Dear Editor, In February the Secretary of Culture, Emile Kairua, told RNZ that Cook Islands Māori is “on the trajectory to becoming an extinct language”. The numbers prove him right.
The New Zealand census, run by Stats NZ for the New Zealand Government, shows that in 2001, 14 per cent of Cook Islanders in New Zealand aged 15 to 29 could speak our language. By 2023 it was 4 per cent. For every seven young speakers, two are left, and it took only 22 years. At the same pace, 4 per cent becomes about 1 per cent within one more generation.
Cook Islands Parliament has passed a $375.9 million budget for 2026/27. Government has allocated $15,000 from this financial year budget to Te Kōpapa Reo Māori, our national language commission. A full-time worker on the current minimum wage of $10.50 an hour earns about $21,800. Te Kopapa Reo Maori receives less than one minimum-wage worker in the Cook Islands.
Looking after the language is the Government’s job by law. Article 35 of the Constitution requires debates in Parliament, and every Bill and Act, to be in Māori as well as English, unless Parliament resolves that a particular one be in English only. That only works if each generation produces people who can read, write and argue in Māori. The Te Reo Maori Act 2003 sets a status for Māori “equal to English” as its goal, and the Education Act 2012 tells our schools to put emphasis on “the use and preservation of the Cook Islands Maori language”. Parliament wrote these duties, and Parliament controls the money to carry them out.
The Te Reo Maori Act has not been amended in 23 years. It still lists telegram, cable and telex as ways for the Commission to pass a resolution. It puts no duty on any government department to use the language, says nothing about phones or artificial intelligence, and does not reach the nearly nine in 10 Cook Islands Māori who live in New Zealand and Australia. A law written in 2003 cannot answer a decline this fast.
Business has a share in this too. Since the airport opened in 1974, banks, airlines, hotels and shops have grown here by putting Māori-speaking staff at the counter. The teller explained loan papers to a mama in Māori, and customers stayed loyal for decades. I was one of those workers in the late 1990s and early 2000s, at a bank and a hotel on Rarotonga, starting at one job on $3.50 an hour. In my experience our Māori was used every working day building loyalty with customers, and it was never paid for.
Parents see which language earns the wage, and that is one reason many speak English to their children. Someone who was 15 in 2001 is 40 today and may be raising children of their own. Where those parents never learned Māori, their children will not hear it at home.
I ask the new Parliament to:
- Amend the Te Reo Maori Act so the Government must protect, promote and ensure the continuation of Cook Islands Māori, before the next Te Kōpapa Reo Māori is appointed.
- Fund the language over several years at a level that matches the job, not $15,000 at a time.
- Pay a fluency allowance to certified speakers in the public service and at large employers. Most New Zealand government departments already pay one for te reo Māori.
- Pay for a Cook Islands Māori keyboard, spell-checker and dictionary app.
Businesses that profited from our language for fifty years can help pay to keep it spoken, but the legal duty sits with the Government of the Cook Islands. One generation has already cost us most of our young speakers. If this Parliament waits, the next count will be lower, and there will be fewer speakers left to teach the children who come after.
Meitaki maata,
Marcel Teraimana