July 01, 2022
Time to embrace bicultural media strategy
The co-chair of Māori language revitalisation body Te Mātāwai says the Māori media sector needs to embrace biculturalism rather than be solely fixated on te reo Māori.
Bernie O’Donnell says the merger of Radio New Zealand and TVNZ will change the crown’s response to the language.
While Te Mātāwai’s mandate covers the non-crown elements of revitalisation, the changes will affect the Maori sector it has oversight of.
He says existing funding structures developed when there was a necessary fundamentalist focus on te reo, but the shift from revitalisation to normalisation has changed the game.
“The silo thinking, which was required because we need to protect our language, needs to shift as well. We understand we have just come off a 20-year journey that talked about ‘either or’ and you could never be both. Now we have to start to discover what ‘and and’ looks like. We shouldn’t restrict ourselves, in terms of where we might go ensuring the language is everywhere,” Mr O’Donnell says.