MORE Cook Islanders call New Zealand home and that means holding on to their culture and traditions can be a challenge at the best of times.
Senior lecturer in Māori Studies at Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland, Dr Ake Nicholas is doing her part to help Cook Islanders preserve their heritage. Her approach starts with a word of encouragement: “If you didn’t grow up speaking your language, it is not your fault.”
This first week of August is Cook Islands Maori language week, and Nicholas hopes that it will help communities to see the value of and celebrate using their language.
“Language is much more than words,” she said.
“People carry a lot of shame about not knowing their language. But if you are a descendant of one of these communities and you don’t know your heritage language, that’s not because of something you have done.”
As one of the Pacific’s top indigenous linguists, Nicholas is passionate about helping Cook Island Maori strengthen the connection to their indigenous language heritage. She played a lead role in establishing the Diploma in Cook Islands Māori at the University of the South Pacific, with a focus on language revitalisation, Indigenous education, Pacific linguistics and emerging technologies.
Digging deeper into the issues around indigenous languages has shed light on the issue of language loss. She found that language loss experienced by many Cook Islands Māori families is closely linked to historical and structural forces, including colonial education systems and language policies that discouraged the intergenerational transmission of Indigenous languages.
In her award winning essay Linguicide and the Realm of New Zealand She urges Cook Islanders not to blame themselves: “It is impossible to blame yourself for decisions that were made before you were born. Those choices about what language was spoken in homes, classrooms and institutions were made by others, and she had a simple message for this week: “You didn’t choose the circumstances that separated you from your language. What matters is that the opportunity exists now to reconnect.”
