A gentlemen's agreement ... not policy

Tu Tangata, Issue 27, 1 December 1985, Page 12

A gentlemen's agreement ... not policy

Waitangi Tribunal update

Maui was a famous Polynesian fisherman according to one educational text still used in New Zealand schools. That’s one of the gripes that the Waitangi Tribunal heard in the second week of hearings of a maori language claim by Nga Kaiwhakapumau i te Reo, the Maori Language Board of Wellington.

This degrading of the maori language as a taonga of such tipuna as Maui, formed the bulk of the many submissions to the tribunal. Most related the effect of mono-cultural and monolingual policies by government agencies such as Broadcasting and Education on the reo rangatira, the maori language.

The Education Department came in for a fair amount of flak from speakers such as Sir James Henare who in response to a question from tribunal Q.C. Mr Paul Temm as to whether there was an official education policy to supress maori language at school replied, “it was a gentleman’s agree-

ment if not official policy”. Other speakers such as Haare Williams spoke of leaving their maori behind at the school gate but now it had graduated to stopping at the principal’s desk. And it was stated that school principals still control too much and supress the mana of the reo. Mike Hollings a teacher himself in the Wairarapa, spoke of the efforts made by Maori parents in his community to get bi-lingual status for some classes at East School, Masterton.

These parents had children coming

from several kohanga reo in the Wairarapa and going to a school with around 65% maori pupils. He spoke of intransigence by successive principals and Education Department inspectors to even consider and investigate the need of the community to have the maori language acknowledged in the schooling system.

He spoke of a threatened boycott by Maori parents before there was verbal agreement given to bi-lingual status. And even then he said that would only entitle the school to one maori language teacher when there was already need for at least two bi-lingual classes. And he said because of regulations relating to pakeha paper qualifications, a fluent speaker in the community could not be employed immediately at the school.

The downgrading of the maori language by an education system that convinced Maori parents that the learning of english would ensure a full sharing in the benefits of european civilisation, was a recurring theme in submissions before the tribunal.

Tamati Cairns, a teacher at Heretaunga College, spoke of the separation of the maori culture from the wairua, the life-giving force.

The wairua maori and the language were one he said, and when the wairua is not included, decadence creeps in. That is how he saw the emergence of ‘taha maori' in schools, a pakeha

response that was less threatening if it could be expressed in english.

However he saw it as a compromise any way it was looked at.

He said pakeha teachers had been safe in their monocultural cocoon, leaving the real work to someone else to do. He advised them to take the plunge and get wet. They would have to be prepared for knockbacks as maori things would no longer come cheaply. He said Maori people had had to undergo knockbacks also and they had come through.

He saw the road for pakeha teachers as being a painful one but ones who were already on the journey would attest to learning maori language for greater knowledge opened the door wider to the Maori community where the resources lay.

A painful reminder and an eyeopener for others was a demonstration before the tribunal by Pou Temara, a former school-teacher and now a broadcaster. He quizzed a fifth-form pupil with a School Certificate paper in maori language. To questions such as. ‘he aha tenei?' and ‘hei aha enei kamuputu?' while holding up a photograph of people on the marae, he received tentative and in some cases negative response.

He then addressed the same questions through a kohanga reo kaiako to a kohanga graduate now at primary school. The confident replies ably

demonstrated his point that the education system had made maori language into a written subject along the criteron of pakeha values, when it should be ‘korero a waha', a spoken language learnt by speaking it.

The further ills of the education system this time through the eyes of a Correspondence School teacher of maori, June Mead was chronicled. She spoke of the example used at the beginning of this story, that of reducing a treasured Maori tupuna, Maui-tiki-tiki-a Taranga, to that of a fisherman, when in Maori fact Maui fished up the North Island of Aotearoa.

The inadequate setup of the teaching of maori language by correspondence was shown by final power of whether or not a student can study being vested once again in the hands of the principal. Claire Morgan, a former Wellington Girls High School student later attested to four frustrated years at college trying to learn the maori language by correspondence while at the same time fighting a running battle with the headmistress, the college board and educational authorities.

June Mead further went on to point out the unfairness of a S.C. exam pass system that placed maori language on a low priority amongst handcrafts whilst foreign languages were scaled up to produce 70% S.C. pass rates. She said this had been a major bone of conten-

tion amongst maori language teachers as was the low 15% oral content of the S.C. Maori exam.

Broadcasting ignored

Broadcasting policies coming from an arm of the government for over one hundred and forty five years have had the effect of cementing in place a monocultural system that has ignored the only true New Zealand voice, te reo Maori.

The tribunal heard this from four BCNZ employees and a former member of the BCNZ board. Their testimony was vocal, loud and proud.

Haare Williams, the station manager of Radio New Zealand’s Maori radio unit spoke of single-minded policies that saw a radio transmitter taken away from a proposed Radio Polynesia and since then shared time amounting to no more than twenty minutes a day to maori language on government run airwaves. Morehu McDonald, a television producer of Credo, Country Calender and now Koha, spoke of deliberate decisions by BCNZ policy makers to limit maori language in programme schedules to low viewer slots, and then justifying the low ratings arrived at by pakeha viewpoint. Morehu said the total lack of a Maori viewpoint, right from the allocation of finances for programmes to the commissioning of ratings surveys to justify this pakeha commercial viewpoint, has accounted for a dismal media presence for Maori people both by pakeha and Maori.

Both of these experienced Broadcasting Corporation employees said there needed to be an autonomous Maori unit in radio and television, as proposed by the third television channel front-run-ner, Aotearoa Broadcasting System. Haare Williams envisaged a Radio Aotearoa Network embracing the country and using the access radio principle to have local ‘breakouts’ to handle regional iwi and hapu.

Piripi Walker, a radio producer in Radio New Zealand's Continuing Education Unit, told the Waitangi Tribunal of the success of two Maori initiatives he had been associated with, Te Reo o Poneke and Te Reo o Raukawa. Both radio stations he said, were based on maori kaupapa and came from the maori community because that was where the mana of the reo belonged.

He saw it as inevitable the advent of maori radio in FM and AM as Maori people discovered the thrill of taking off the shackles and letting the reo of Aotearoa heal the injustice suffered by mana maori.

The claim by Huirangi Waikerepuru on behalf of Nga Kaiwhakapumau had its third and final sitting from November 19-29 after this issue went to press. Coverage will be in the Feb/Mar issue of Tu Tangata by which time a decision may have been announced by the tribunal.