Written By Kata Roberts
I think back to a time when te reo Māori was being pushed out of our schools, our workplaces,
and our everyday lives. I think back to 1972.
I imagine standing there, among thousands of Māori, watching our voices make their way to
Parliament. I wonder what it felt like to know that something bigger than a petition was taking
shape, a fight to keep our language alive.
TE WHANGANUI A TARA, WELLINGTON
14th SEPTEMBER 1972
Journal entry #156
22 years old, I stand outside parliament, a sea of Maori stretches beyond sight, voices rising like
wind through trees.
Heavy air sits on shoulders, anger there yes but underneath, something else pulses, quiet
belief.
Schools shut doors to te reo, workplaces turned away. Public life acted as though our words
were ghosts. Generations watched elders fold their tongues, shrink who they were. Just to move
quietly among Pakeha norms.
A petition moves ahead now, packed with over 30,000 names, each one pressing into history.
What we’re really asking lives deeper than grammar or vocabulary, it’s about keeping breath in
the bones of who we are.
Something stirs within when I hear te reo rising above the murmur of voices. Not just words, but
tales. Whakapapa woven into sound, echoes from those who came before.
Colonisation aimed to silence this thread connecting us, yet here it breathes again.
Releasing the language feels less like study, more like remembering a rhythm my bones already
know.
Somehow, when people start calling 14th of September Māori language day, it sounds like
echoes returning after years of being muffled by colonial weight.
Come 1975, what becomes Te Wiki o te Reo Māori unfold, a widening circle inviting every
person in Aotearoa to speak words guarded fiercely by generations of Māori.
In my bones, this isn’t just another calendar moment, instead roots upwards, breath returns,
quiet persistence answers noise.
