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It’s Te Wiki o Te Reo Maori, and communities around the country are looking at ways to celebrate and advance the use of Maori language.
The Hawke’s Bay is holding its Kia Tipu Te Reo summit this Wednesday and Thursday, looking at the state of the language and what can be done to encourage wider take-up across society.
Speakers include Maori Language Commission chief executive Ngahiwi Apanui, New Plymouth Mayor Andrew Judd, language scholar Richard Benton and Donna Awatere-Huata, who was one of the founding members of Nga Tamatoa, the group which championed the first Maori language petition in 1972.
Mrs Awatere-Huata says 40 years on it’s time to set some more ambitious objectives than just allowing Maori to be taught in schools.
"2040 is the bicentennial of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi and it would be amazing, it's 24 years away, if we could look back and have every 20 year old in Hawke's Bay or the majority of them able to hold a conversation in te reo Maori, I think that is a strategy worth pursuing," she says.
The Kia Tupu Te Reo Summit will be held at the Eastern Institute of Technology’s Te Urunga Waka in Taradale.
Copyright © 2016, UMA Broadcasting Ltd: www.waateanews.com
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