When Pākehā arrived here,
they were immersed in te ao Māori.
If they couldn’t speak Māori...
they couldn’t entice Māori
to buy their goods etcetera, etcetera...
or to marry them.
So yeah, according to the story
many of them (Pākehā) could speak Māori at the time.
But, it was a survival mechanism...
It wasn’t because they had any great affection for te ao Māori.
Once in the mid-1800s...
the tide had turned in this country.
The thing that really turned the tide...
was the onslaught of Pākehā arrivals,
so that the Pākehā population increased,
and the Māori population decreased.
Displacement from whenua,
displacement from...
from your ūkaipō,
displacement from...
the very essence of who you are
as a people,
which meant that things
like the reo and our tikanga
were the huge sacrifice.
Once the Pākehā government was established here...
from there a desire grew,
to exterminate the Māori people.
And that comes with
all the other things,
the diseases and language shift,
culture shift, resource...
challenges,
and ultimately some fighting.
All of that just culminated
in one really
toxic kind of mess.
Pākehā society
starts to purport
and present Māori
as being lesser than,
and having that
kind of portrayal
around the savage,
around the Neolithic culture,
around you know...
living in the mud hut,
starts to emerge as
a power play
that starts to render
not only the people,
but their language
is also being inferior.
We were taught that
everything we were doing was bad
and everything they were doing was good,
that white was right.
I’m just going to be frank.
That’s not a racist talk.
That's just what it is,
it's just the reality.
This is reality,
this is what our people have faced.
This is when we saw the end of Pākehā learning te reo Māori,
so that English was their only language.
At that time...
most Māori were still living on their land,
living within their villiages,
on their marae.
Te reo Māori was still spoken in their homes.
Māori realised that if they wanted to be involved in industry,
it was obvious they needed to learn English.
They saw Pākehā society was being elevated...
beyond Māori society.
So they quickly started learning English,
to ensure the well-being of future generations.
Their ultimate goal...
was to maintain the customs,
to maintain their autonomy,
to maintain their sovereignty.
That’s why they went into business,
they went into government,
to maintain that sovereignty.
Our ancestors didn’t anticipate,
te reo Māori could be lost.
I don't think anybody
truly could have foreseen
what was going to happen,
up until we had
Pākehā politicians
who were really individually keen on...
killing the language.