Four years ago, Wellington City Council voted unanimously to make Wellington a te reo Māori city by 2040. How will it meet that promise?

It’s a story that will resonate with Māori around the country. When Tūhoe activist Tame Iti was at school in Ruātoki, he was forced to write the phrase “I will not speak Māori” hundreds of times on the blackboard for speaking his own language. 

He chose that line as the central theme for his collection of art works dotted around Wellington this month in celebration of Te Wiki o te reo Māori. Iti even painted the line in heavy, black font onto a scrim-lined fence on the city’s waterfront. 

The installation marked 50 years since the Māori language petition, delivered by Iti and Māori activist group Ngā Tamatoa from Tāmaki Makaurau, Victoria University’s Te Reo Māori Society and the New Zealand Māori Students Association to Parliament in 1972.

Our capital city was central to the historical suppression of the Māori language, and now, it’s a city that’s made a commitment to being a te reo Māori city by 2040 – a year that will mark 200 years since Te Tiriti o Waitangi/ The Treaty of Waitangi was signed and since the first meeting of Wellington’s Town Committee .

The anniversary of the delivery of the petition offers a moment to reflect on the changing face of te reo Māori revitalisation. That moment led to the Māori Language Claim in which the Waitangi Tribunal decided that te reo Māori was a taonga and that the Crown was required to take active steps to ensure Māori have “the full exclusive and undisturbed possession of their language and culture”. Bringing back our indigenous language is an everyday activity. To progress from Iti facing punishment in school for speaking te reo Māori to having that theme officially adorned throughout the city has required a huge collaborative effort.

What this means in a practical and everyday sense might not be immediately clear. The journey Te Whanganui-a-Tara is on to become a te reo Māori city offers a glimpse at this. 

“I tēnei rā i whakaae ana e ngā kaikaunihera kia tū a Pōneke hei tāone reo Māori,” then Wellington mayor Justin Lester announced to media on June 14, 2018. In a meeting that morning, the councillors of Wellington had unanimously agreed that Wellington should become a te reo Māori city. But what does that look like?

Driven by Justin Lester and then-deputy mayor Jill Day, alongside local iwi, the official strategy is called Te Tauihu. Tauihu are the ornately carved figureheads affixed tightly to waka to join and support the body of the waka. 

Essentially, Te Tauihu is an agreement between Wellington City Council and the Māori Language Commission, with the purpose of holding the status of te reo Māori as a taonga of iwi Māori and to create a framework to help guide the actions of the council – to celebrate te reo Māori and support the revitalisation of the language.

It’s a “policy that puts a stake in the ground to really tell the world that we are serious about te reo maori in the city, and that we have ambitions to be a te reo Māori city,” says Karepa Wall, chief Māori officer at Wellington City Council. 

Aspirations for the language in the city are threefold: for the language to be seen, to be heard and to be felt.

As you’re arriving in the city or wandering about, the hope is that you will be able to see the language. That could be through bilingual signage at council-owned venues like pools, recreation centres and libraries. Or, that may be in the naming of buildings. “Anything we’re going to name we’ll consider a Māori name, or at least a bilingual name,” Wall says. You see it already in newer libraries like Waitohi, a library and community hub opened in Johnsonville in 2020. Or, in Northern Wellington’s Newlands Park, which adopted the name Pukehuia Park following a vote by councillors in 2021.

Next month, the ASB sports centre in Kilbirnie will adopt a Māori name that will be gifted by iwi. “We want people to be able to hear it as well,” says Wall. There are opportunities for the council to encourage that through incorporating te reo Māori in events like Christmas parades, summer festivals or holiday programmes. “Te reo Māori is not just for the marae, te reo Māori is not just a formal language that you use in ceremonies,” he says. “Te reo Māori should be heard in our parks, should be heard in the playgrounds.”

The third aspect is about feeling the language in the city, through a contribution toward actual revitalisation of the language. “That’s about embracing, supporting and empowering other people to pick up the language,” says Wall. “As if it’s a part of our everyday furniture”. Rather than council taking it upon themselves to teach everyone in the city te reo Māori, they want to create spaces where people are able to do that. This week, they’re releasing a free app to make learning te reo Māori in local iwi dialects more accessible to Wellingtonians.

Tame Iti’s exhibition, along with the variety of te reo Māori informed artworks currently spread around the city as part of the Te Ahurei te reo Māori festival, is in many ways an all-encompassing expression of this bilingual vision for the city. “The thing with te reo Māori,” says Wall, is “it’s not just a written language, it was predominantly oral, it was predominantly visual”.

“What the core of this exhibition is about is to get people engaged,” says Iti. The history of te reo Māori from suppression to resistance “is a really important part of our history, that we need to talk about, it should not be put aside,” he says. “It’s our history that affects a hell of a lot of people over a long period of time, and people are still mamae about that.” 

For festival organiser Mere Boynton, art holds a special place in meeting these aspirations in Wellington. While Iti’s work was funded outside the Te Ahurei te reo Māori, it’s been embraced by and given a platform under the festival.

“Tame Iti’s work is important, because what he’s saying is, we can celebrate and commemorate the 50th anniversary, but there’s still a lot of work to be done,” says Boynton. Seeing these themes around te reo Māori expressed in public spaces through art, is transformative in its accessibility for everyday New Zealanders. “There’s still a lot of mamae, and trauma experienced by Māori. And what we need is for New Zealanders to advocate for Māori and to advocate for te reo Māori.” 

There’s also value for young people who have attended kōhanga reo or kura kaupapa to to see and hear art in their own language. When “children and tamariki see themselves or hear themselves, within their environment around them, they feel they feel part of the community, they feel that they are being seen,” she says.

Tame Iti, Wall says, “wants to ensure that people see the language in the middle of a city, that people walk down the waterfront, and they get smacked over the head with te reo Māori.” 

There are ongoing challenges around resourcing and to ensure Wellingtonians are onboard with the strategy. As well, there’s a constant need to reassess and review whether those aspirations remain aligned with where mana whenua are at, and where the country is at with goals surrounding language revitalisation.

The hope is that by 2040, the city won’t need a Māori language strategy. Instead, enough momentum will be built for the language to flourish naturally. That rather than revitalisation, the ambitions will be centred around raising people up. By then, the hope is that reo Māori will be commonly heard in the majority of people’s homes in Wellington, a taken-for granted sight, and heard all over the city. “If we got to that point,” says Wall, “we’ve succeeded”.

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