This article was first published on RNZ.

For the first time in years new research has recorded improvements in New Zealanders’ attitudes towards te reo Māori.

Te Māngai Pāho’s annual survey has shown a “powerful right shift” in the way people engage with the language, revealing that more people are moving from disinterest towards active support.

Te Māngai Pāho Kaihautū Larry Parr said the findings were encouraging after years of little movement.

“Attitudes are the biggest impediment to language revitalisation.

“The environment needs to be receptive to the notion first. You can’t have infertile ground to plant your seeds.”

What does a “right shift” mean?

Since 2016, Te Māngai Pāho has used an indigenous framework known as KoPA to measure how the population feels about te reo Māori.

It tracks attitudes and behaviours, not fluency.

The KoPA model places people along a language and cultural behaviour continuum with seven categories:

• Kore: no interest in te reo Māori (two sub-groups)
• Pō: curious or supportive but not yet active (three sub-groups)
• Awatea: active users and promoters of the language (two sub-groups)

The goal is to steadily move people to the right of the scale, towards Awatea, shifting the midpoint of the population by about 2 percent each year.

Parr said the latest data, taken from Nielsen’s Consumer and Media Insights survey of 10,000 people, showed that shift had finally occurred.

“It’s a measure of the health of the total ecosystem. The impact of broadcasting is primarily on the status of the reo, which is captured in people’s attitudes. The exciting thing is that in the latest iteration we had a right shift,” he said.

“Now we have to work out what levers we need to pull to accelerate the rate of that shift.”

Parr said the visibility of te reo Māori in public life was a major factor, pointing to Matariki celebrations, Waitangi Day coverage, and popular television programmes like The Casketeers.

“In 2006, Whakaata Māori (then Māori Television) broadcast Anzac Day all day for the first time. It was a huge success,” he said.

“The following year they didn’t fully capitalise, but by 2007 they had a strategy, saving content, promoting it, and viewership steadily climbed.

“That represented a change in attitudes. If we’d been measuring back then, I think we’d have seen a big right shift.”

Parr said the political response to Māori Television’s Anzac Day coverage was also a clear example of a positive attitude change towards te reo.

“Māori Television was established under Labour. National originally had a policy to close it down. But by the time they came into power in 2008, their attitude had changed, largely because of what Māori Television had done with Anzac Day.

“That shows attitudes can change, and we need to keep working at it.”

Risks and challenges

While the gains were positive, Parr warned they could easily be undone.

“There is a risk of a left shift… and that would make the landscape much more difficult for us,” he told RNZ.

“It’s about balance. If TVNZ1 went to 100 percent te reo Māori overnight, there’d be backlash, a left shift. Change needs to be steady and sustainable to avoid backlash.”

With funding limited, providing high-quality content for fluent speakers and learners remained a challenge, Parr said.

“There’s a risk of a left shift. That would make it more difficult to grow speaker numbers. But overall, we’re in a good position. Survey results show a significant majority support te reo Māori. The challenge is turning that support into active speakers.”

The levers of revitalisation

Parr said much of what Te Māngai Pāho does was influence the elements of revitalisation: status, acquisition, corpus, critical awareness, and use.

“First, you need people to value the language, to build its status. Then they need to acquire it, and then use it. That’s the basis of the Māori Language Strategy: whakanui, whakaako, whakamahi - value it, learn it, use it."

The long-term goal, he said, was an Aotearoa where everyone spoke te reo Māori.

“The end game is a bilingual country. Not in five or ten years, but aspirationally.”

But one of the biggest challenges remained meeting the demand for te reo Māori education.

“At the moment, most wānanga and other learning institutions are oversubscribed, which is great, but also means people are turned away. We need more capacity, so no one misses out.

“And we need the right model for our immersion pipeline.

“We know kōhanga reo, kura kaupapa, and wharekura turn out absolute gold.”

However, Parr said “we keep tampering with that pipeline.”

“For example, taking teachers out to teach public servants. That’s counterproductive.

“We should be strengthening the pipeline so more tamariki and mokopuna go through kōhanga, kura, and wharekura, producing more graduates.”

By Layla Bailey-McDowell of RNZ.