Increasingly, a further claim is added: that difficulty learning te reo Māori today is driven by “intergenerational trauma”. This article questions whether that trauma framework is being used with conceptual precision and evidential discipline, and whether it explains contemporary language outcomes better than simpler factors such as age, literacy, educational quality, and language use in the home.
This article does not dispute the cultural value of te reo Māori. It disputes the logic of outsourcing responsibility while psychologising ordinary learning difficulty as inherited harm.What taonga meant — and what it did not
At the time the Treaty of Waitangi was signed, taonga referred primarily to things people actively used and relied upon in daily life—land, fishing grounds, tools, and other tangible resources.
Languages were not administered by governments. They were spoken within families and communities. They lived—or died—in the home.
No government, British or otherwise, was ever responsible for ensuring parents spoke their own language to their children. That responsibility rested with families themselves.Languages live at home — or they do not live at all
This is a universal principle across cultures.
Languages survive when parents speak them to their children, when families prioritise them in daily life, and when communities invest time, effort, and resources into passing them on.
Immersion at school can help. It cannot substitute for habitual use outside school.
Reframing this reality as “intergenerational trauma” does not alter the mechanics of language transmission.Kōhanga Reo and the inversion of responsibility
Kōhanga Reo have operated since 1982 and have been publicly funded for decades. They were designed to immerse children in te reo Māori and to involve whānau in language revitalisation.
Yet the experience of Kōhanga Reo reflects a pattern seen internationally: institutional immersion does not automatically translate into sustained home use when English remains the dominant household language.
In effect, the dynamic has inverted. Where English was once required at school while Māori was spoken at home, today te reo Māori may be required in educational settings while English dominates family life. Compulsion has shifted, but the locus of transmission remains the home.The Australia test
The contradiction becomes clear when Māori families move overseas.
When Māori families live in Australia, they are migrants. They do not expect the Australian government to teach their children te reo Māori, fund immersion programmes nationwide, or be morally responsible if their children do not learn the language. At most, te reo Māori might exist as an optional community or heritage subject.
In that context, everyone understands that heritage language transmission is a family responsibility, not a state obligation.
That principle does not change simply because the family resides in New Zealand. What changes is the political narrative.Generational limits of the punishment claim
If historical punishment for speaking te reo Māori is invoked as a cause of trauma-related language avoidance, that claim can only plausibly apply to a specific cohort—primarily the Baby Boomer generation or earlier—who may have had direct exposure to those schooling practices.
That same cohort is now older. Difficulty learning a second language in later adulthood is a well-documented phenomenon across all ethnicities, reflecting age-related constraints on language acquisition.
Difficulty learning te reo Māori in later life is therefore more parsimoniously explained by age, educational foundation, literacy, and opportunity than by a transmissible psychological condition.The myth of inherited linguistic ability
There is a widespread but largely unspoken assumption that Māori identity itself confers an advantage in learning te reo Māori, or that Māori learners should acquire it more easily.
This assumption is false.
Languages are not genetically inherited. They are not spiritually transmitted. Cultural identity does not confer linguistic competence. For many Māori today, te reo Māori is a second language learned under the same cognitive constraints as any other adult learner.
Treating te reo Māori as exceptional in this regard inflates expectations, generates shame when normal learning difficulty arises, and invites trauma narratives to explain what is, in most cases, ordinary second-language acquisition.Trauma, PTSD, and mechanism
In clinical psychology, trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder require defined exposure and mechanism. Children can be affected by a parent’s PTSD—such as in families of war veterans—because they grow up in a dysregulated home environment shaped by that parent’s symptoms.
That model does not extend indefinitely across generations.
There is no scientific basis for diagnosing PTSD, or comparable psychological impairment, solely on the basis of ancestral experiences many generations removed. Claims that difficulty learning a language today is caused by intergenerational trauma rely on unspecified and untestable mechanisms. In this sense, they are metaphysical rather than scientific.The selectivity problem
If intergenerational trauma were a general explanatory framework, it would be applied consistently across historical experience.
Māori history, like that of many pre-modern societies, includes internal warfare, enslavement, and cannibalism. These events are not invoked as sources of contemporary psychological impairment affecting cognition or learning.
By contrast, reduced language transmission within families generations later is increasingly framed as traumatising and attributed to external forces. This selectivity suggests that trauma narratives are being applied symbolically, in support of a particular political story, rather than consistently as neutral psychological explanations.The Irish precedent: over a century of compulsion
International experience reinforces these limits.
In Ireland, Irish (Gaeilge) has been a compulsory, state-funded subject in national schooling since 1922—a period now exceeding a century. Despite this, English remains the dominant language of everyday public life.
Recent census data show that only around 1.4–1.5 per cent of Ireland’s population speaks Irish daily outside educational settings. This outcome demonstrates that even prolonged compulsory instruction and sustained funding do not guarantee widespread home or social use.
The Irish case illustrates a broader principle: international and economic forces—particularly the global dominance of English—exert stronger influence on everyday language behaviour than national education policy alone.Conclusion
Respecting te reo Māori does not require mystifying language learning or psychologising ordinary difficulty.
Languages endure when they are used, prioritised, and transmitted through sustained practice—principally in homes and communities. State support may assist, but it cannot substitute for voluntary use, social utility, or family responsibility.
If te reo Māori is a taonga, it deserves honesty about what actually sustains languages, and clarity about the limits of trauma-based explanations that lack mechanism.
References
Te reo Māori / New Zealand
Te Mātāwai – Everyday Experiences of Te Reo Māori Trauma
https://www.tematawai.maori.nz/en/research-and-evaluation/our-research/everyday-experiences/
NZ History (Ministry for Culture and Heritage) – First kōhanga reo opens (1982)
https://nzhistory.govt.nz/page/first-kohanga-reo-opens/
Ireland / Gaeilge
Central Statistics Office (Ireland) – Census 2022: Irish language use
https://www.cso.ie/en/census/census2022/
Central Statistics Office (Ireland) – Profile 8: The Irish Language and the Gaeltacht
https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-cp8lg/cp8lg/
Government of Ireland – Exemption from the study of Irish
https://www.gov.ie/en/service/1d6f3-exemption-from-the-study-of-irish/
Judy Gill BSc, DipTchg, is a parent, former teacher, and a staunch advocate for secular education.
8 comments:
How did academics communicate before modern academic speak was contrived? I would like to see the whole article in Churchillian English (including his opinion!) The serious discouragement of maori lingo in schools long preceeded the baby boomer era (just post WW2). It stemmed from 19th Century representations to Parliament by responsible far sighted senior maori. It facilitated a level of achievement even in back country schools and now often not attained in towns and cities.
If it were not for English in the home total immersion victims would be as lost as a Somali refugee with little hope of employment except to teach te reo. Maori may not even have the advantage of a superior IQ. Total immersion or devotion of significant time to te reo must be quite the most irrational policy ever adopted in NZ. The costs of te reo directly in teaching, plus consequent English remedy, and resulting costs associated reduced employment and income must be staggering. Not to mention the costs arising from the closely related insurgency movement.
From RNZ and occasional Letters to Editor, the fact that intelligent non maori front up to te reo classes and often excel is a factor of great annoyance to maori. Bears out the writer's observation. However many maori have the advantage that the maori accent so grating to others fits true te reo. Whilst an ability to learn te reo may not be inherited, the accent passes down as if it is, to the unfortunate exclusion of good English pronunciation. Just as te reo immersion displaces English language.
If te reo were limited to the vocab of 1840 learning would not so seriously displace English. But a stone age derived people have now inflicted on them not just one simple stone age language but two both now complex languages.
The promotion of obsolete stone age te reo and the associated development of the network of interconnecting structures built around it must rank as quite the most artful insurrection mechanism developed and successfully applied in any country ever.
Thank you for saying what the trace-Maori activists and their woke fellow travellers (here's looking at you Anne Salmond) do NOT want to hear.
I am so sick and tired of hearing the big LIE about the suppression of the Maori Language, kids getting bashed in school for speaking Maori etc. Yes, some Maori kids were bashed (as were all kids back then to breaking school rules) for speaking Maori in some schools. BUT many of the "native" schools back then were in fact entirely run by Maori who insisted on their pupils speaking English. Why? because the smart Maori saw that the way for their kids to get ahead in the wider modern non-tribal world was to learn English, the dominant language of industry, trade, etc. Maori as a viable language in the modern world is a DEAD END. If people want to speak it, fine with me, but as a tax-payer, I'll be damned if I'll waste my hard earned $ on it.
The New Zealand government has absolutely NO legal obligation of "protect' any language or culture. The only Government obligation is to take care of ALL New Zealand citizens regardless of race, religion, culture, ancestry. And this includes the modern made-up version of Te Reo which has very little in common with the Maori spoken language as it existed pre -European contact.
Maori separatists/activists and their woke European fellow travellers (here's looking at you again Dame" Anne Salmond), will do anything and invoke any woke twisted academic bullshit to shift the blame for the failings of Maori culture away from Maori and onto the always evil colonialists. No matter that hypocrites/neo-Marxists like Salmond are sucking off the public tit in their very privileged positions in the universities which never existed (and could never exist) in pre-literate stone-aged tribal Maori culture.
When I despair at the sheer daft unreason of all that has come after the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi ( not a treaty at all actually) I take solace in the fact that there are sane people like you Judy, who know how it really is.
This warping of history and inventing Marxist - like victimisation scenarios to invoke guilt towards 'the colonizers ' is becoming very irritating.
What went wrong in NZ education was the introduction of progressivism ( thin end of wedge to introduction of Marxism) mid last century which has caused us to have the longest tail of underachievement in the developed world . Maori are over-represented in this tail which condemns them to being in the underclass with high prison occupancy and on welfare. When we still had traditional methods of teaching there was no tail of underachievement .Traditional education has strict discipline because you can't learn in an undisciplined classroom . Unfortunately the discipline sometimes in the past went beyond strict to unfair and even brutal which included strapping children for speaking Maori in class . Of course back then any talking at all out of place in class warranted strapping.
What progressives fail to mention is that the strict discipline , combined with structured teaching methods resulted in all children achieving good levels of literacy , numeracy and written work. Now with progressive permissive discipline our achievement in the basics are appalling . The two factors are related particularly with low decile children who often come from disordered and undisciplined homes and desperately need strict direction at school more so than higher decile children.
My questions to the progressives is what would you rather have strict discipline or a life time of illiteracy ? Gaynor
To get the maori strapping in perspective'; in the early 1950s I attended a primary school in a provincial town. In my intake we had a disruptive (European) boy who would now probably be automatically categorised as autistic He constantly performed to attract attention so was very disruptive in class. The female teacher used to call upon the male teacher in the next class to strap. Incredibly (now) he regularly obliged; the deed was done in the corridor. On one occasion the boy would not leave his desk, the combined table and seat type. The teachers dragged the whole assembly out of the classroom. If the boy had been maori it would now be major folklore. (The boy was successful with publicity; I still remember his name...)
Ellen, there are perfectly sane people in NZ, sadly very few in the hierarchy running it.
How does Luxon think that different family members can have greater rights created by grandparents having a touch of Maori ?
And we thought at election time that Luxon was smart ?
Well put Gaynor, and some pertinent remarks also by the other commentators.
While a little off topic, the other day I happened across the link below and was somewhat dumbfounded: (a) because I wasn’t expecting it - as I was on a website that until then was principally in English (as you would rightfully expect); and, (b) I’ll wager if you went back half a century or more and put this to most Te Reo speakers (without the English translation) they’d struggle to know what you were on about with many of the words and concepts having been invented since. That this is produced on a Council website shows how misguided such bureaucracies have become and it’s little wonder our rates are so out of hand, with time and money spent producing such virtue signalling nonsense.
https://eplan.wellington.govt.nz/proposed/rules/0/301/0/0/0/108
I have little doubt that the excuse for such a ‘worthwhile initiative’ would be put down to meeting the requirements of the Treaty provisions of the Local Government 2002.
In the 1970s, as a young adult, I learned the Maori language to a fair degree of fluency. I was taught by a native speaker, of whom there were still many, back then. In those days, the vocab. was, for obvious reasons, pretty small. Many common words - days of the week eg - were transliterations, which was also to be expected. Our teacher referred to them as "Maorifications". Nobody ever referred to the language as "te reo". That's a piece of revisionism.
In recent years, I've made it my business to forget the language, because it's been weaponised. I can't now be bothered with it. Though my pronunciation is still excellent (I've always had a very good "ear" for languages), nowadays I don't give a toss about that and make no effort at all.
Many years later, I studied linguistics at uni. I learned that the ineluctable linguistic rules apply to all languages, including Maori. For survival, let alone increased usage, all languages need a critical mass of native speakers: people who have it as their first and only language, for the first 4-5 years of their lives. Even bilingualism is unlikely to be sufficient when a language is critically endangered, as is Maori. Absent those native speakers, a language is dead, as is Latin. This doesn't mean that it isn't still used, as is Latin, but nonetheless, the language is dead. It looks to me as if that applies to Maori. It doesn't matter how many well-meaning non-Maori attempt to learn Maori, they cannot save the language. Revival would be a very difficult task, and Maori themselves are the only ones who can bring it about.
Another thing I learned at uni: all languages with native speakers, whether or not they have a written form, are equally complex, with their own grammar. It's only the vocabulary which varies in size. People who think that the Maori language spoken here when, eg, Cook arrived, was simpler than English, are incorrect. The vocabulary was smaller than that of English, but that's all.
Language acquisition is easiest when one is young. The literature shows that the upper age limit for acquiring native-like ability and pronunciation is around the early 20s, though there'll always be exceptions. People over this age can still become fluent in a language, but are likely always to speak with an accent which derives from their native language. The older we are, the more difficult it becomes to learn and remember another language. These rules of language acquisition apply to Maori, just as to all other people.
I note the reference to Ireland. We were there about 20 years ago, travelled around the Ring of Kerry (the Iveragh Peninsula, a Gaeltacht area, where Irish was spoken pretty much exclusively). When we stopped at Waterville for lunch, everyone in that restaurant was speaking Irish. Except for us, and the waiter, who addressed us in English. This was in winter, when few tourists were about. I have read that, since then, Irish usage has dropped away, even in the Gaeltacht areas. It's fallen victim to the advance of English. I can vouch for the fact that, wherever we went in Ireland, people used English. I've also read that, in modern-day Ireland, Irish has become the second language of middle-class urbanites in Dublin and such places. That bodes ill for language survival. And if the Irish, of all people, cannot preserve their language, what hope is there for Maori?
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