Is ‘reo trauma’ holding back the revitalisation of te reo?

Source: Radio New Zealand

Researchers have identified “te reo trauma” as a barrier to the revitalisation of the Māori language.

Dr Raukura Roa (Waikato, Maniapoto, Ngāti Hauā, Ngāti Korokī Kahukura, Ngāti Raukawa) told RNZ the working definition for te reo Māori trauma is “a person’s emotional, psychological, spiritual distress and or physical injury caused by harmful events or by association to harmful events, which directly impacts their ability and or willingness to learn and or speak te reo Māori”.

One of the things that had her start research on this topic, which became the report Te Reo Māori Trauma Literature Review authored with Professor Tom Roa, was the fact that despite it being widely talked about on social media especially, there was no definition for Māori language trauma.

“The fundamental thing I wanted to accomplish, though, with this particular research is identifying exactly what it is we’re talking about when we say te reo Māori language trauma and also to be quite specific. So language trauma is across all languages, te reo Māori language trauma is specific to te reo Māori, so I wanted to get those things distinct.”

Research was expanded in a second report, Everyday Experiences of Te Reo Māori Trauma by Dr Mohi Rua, which saw a small number of participants share their experiences anonymously.

Roa said when learning a language there were both internal and external barriers that needed to be overcome. External barriers included time, money, government policy, but other people’s attitudes and comments could also be perceived as external barriers.

“So other people’s behaviours, other people’s attitudes, comments can be perceived as an external barrier. The other people, however, the comments, the judgments, it points to an internal barrier around fear.

“Fear of being judged because you made a mistake or just plain fear of making mistakes. Fear of being embarrassed or humiliated because you mispronounced some words, or you used the completely wrong word for the wrong context and in that moment was either judged or experienced embarrassment by being judged or publicly humiliated based on the way in which you were corrected.”

The physical injuries and emotional scars experienced by the generation of Māori who experienced corporal punishment at school for speaking te reo was also a barrier, she said.

“Even by association, so even if you yourself weren’t caned for speaking te reo Maori, if you saw someone who was caned, that would stop you as well. Our brains do a quick calculation. Te reo Māori equals pain. Te reo Māori is bad. Don’t speak te reo Māori.

“What’s missing is just there’s no freedom to just kōrero. Just kōrero. If it’s on social media, if it’s, you know, in person, on the phone, on Zoom hui. Kaore te iwi i te tino wātea ki te tuku i te reo kia rere, he wehi.”

Can we reach 1 million speakers by 2040?

In 2019 the government pledged to ensure one million people in New Zealand were able to speak basic te reo Māori by 2040. Roa said reo trauma would be a big barrier to that goal.

Te reo was New Zealand’s most widely spoken language after English, data from Stats NZ showed there were 213,849 te reo Māori speakers in 2023, up from 185,955 in 2018, an increase of 27,894 people (15 percent) since the 2018 Census.

Roa said that was a huge increase, but if the number of speakers continued to increase at a pace of 30,000 every five years, the country would reach approximately 303,000 speakers by 2040, quite a shortfall.

“The thing is, until now, we haven’t really started dealing with Māori language trauma as a barrier. We’ve talked about it. We know about it. We know that there’s a barrier there. We know that there is trauma there. We know that people experience fear, they experience embarrassment. We haven’t actually come up with a strategy to combat that barrier, to dismantle that barrier.”

In order to reach that goal, New Zealand needed to find new strategies and be committed to not only identifying the barriers, both external and internal, but also be willing to work on dismantling those barriers, she said.

‘It gives a very clear message’ – Te Mātāwai on trauma research

Chair/toihau of Te Mātāwai’s Komiti Rangahau, Teina Boasa-Dean, said it made sense that there be further research from Te Mātāwai into te reo trauma.

While the themes and issues raised by Roa’s research were not new, they brought new insight into the contemporary experiences of te reo speakers, she said.

“It gives a very clear message that what is still deeply embedded inside communities, Māori communities in particular, is the notion that a number of different forms of distress, anxiety, even discriminatory, I think, attitudes towards te reo Māori has exacerbated lots of different forms of anxiety around language learning, language revitalisation.”

Boasa-Dean said te reo trauma had “without question” been a hindrance to language revitalisation over the last 50 years.

Referring to it as “trauma” was a very pointed and accurate way of describing what people were experiencing, what learners were experiencing in terms of encountering their language and their cultural knowledge, maybe for some of them for the first time, she said.

Māori needed to design innovative strategies to cope with the different forms of trauma, whether that was anxiety or distress, she said.

“Much of that sits on the shoulders of skilled and talented facilitators to ensure that they are conscious, number one, that … many, many of our people will walk into the door, the language learning door, with different levels, different shades, and different degrees of fear.

“Kei te nui anō hoki te aupēhitanga i tō tātou reo me ōna tikanga i roto i a Aotearoa i tēnei wā tonu. Nō reira, he wā tōtika tēnei wā ki te kawe haere anō hoki i ō tātou taiaha ki te turaki anō hoki i ērā taiapa ki raro, kia mauri tau ai te ngākau, te wairua, te hinegaro o te tangata e kuhu mai ana ki te ako i tāna reo me ōna tikanga tonu.”

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand