Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori

Rāhina kicked off the start of a fun-filled and busy Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori at WITT. Each day this week WITT has held activities across their Ngāmotu and Hāwera campuses getting ākonga involved in Māori Language Week and helping them increase their understanding of te reo Māori.  

Activities included a campus-wide Kahoot quiz, hangi and a day filled with poi-making, weaving, and screen-printing Māori designs.  

Hayley Pennell is an ākonga in the New Zealand Certificate in Te Reo Māori (Level 1) who took part in the activities on Rāapa and got to make her own poi.  

"I enjoyed finishing class and going over to Te Kauta Café and getting involved in all the activities that were happening."  

Hayley chose to study te reo Māori as a challenge to herself. 

"I wanted to study te reo Māori to try something out of my comfort zone and be more connected to Aotearoa." 

"From starting the programme until now, I've fallen in love with the culture and the language," she said.  

Te Amoroa Clifton Lead -Māori Enterprise said Te Wiki o Te Reo is an important event in the WITT calendar each year, and was excited to see how many activities took place over the week.  

"The normalisation of te reo Māori as an everyday language is important and Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori is just the start of this."  

"This year’s Māori Language Week celebrates the 50^th anniversary of the petition that called for the Māori language to be taught in schools. In 1972, a group known as Ngā Tama Toa and the Te Reo Māori Society collected over 30,000 signatures on a petition to Parliament calling for the government to offer Māori Language in schools."

"For me, it is important to remember all of those people who were instrumental in making Te Reo Māori available to us in education."

"My vision is to increase the use of reo across the organisation, the community and to continue the legacy of those who have laid the path for language revitalisation in Taranaki," he said.  

Check out our Māori Language Moment for 2022.