PĀNUI
NEWS
Te Wiki o te Reo Māori 2025: Honouring the Journey of our Language
10 / 09 / 2025
As you may know, from the 14th to the 20th of September we are celebrating 50 years of te wiki o te reo Māori, and because whakapapa is so incredibly important to us, lets take a look back at the origin of one of the most important weeks in our calendar year and our countries history.
From about 1860, life for Māori changed dramatically. Land wars, foreign diseases like influenza, world wars and government policies such as the Native Schools Act had a devastating impact on our people, our wellbeing and our ability to pass te reo Māori on to future generations.
By 1913, around 90% of Māori schoolchildren could speak te reo. But just 40 years later, by 1953, that number had dropped to only 26%. Colonisation, assimilation policies and urban drift in the 1960s and 70s pulled our people away from traditional ways of living.
Many whānau were actively discouraged, even punished, for speaking their language. Generations of Māori were deliberately disconnected from te reo.
Yet despite this, movements of resistance and revitalisation rose. In the late 1960s, Māori students and activists pushed back against discrimination and fought to protect te reo.
At Victoria University in 1970, Ngā Tamatoa and the Te Reo Māori Society were formed by largely urbanised Māori determined to do something about the impact of colonisation.
Both groups wanted te reo Māori taught in schools. Working with student associations, they gathered more than 30,000 signatures on a petition. On 14 September 1972, that petition was delivered to Parliament. The image of those young Māori sitting on the steps of Parliament remains iconic today. That date became known as Māori Language Day.
"From there, the momentum only grew. In 1975, the first Māori Language Week was held around 14 September. Bilingual schools began to emerge, including the first at Rūātoki in 1978. In 1982, the first kōhanga reo opened, followed soon after by kura kaupapa Māori."
Another milestone came in 1985, when Dr Huirangi Waikerepuru and Ngā Kaiwhakapūmau i te Reo lodged the Te Reo Māori claim with the Waitangi Tribunal. The Tribunal’s 1986 findings were groundbreaking: te reo Māori was recognised as a taonga, and the Crown was found to have a duty to actively protect it.
This led directly to the Māori Language Act 1987, which established Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Māori (the Māori Language Commission) and made te reo Māori an official language of Aotearoa.
These hard-fought battles remind us that the reo we hear today, in our news, workplaces, homes, schools and marae, did not survive by accident. It survived because people fought for it.
Te Wiki o te Reo Māori is a time to celebrate our reo, but also to reflect. Maybe te reo Māori fills you with pride. Maybe it stirs up mamae, remembering the history of loss. Both feelings are valid. What matters is that we continue to honour those who fought for te reo to be alive and thriving for us today, and for the generations still to come.
Kia kaha te reo Māori - mō ake tonu atu.
