Judy Gill: Te reo Māori, taonga and the question of responsibility

Te reo Māori is frequently described as a taonga—sacred, tapu, precious—and the Treaty of Waitangi is often invoked to argue that the state therefore bears an obligation to protect it.

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.