Te Kura Roa-Waiaro

There are multiple Government funded initiatives aimed at addressing Māori language decline, including increasing the amount of Māori Language spoken, maintenance and quality. Te Puni Kokiri (2006 Health of the Māori Language Report) touched on the attitudes of wider New Zealand society towards the Māori language as unengaging and unlikely to change in the immediate future (p.7). Te Kura Roa-Waiaro proposes to examine the attitude of Government (National and Local) policy in an attempt to gauge how responsive the state (NZ) is to the Māori language. From this study this project will ascertain what interventions can be developed to improve the Māori language. It will look at attitudes of managers and their staff in an attempt to understand what the impact the language has on the entity and its employees. From the data collected this project will highlight if the value that is attributed to the language impacts on societal attitudes. It is hoped that with an understanding of the value placed on the language by the State, attitudes can be changed to reverse language shift that not only embraces language as a mode of communication but as a vehicle for expressing our diverse epistemologies and worldview.