Saving a language
When Hamish Crooks presented his Trust’s Cook Islands language resource kit to a public meeting recently, the reaction from one grandfather in the audience was “how much is this going to cost me?”
With flash cards, charts and a resource CD, the pack looks impressive. The grandfather was expecting a price to match.
“It’s going to cost you a lot,” was Hamish’s reply. “It’s going to cost you a lot of time with your mokopuna (grandchildren) teaching them this language and then, when you use our resources on the internet, you have to let them teach you.”
The Toku Reo Tupuna Trust takes an inter-generational approach to saving the Cook Islands language from extinction, working with families to encourage the use of the language in everyday life.
"You have to be multi-lingual in a modern society," says Hamish, "but your language links you back to your identity, to who you are and what you want to achieve. It is spiritual, it's a belonging. That identity is really important to New Zealand-born Cook Islanders."
The Manukau-based Toku Reo Tupuna Trust is targeting around 10 Cook Island early childhood centres, mainly in Auckland, and the 58,000 New Zealanders of Cook Islands decent who live in New Zealand. Its vision is that the language will be spoken in every Cook Island family's home.
It already has language resource kits and an interactive website, developed in partnership with The Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs . Now ASB Community Trust funding will allow the trust to work wider afield.
"We hear people saying they want structured learning of the language, but there's not much around," says Hamish. "We'll now be getting out there face-to-face and we will look at working with primary and high schools as well as the punanga reo (Cook Island language nests)."
The trust will begin by working intensively with 100 families. It is employing a fulltime co-ordinator and administrative support to work with the Punanga reo, community organisations and schools to develop more resources. Ideas in the pipe-line include talking books, which will bring the language to life when people can see and hear it.
"Although we're targeting the New Zealand-born population, through the internet we've already got 1600 people registered worldwide," says Hamish. "Our website is the biggest classroom. It has free registration and it allows people to explore the islands, hear the traditonal songs and learn the language."
There are three main languages used in the Cook Islands, but Toku Reo Tupuna (the language of my ancestors) will concentrate on teaching Rarotongan as the area's main langauge. It is the offical language for the 20,000 people still living in the Cook Islands, but it is estimated that only about 16% of Cook Islanders in New Zealand can now use it to hold an everyday conversation.
"We're definitly losing the language," says Hamish. "The older people, they can still speak it, but its not being passed down to the next generations."
He likens the crisis of Cook Islands Maori to the situation Maori were in before the kohanga reo revival of the 1970s. The language has been preserved in bible translations, and it is still used in church services,
but Toku Reo Tupuna Trust wants to make sure it remains in use elsewhere.
"When we hear the grandchildren saying a prayer in Cook Island Maori, its an awesome experience," says Hamish. "It warms the hearts of our elders and gives us all hope for the future."
