori has caused a domino effect.”
“Whether or not it is pronounced correctly, Te Reo Māori is everywhere within Aotearoa. We do not have to look far to find a place name that is Māori and I think many Pākehā genuinely want to learn how to correctly pronounce our kupu.”
The debate around Te Reo was stirred up late last year by an opinion column in the ODT which argued that Te Reo shouldn’t be spoken on National Radio. Refreshingly, the general consensus among media outlets who weren’t the ODT was that the article was a piece of toxic shit.
Tiana thinks that “we are witnessing a generational change/shift towards the acknowledgement of Te Reo Māori as an official language by the population of Aotearoa. The misconception and propaganda that Te Reo Māori is a dying language is being ignored by many within my generation and our language is fostering a newfound sense of national identity for this country.”