Maori and Hawaiian Language revitalization

Chelsea Lehman

Maori and Hawaiian Language revitalization

Abstract

The world"s languages are dying at an astonishing rate. Linguists estimate that within the next hundred years, nearly half of the world"s six thousand languages will be extinct. The majority of the languages that are at risk are spoken by indigenous minorities and are not languages of government or power (Hinton, Leanne, 2001, p. 3). Despite this bleak prediction, there are several cases of successful indigenous language revitalization programs that serve as optimistic examples of what is possible. The Maori and Hawaiian language revitalization programs are the two foremost examples of successful indigenous language revitalization. These programs, which began in the 1980"s, have produced a new generation of native speakers through government funded, formal, total immersion education programs that begin at the early childhood level and continue through high school.

, The New York Times (NYT) reported the discovery of the remains of 215 Indigenous children on the grounds of a former residential school in British Columbia, Canada (Austen, 2021). News of this mass murder and its subsequent cover up rocked the world and came at a time when Canada and many other countries have mounted reconciliation efforts as they attempt to come to terms with a brutal past involving Indigenous populations. The residential school context described in the NYT story is representative of residential school educational arrangements in the last century that saw children from numerous First Nations forcibly removed from their homes and forbidden to speak their languages for generations (McIvor, 2020). By detaching these children from language, culture, and place, state-and church-sponsored schooling sought to train Indigenous students for subservience. Sadly, these cruel efforts inflicted unimaginable harm-both epistemological and emotionalupon these children (McCarty et al., this issue). In fact, Geraldine Bob, a former student, featured in the NYT story disclosed that the school staff members "would just start beating you and lose control and hurl you against the wall, throw you on the floor, kick you, punch you" (Austen, 2021). Such abuse, as we learn, was not uncommon. In starting my commentary with this disturbing anecdote, my goal is to highlight how Indigenous people have been forcibly removed from their land, displaced, and subsequently had their rights revoked and identities rejected (McKinley & Smith, 2019). That their lives are inextricably intertwined with the land is further underscored by Chiblow and Meighan (2021, in press). More importantly, however, as the four papers in this special issue demonstrate, vestiges of coloniality-often mediated through language-in-education policies and practices-have had a lasting impact on disenfranchised Indigenous people. And ultimately what's at stake is a politics of identity (mis)recognition. Before I proceed any further, I would like to acknowledge that to some extent I am complicit in the settler colonialism that I write about. I want to acknowledge the land upon which my university, Michigan State University (MSU) resides. MSU occupies the ancestral, traditional, and contemporary Lands of the Anishinaabeg, namely, the Three Fires Confederacy of Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi peoples. But I am also originally from Singapore, a small country in Southeast Asia that was previously inhabited by the Indigenous people (i.e., the bumiputeras, or "Sons of the Soil") of the region. Over the centuries, however, this region was overrun by colonizers from Portugal (the 15 th century), the Netherlands (17 th century) and Britain (19 th century), all of whom plundered the wealth of and in Southeast Asia. But I am also a product of colonialism, having grown up in a postcolonial Singapore whose government preserved many policy practices (e.g., the implementation of English as a medium of instruction in public schools) that it inherited from the British, and having been raised Catholic within a family of Portuguese heritage. I mention my own history in order to underscore how the apparatuses of church and school have historically and universally played pivotal roles in advancing the colonial enterprise; the lasting influence of church and school also echoes through the papers in this special issue.

Political and linguistic repression over a period of 100 years nearly brought the death of the Hawaiian language. In the last 30 years though, a Hawaiian renaissance movement has helped revitalize the Hawaiian language. Hawaiian language activists and scholars are taking advantage of every possible tool to promote their language, including computers and the Internet. This article discusses the role of computing and online communications in Hawaiian language revitalization, focusing on the Leokï bulletin board system, the first BBS in the world fully based on an indigenous language. "I ka 'ölelo nö ke ola, i ka 'ölelo nö ka make" (In the language there is life, in the language there is death, Ancient Hawaiian Proverb). Though some believe that the Internet will strengthen the worldwide dominance of English , indigenous language activists around the world are working for a different electronic future, one based on linguistic rights and cultural diversity. One of the most inspiring projects designed to bring about such a future is the Leokï (Powerful Voice) bulletin board system, the first Internet communication systems in the world fully based on an indigenous language. This article describes the development and use of Leokï, but first provides some necessary background information on the history of the Hawaiian language and current revitalization efforts. Ka 'ölelo Hawai'i, the Hawaiian language, is a member of the Polynesian language family, which spreads over a large triangular area in the Pacific Ocean from Hawai'i to New Zealand to Easter island . While Hawaiian is similar to other Polynesian languages such as Tahitian and Mäori, they cannot be said to be mutually intelligible. Hawaiian was a strictly oral language until the "discovery" of the islands by Europeans in 1778, followed by the arrival of American missionaries in 1820. The missionaries eventually developed an alphabet based on five vowels (a e i o u) and eight consonants (h k l m n p w '). The language is written with the roman alphabet plus two special diacritical marks, the 'okina ['], which signifies a glottal stop, and the kahakö, or macron, which is placed over vowels to lengthen them (ä ë ï ö ü). Hawaiian literacy flourished in the 19th century when Hawaiÿi was an independant kingdom with a parlimentary form of government. Dozens of newspapers were published, a number of religious and literary works were translated into Hawaiian, and Hawaiians transcribed a wealth of traditional oral literature. Literacy rates were high; indeed according to one published account they were as high as anywhere else in the world . At the same time, though, the Hawaiian people and their culture were being devastated by Western colonization. Diseases introduced by colonizers reduced the Hawaiian population from some 300,000 in 1778 to approximately 50,000 a century later (Wilson, in press;. Traditional language and art forms, such as the hula, were repressed due to pressure from the missionaries, who viewed these cultural expressions as "foul" and "idolatrous" . We would like to acknowledge the assistance for this article provided by Hale Kuamo'o at the University of Hawai'i, Hilo, and especially by the children, teachers, and principal at Keaukaha Elementary School in Hilo.

Linguistic trends within last decades have become an intriguing and attention-grabbing phenomenon. The language policy which often sides with a stronger and more promising linguistic group in terms of social development is changing in the direction of preserving the linguistic minorities diversity. As its variety deteriorates annually and the sharp decrease is worsening, a combination of different measures is being undertaken in many countries. Such approach is aimed at supporting one language or several languages in order to unite the various nationalities inhabiting the country into a single state unit-the nation. In the framework of special attention to the unique cultures and languages of the Maori in New Zealand and the Mayan in Mexico, there is an unusual integration of indigenous languages (autochthonous languages) into the commonly used allochthonous languages of these areas. Thus, this article presents a survey on the penetration and full implementation of maorisms into the New Zealand variant of English language and maisms into the Mexican national variant of Spanish language, confirming their original existence and development in a new integrated form. The aim of this work is to compare the position of indigenous languages, their inclusion processes in English and Spanish, as well as the revival policy influencing the situation. The linguistic situation in New Zealand and in Mexican state Quintana Roo contrasts significantly, as the policy of education through " language nests" to preserve the Maori language is regarded to be efficient and successful while the Mayan language isn't supported enough. In New Zealand, a situation of simultaneous bilingualism is more observed-the knowledge of Kiwi English and the Maori language, there is almost no place where only the language of Maori is spoken and the interpenetration of languages is very strong. While in Quintana Roo there are still places where they do not understand Spanish and speak exclusively in the Mayan language, zealously protecting their cultural heritage and language, whereas the majority tend to use Spanish with Mayan language units. The issues of preserving the ethnic identity and national values are acute and relevant. On the one hand, small nations are able to use now wide opportunities through digital technologies for self-presentation of their culture and languages having also a substantial policy of support from the state. On the other hand, globalization is a challenge to small ethnic groups considering their future destiny as they are pushed to be flexible and elastic; they have to adapt to the life of majority changing their lifestyle and language preferences. The online sociological survey conducted on the base of the linguistics faculty in People's Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University) has acknowledged the intentions of 42 PhD students to study not only English and Spanish as allochthonous languages but also concentrate their attention on the cultural linguistic specifics of maorisms and maisms: • 58% of students claimed about the desire to deepen the knowledge and to learn distinctive features of indigenous languages, • 30% of respondents stated their preference exclusively for the languages of majority, • 12% of students refused the need of deep language learning being ready only to learn colloquial part of it

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