Advocating for a Threatened Language: The Case for Māori on Television in Aotearoa/New Zealand

Abstract

The Māori text of the Treaty of Waitangi – founding document of Aotearoa/New Zealand – proclaims protection of Māori taonga or treasures. A series of court cases began in the 1980s seeking to obligate the New Zealand Government to recognise the threatened Maori language as such a treasure, and to protect and promote it through its broadcasting interests. For a decade, the author acted as an expert witness in these cases through all levels of the New Zealand courts. Presenting international precedents for broadcasting in language maintenance efforts, my evidence argued for the importance of broadcasting to help give Maori the prestige which will make speakers want to use it. Exposure through daily use on mainstream, primetime television could make the difference between the language’s death or survival as a full, vital language. The successive cases were all lost, but the courts’ judgments required the Government to accept its political obligations to the language through broadcasting. The result was the establishment of Māori Television as a stand-alone channel in 2004. Mainstreaming of Maori on majority-audience, primetime television, however, still shows no sign of occurring in the highly deregulated and competitive New Zealand broadcasting environment.